Helaman 5:15 Textual Variants

Royal Skousen
and from the city of Gid to the city [NULL >+ of 1|of ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRST] Mulek Here in ๐“Ÿ, Oliver Cowdery initially omitted the of in the phrase โ€œthe city of Mulekโ€. He later supplied the of, perhaps when he proofed ๐“Ÿ against ๐“ž (the level of ink ๏ฌ‚ow for the supralinear correction is somewhat heavier). Here ๐“ž is not extant but probably read with the of. Another instance of โ€œthe city of Mulekโ€ with the same initial error in ๐“Ÿ is found earlier in the text; in that case, ๐“ž is extant and has the of:

In that case, the supralinear of was written in ๐“Ÿ with heavier ink ๏ฌ‚ow; again the correction probably occurred when Oliver proofed ๐“Ÿ against ๐“ž. As explained under Alma 53:6, either reading, with or without the of, for โ€œcity (of ) Mulekโ€ is possible. In each case, the critical text will follow the earliest extant reading, thus the corrected reading in ๐“Ÿ for Helaman 5:15 and the reading in ๐“ž for Alma 53:2.

Summary: Maintain the occurrence of of for โ€œthe city of Mulekโ€ in Helaman 5:15; the corrected of is very likely the reading in ๐“ž (which is not extant here); also maintain the of in Alma 53:2, which is extant in ๐“ž.

Analysis of Textual Variants of the Book of Mormon, Part. 5

References