Helaman 1:9 Textual Variants

Royal Skousen
and behold they sent forth one [Kishcumen /Kishcamen 0|Kishkumen 1ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRST] even to the judgment seat of Parhoron

This is the first occurrence of the name Kishcumen in the Book of Mormon text. Throughout the original manuscript, this name is consistently written with a c for the second part of the name (that is, -cumen), but for some inexplicable reason Oliver Cowdery changed the spelling to Kishkumen when he copied the text into the printer’s manuscript (all 19 times). There is no manuscript evidence in 𝓞 for such a change since every sufficiently extant occurrence of the spelling in 𝓞 (11 of them) has the c. Perhaps Oliver thought the c following the sh looked strange, or perhaps he was influenced by the initial k in Kish-. In any event, this change appears to be a conscious one.

The form -cumen could be a separate morphological form—that is, the name could be made up of two separate morphemes (Kish and Cumen). The name Kish is used for a Jaredite king (Ether 1:18–19 and Ether 10:17–18); and there are two other Jaredite names that may end in a -kish morpheme, Riplakish (Ether 1, 10) and Akish (Ether 8–9, 14). Cumeni is used to refer to the name of a city seven times (in Alma 56–57); it is also found in the name of a Nephite general, Cumenihah (Mormon 6:14). Furthermore, the name Pacumeni (Helaman 1) may end in a -cumeni morpheme. On the other hand, Kumen itself is a separate name (in 3 Nephi 19:4), where it also occurs with the morphologically related name Kumenonhi. So the morphological evidence could be used to support either Kish +Cumen or Kish +Kumen, although there is strictly speaking no form Cumen, only Cumeni. It is very doubtful that Oliver Cowdery considered such morphological evidence when he changed the c in Kishcumen to a k.

As far as the first vowel of -cumen is concerned, in the original manuscript 12 occurrences of the name are extant for that vowel, and ten of those clearly show a u. But in two instances the letter could be interpreted as either a u or an a (that is, the u is somewhat closed). Those two unclear cases include the very first occurrence (here in Helaman 1:9) as well as the 11th occurrence in the text (in Helaman 2:7). Nonetheless, in the printer’s manuscript, Oliver Cowdery consistently wrote this vowel as a u, so there is no strong evidence for emending the first vowel in -cumen from to a. For another example of a name where u was misread as an a, see the discussion under Mormon 6:2 regarding the name Cumorah.

The change of Kishcumen to Kishkumen clearly demonstrates that Oliver Cowdery was occasionally willing to make an unsupportable change in the spelling of a name. Another example is the name Morionton; the first occurrence of that name is extant in 𝓞, yet Oliver changed the spelling to Morianton when he copied the text from 𝓞 into 𝓟 (see the discussion under Alma 50:25).

Summary: Restore throughout the text the original spelling Kishcumen (essentially the invariant spelling of the name in 𝓞); Oliver Cowdery systematically changed this name to Kishkumen when he copied the text from 𝓞 into 𝓟.

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

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