Helaman 3:1 Textual Variants

Here Oliver Cowdery initially wrote the plural dissensions in the original manuscript, but then he erased the plural s and overwrote the last part of the erasure with the a at the beginning of the following word, among. Thus the singular dissension appears to have been the reading of the original text. But in the printer’s manuscript, Oliver copied the text with the plural dissensions, which has been followed in all the printed editions. Perhaps one reason for the tendency to favor the plural is the plurality of the following clause (“which affairs were settled in the ending of the forty and third year”).

There is one other example of “little dissension(s)” in the text, and it is in the plural:

• Alma 45:21
  • for behold because of their wars with the Lamanites and the many little dissensions and disturbances which had been among the people …

In this case, the plural is supported by the quantifier many. Unfortunately, there are no other examples of some combined with little. More generally, when the determiner is some, we get only the singular if there is an intervening adjective:

• 1 Nephi 7:13 at some future period
• 1 Nephi 16:38 into some strange wilderness Enos 1:13 some future day
• Mosiah 5:10 by some other name
• Alma 30:28 some unknown being
• Alma 52:10 by stratagem or some other way
• Helaman 16:20 in some great and marvelous thing
• Helaman 16:21 some great mystery
• 3 Nephi 2:2 some vain thing
• Moroni 1:4 in some future day

Of course, this restriction to the singular may be just accidental. For instances of “some>” (that is, without an intervening adjective), the noun can be plural (thus “some dissenters” in Alma 63:14 and “some disputings” in 3 Nephi 6:10).

In any event, the singular dissension will work in Helaman 3:1, especially if some is interpreted as meaning ‘a certain’ or ‘a particular’. That seems to be the meaning here, and the immediate correction in 𝓞 strongly supports the singular reading, “some little dissension”.