Helaman 5:15 Textual Variants

and from the city of Gid to the city [NULL >+ of 1|of ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRST] Mulek Here in 𝓟, Oliver Cowdery initially omitted the of in the phrase “the city of Mulek”. He later supplied the of, perhaps when he proofed 𝓟 against 𝓞 (the level of ink ﬂow for the supralinear correction is somewhat heavier). Here 𝓞 is not extant but probably read with the of. Another instance of “the city of Mulek” with the same initial error in 𝓟 is found earlier in the text; in that case, 𝓞 is extant and has the of:

Alma 53:2
- and Moroni went to the city [of 0ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRST|NULL >+ of 1] Mulek with Lehi

In that case, the supralinear of was written in 𝓟 with heavier ink ﬂow; again the correction probably occurred when Oliver proofed 𝓟 against 𝓞. As explained under Alma 53:6, either reading, with or without the of, for “city (of ) Mulek” is possible. In each case, the critical text will follow the earliest extant reading, thus the corrected reading in 𝓟 for Helaman 5:15 and the reading in 𝓞 for Alma 53:2.

Summary: Maintain the occurrence of of for “the city of Mulek” in Helaman 5:15; the corrected of is very likely the reading in 𝓞 (which is not extant here); also maintain the of in Alma 53:2, which is extant in 𝓞.

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

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