Helaman 6:14 Textual Variants

Oliver Cowdery initially wrote in 𝓟 “they did also have great joy / yea much preaching & many prophecies”. Virtually immediately Oliver crossed out the yea, then supralinearly reinserted it. Finally, he inserted “& peace” right before the supralinear yea (there is no change in the level of ink flow for these two supralinear corrections). 𝓞 undoubtedly read with the conjoined “& peace” since either reading, with or without “and peace”, is theoretically possible. Normally, “great joy” occurs in the text without any conjoined reference to peace (27 times). Oliver’s omission of “and peace” in 𝓟 may be because earlier in this chapter there are two instances of “great joy” without any reference to peace:

• Helaman 6:3
• nevertheless the people of the church did have great joy 
  because of the conversion of the Lamanites yea because of the church of God which had been established among them and they did fellowship one with another and did rejoice one with another and did have great joy

Even so, there are two earlier references to “peace and great joy” in the book of Helaman, both in the same passage:

• Helaman 3:32
  • and it came to pass that there was peace and exceeding great joy in the remainder of the forty and ninth year yea and also there was continual peace and great joy in the fiftieth year of the reign of the judges

The critical text will maintain the corrected reading in 𝓟 for Helaman 6:14.