Helaman 9:14 Textual Variants

Royal Skousen
we ran and came to the place of the [ Judgmentseat 1|judgement A| judgment BCDEFGHIJKLMNOQR|judgment seat PS|judgment-seat T]

The printer’s manuscript reads judgment seat here in Helaman 9:14 (although spelled as Judgmentseat). The 1830 compositor accidentally dropped the word seat when he set the type for this passage. Perhaps he was expecting something like “the place of judgment”, as in Ecclesiastes 3:16: “and moreover I saw under the sun the place of judgment”. The 1908 RLDS edition and the 1981 LDS text restored the missing seat (by reference to 𝓟). The use of the compound noun judgment seat with the noun place is consistent with an earlier occurrence in this chapter:

And earlier references to the murder of this chief judge refer to the place of the judgment seat but without using the word place:

Thus the expression “the place of the judgment seat” is more appropriate in the Book of Mormon text than “the place of the judgment”, the 1830 reading. The current LDS and RLDS texts read correctly in Helaman 9:14 as well as in Helaman 9:7.

Summary: Retain “the place of the judgment seat” in Helaman 9:14 as well as in Helaman 9:7, the reading in both instances of the earliest extant text (the printer’s manuscript).

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

References