Helaman 9:19 Textual Variants

Royal Skousen
and they began to question him in [divers 1ADEFGHIJKLMNOPQRST|diverse BC] ways

In earlier English, divers and diverse were used interchangeably. In modern English, the general tendency has been to distinguish the two semantically, with divers meaning ‘various, sundry, several’ and diverse meaning ‘different in character or quality’ (see the various definitions under both divers and diverse in the Oxford English Dictionary). There are six instances of divers(e) in the Book of Mormon, and in each case the context suggests the meaning ‘various’, which implies that the modern spelling in the Book of Mormon text should be divers. In four of the six instances, some of the early editions replaced the manuscript spelling divers with diverse, but both the current LDS and RLDS editions have only divers:

The printer’s manuscript consistently reads divers. The original manuscript is not extant in any instance but probably also read divers. The spelling diverse shows up only occasionally in the early editions (three times in the 1830 edition, three times in the 1837 edition, two times in the 1840 edition, and once in the 1841 British edition). The critical text will follow the spelling distinction found in standard modern-day English, thus divers throughout the text since the meaning in the Book of Mormon is consistently ‘various’ rather than ‘different’.

Summary: Maintain the spelling divers in the Book of Mormon text since the consistent meaning in all six passages where it occurs is ‘various’ rather than ‘different’.

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

References