Helaman 9:39 Textual Variants

Oliver Cowdery sometimes added the auxiliary verb do in the manuscripts, if only momentarily. Here in the printer’s manuscript, he initially wrote “which did believe”. Later he crossed out the did and inserted inline a d at the end of believe. These corrections are with slightly heavier ink flow and were probably made when Oliver proofed 𝓟 against 𝓞 (no longer extant here). There are a few other cases in the text where Oliver added the do auxiliary, usually in the context of other instances of the do auxiliary. In two cases, the do auxiliary was permanently added to the text when Oliver copied from 𝓞 into 𝓟:

• 1 Nephi 2:16
  • wherefore I [cried 0|did cry 1ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRST] unto the Lord
    and behold he did visit me and did soften my heart
    that I did believe all the words which had been spoken by my father
• 1 Nephi 18:11
  • Laman and Lemuel did take me and bind me with cords
    and they did treat me with much harshness
    nevertheless the Lord [suffered 0|did suffer 1ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRST] it

(See under those two passages for discussion.) In a couple of other cases, Oliver initially wrote the do auxiliary in 𝓟, perhaps in the second case because of a nearby use of the do auxiliary (marked below with an arrow):

• Alma 53:13
  • but it came to pass that when they saw the danger
    and the many afflictions and tribulations which the Nephites [did > bore 1|bore ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRST] for them
    they were moved with compassion
• 3 Nephi 11:15
  •   and it came to pass that the multitude went forth
      and [did > thrust 1|thrust ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRST] their hands into his side
    → and did feel the prints of the nails in his hands and in his feet

In the first case, Oliver apparently started to write did bear in 𝓟 (for discussion, see under Alma 53:13). In the second case, he started to write did thrust in 𝓟. Here in Helaman 9:39, Oliver’s initial did believe was probably influenced by the use of the auxiliary form did earlier in verse 37: “for according to the words he did deny and also according to the words he did confess”. On the other hand, the intervening verse 38 has only instances of the be verb (“and he was brought to prove that he himself was the very murderer insomuch that the five were set at liberty and also was Nephi”); nevertheless, these verb forms would not have interfered much with the influence of the preceding instances of did in verse 37.

There are 12 other occurrences in the earliest text of “ believed”, including one more in Helaman 9:39: “and there were some also which believed because of the testimony of the five”. But there are also two examples in the earliest text of “ did believe”:

• Alma 19:35 there was many that did believe in their words
• Helaman 16:3 there were many more which did believe on his words

These two passages parallel the first one in Helaman 9:39 (all three refer to believing in or on someone’s words). Thus either reading is theoretically possible in Helaman 9:39, and we can assume that Oliver Cowdery’s replacement of did believe with believed in 𝓟 was not influenced by grammatical considerations, only by his attempt to correctly copy the text from 𝓞 into 𝓟.