Helaman 9:41 Textual Variants

Ross Geddes (personal communication, 22 September 2004) suggests that here in Helaman 9:41 the original text twice read all things but that in the second case the all was lost during the early transmission of the text, giving “and also hath told us things” instead of the correct “and also hath told us all things”. Nonetheless, it is possible “to tell things”, as in Alma 19:34: “and thus they had told them things of God”. In this earlier example, an expected the before things is lacking, just like here in “and also hath told us things”. Moreover, the people here in Helaman 9:41 can say that Nephi told them not only their thoughts but also actual events and deeds (in particular, who had murdered the chief judge). As suggested by David Calabro (personal communication), such a distinction between thoughts and things would explain the use of also in this sentence: “he hath told us the thoughts of our hearts and also hath told us things”.

In addition, one could propose that this conjoined predicate is missing an of. In other words, the original text could have read “and also hath told us of things”—or even “and also hath told us of all things”, which parallels the earlier clause “he could not know of all things”. Note, for instance, the parallel usage in another passage where there is an instance of “know of ” followed by an instance of “tell of ”:

• Jacob 7:7
  • for no man knoweth of such things for he cannot tell of things to come

Ultimately, here in Helaman 9:41 the critical text will reject these proposed emendations (an of or an all before things) since the earliest extant reading, “and also hath told us things”, will work.

Don Brugger points out (personal communication) that the verb tell here can be interpreted as meaning ‘foretell’. Brugger does not propose that there is necessarily an error here in the text, but instead that in older English tell had the now obsolete meaning ‘to reveal (something future); to foretell, predict’ (see definition 5b under the verb tell in the Oxford English Dictionary). And this is precisely what Nephi has done with his telling of things, as in his earlier use in verse 25 of the word thing to refer to his predictions: “and see if ye will in this thing seek to destroy me”. Thus the earliest text here in verse 41 appears to be equivalent to “and also hath foretold us things”. The OED gives an interesting citation from a sermon of Wycliffe’s dating from late Middle English that supports this interpretation:

• John Wycliffe (about 1380)
  • pis Gospel of Mark bigynnep how Crist was teld in pe olde lawe ‘this gospel of Mark begins with how Christ was foretold in the old law’

The verb foretell occurs only once in the Book of Mormon text, but interestingly it is followed by a use of the verb tell that also has the meaning ‘foretell’:

• 2 Nephi 25:9–10
  • and never hath any of them been destroyed save it were foretold them by the prophets of the Lord wherefore it hath been told them concerning the destruction which should come upon them immediately after my father left Jerusalem

Thus the archaic meaning ‘foretell’ for the verb tell supports maintaining the phraseology “and also hath told us things” in Helaman 9:41.