Helaman 12:7–8 Textual Variants

Here in Helaman 12:8, Oliver Cowdery initially wrote durt in the printer’s manuscript, which could be interpreted as a misspelling for dirt. Nonetheless, he corrected durt to dust by overwriting the r with an s (the ink flow for the s that overwrites the initial r is somewhat heavier). The original manuscript undoubtedly read dust. This reading is especially supported by the immediately preceding occurrence of “the dust of the earth” in verse 7. Oliver’s error was probably a scribal slip.

Elsewhere in the Book of Mormon, there are two references to dirt (in Alma 49:2 and Alma 53:4), but both these occurrences refer to the dirt of battlements. Moreover, these two cases of dirt are always spelled as dirt in the manuscripts, never as durt. Overall in the text, including these two examples in Helaman 12, we get only “the dust of the earth” (six times), never “the dirt of the earth”:

• Mosiah 2:25 thou art even as much as the dust of the earth
• Mosiah 2:25 yet thou wast created of the dust of the earth
• Mosiah 4:2 and they had viewed themselves in their own carnal state even less than the dust of the earth
• Helaman 12:7 yea even they are less than the dust of the earth
• Helaman 12:8 for behold the dust of the earth moveth hither and thither
• Mormon 9:17 man was created of the dust of the earth