Helaman 14:4 Textual Variants

The printer’s manuscript here uses the verb sit rather than the expected set. We cannot be sure whether the original manuscript, not extant here, read sitting or setting. The 1830 edition, also a firsthand copy of 𝓞 for this part of the text, has the expected setting. If 𝓞 read sitting, then the 1830 typesetter decided to correct it to the expected setting. On the other hand, if 𝓞 read setting, then Oliver Cowdery replaced it with sitting. As explained under 1 Nephi 11:1, the earliest Book of Mormon text has a number of cases where sit and set are mixed up (nearly 10 percent of the time), at least from the perspective of standard grammar. For each of these cases, the critical text will follow the earliest textual sources, even if the reading is nonstandard. The problem here in Helaman 14:4 is that it is not clear how 𝓞 originally read. And even if 𝓞 read sitting, that may have been an error for setting that was introduced into the text as Joseph Smith dictated it to Oliver.

There is only one example in the manuscripts of Oliver Cowdery accidentally mixing up these two verbs. Once, while copying from 𝓞 into 𝓟, he wrote setting, but then later (probably when he proofed 𝓟 against 𝓞) he corrected the e of setting with an i (the overwriting is with somewhat heavier ink flow):

• Ether 12:37
  • thou shalt be made strong even unto the [setting >+ sitting 1|sitting ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRST] down in the place which I have prepared in the mansions of my Father

And, it should be noted, Oliver’s error in Ether 12:37 was to write setting rather than sitting, the opposite of him potentially writing sitting in Helaman 14:4 instead of setting. In fact, Oliver frequently initially wrote i ’s as e’s, so the initial writing of setting in Ether 12:37 may have simply been a scribal error on Oliver’s part that he later corrected. Finally, we should note that in all other cases, Oliver showed no hesitation in deciding what form of sit or set he should write; that is, there is no other manuscript variation between these two verbs.

On the other hand, there are four cases where the 1830 typesetter consciously emended the text to read set (and incorrectly in the last case, at least from a prescriptive point of view):

• Jacob 3:10 (sot appears to be a scribal slip for sat)
  • wherefore ye shall remember your children how that ye have grieved their hearts because of the example that ye have [sot 1|set ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRST] before them
• Mosiah 10:2
  • and I [sat 1|set ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRST] guards round about the land that the Lamanites might not come upon us again unawares and destroy us
• Mosiah 11:11
  • and the seats which was [sat 1|set ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRST] apart for the high priests which was above all the other seats he did ornament with pure gold
• Moroni 7:27 (should be sat in standard English rather than set)
  • hath miracles ceased because that Christ hath ascended into heaven and hath [sit 1|set ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQ|sat RST] down on the right hand of God

(See under each of these passages for discussion; also see under sit in volume 3.) These examples argue that the 1830 typesetter is more likely the one responsible for the variation here in Helaman 14:4. In other words, he replaced the original but nonstandard sitting in 𝓞 with setting in the 1830 edition.

Historically and dialectally, we can find evidence that “the sun sits”, including these examples from Literature Online :

• William Sherlock (1694)
  as the rising and sitting of the Sun
• Thomas Chatterton (1770)
  the sun sat lowering in the western sky
• Joseph Holt Ingraham (1845)
  “He must be expelled from your roof ere another sun sits, or I and my child will go!”

Note especially the first example with its use of the present participle sitting conjoined with the present participle rising, just like here in Helaman 14:4 (“the rising of the sun and also of its sitting”). The critical text will therefore accept the nonstandard sitting here in Helaman 14:4 as the reading of the original text (as well as the reading in 𝓞).