Here the extant portion of the original manuscript has only the initial t of either the or that for the phrase “in the/that day”. The printer’s manuscript has the; the 1830 edition has that. Both 𝓟 and the 1830 edition are firsthand copies of 𝓞 for this part of the text. One of these two readings was the reading in 𝓞, but which one?
Elsewhere in the text, there are 11 occurrences of “in that day that”. However, in eight of these cases, the second that is the subordinate conjunction that, as in the following example where the subordinate conjunction that is repeated:
(For further discussion of this expression, see under 2 Nephi 24:3–4.) But in three cases we have “in that day that” where the second that is a relative pronoun (with essentially the meaning ‘when’):
In contrast to these three cases, there are seven cases of “in the day that” where that is a relative pronoun, of which three are found nearby in Helaman 13–15:
Thus either reading is possible here in Helaman 14:20.
The reading in 𝓟, “in the day that”, could be viewed as the correct reading in Helaman 14:20 since all other instances of “in the/that day that” in the book of Helaman (three of them) read as “in the day that”. As further support for “in the day that”, note that in the text immediately following we have three instances of “the time that” instead of “that time that”:
All of these examples in the book of Helaman argue that the reading in 𝓟 for Helaman 14:20, “in the day that he shall suffer death”, is the expected reading.
On the other hand, one could argue that the two preceding instances of “in the day that” in Helaman 13:33, 36 (and perhaps the three following instances of “the time that” in Helaman 14:20–21) led Oliver Cowdery to accidentally change an original “in that day that” to “in the day that” near the beginning of Helaman 14:20. And there is strong support from transmission errors to support such a hypothesis. When we consider the manuscript errors made by Oliver, we discover that he frequently replaced an original that with the, sometimes momentarily but other times permanently, when he copied from 𝓞 into 𝓟 (each persevering instance is marked below with an asterisk):
In contrast, there is only one case where the 1830 compositor replaced an earlier the with that:
Yet as explained under Alma 43:50, it is not clear that 𝓞 actually read the in that passage; it may have actually read that. For that part of the text, from Alma 41:8 to Alma 46:30, signature 22 of the 1830 edition was set from 𝓟 but proofed against 𝓞 (for a summary of the evidence, see under Alma 42:31).
So the use of that in the 1830 edition, for both Alma 43:50 and Helaman 14:20, may actually be the reading in 𝓞 rather than a mistake made by the 1830 compositor when he originally set the text from 𝓟. What this means is that there may be no examples where the 1830 compositor accidentally replaced the with that. In any event, the odds are considerably stronger that Oliver Cowdery is responsible for the introduction of the in Helaman 14:20 (and also in Alma 43:50). The critical text will therefore assume that 𝓞 originally read “in that day that” here in Helaman 14:20. For further discussion of the case of Alma 43:50, see the addenda at the end of this volume of the critical text.
Summary: Maintain in Helaman 14:20 the 1830 reading, “behold in that day that he shall suffer death”; not only is there support for this reading elsewhere in the text, but transmission errors show that Oliver Cowdery was prone to replace the determiner that with the; on the other hand, the 1830 compositor was not particularly inclined, if at all, to replace the with that.