Here the printer’s manuscript reads “upon the face of the earth”, while the 1830 edition reads “upon the face of this earth”; as one might expect, the printed editions have followed the 1830 reading, except for the RLDS editions from 1908 on. The 1908 RLDS edition, following the reading in 𝓟, restored that definite article the. Note, however, that nearby, in verse 20, the editors for the 1908 RLDS edition did not make the change to “upon the face of the land”, the reading in 𝓟; instead, they kept the this in “upon the face of this land” (see under Helaman 14:20).
Internal evidence argues that Helaman 14:21 should read “upon the face of the earth”, the reading in 𝓟. There is only one case in the Book of Mormon text of “the face of this earth”:
More generally, the phrase this earth occurs only one more time in the text:
Excluding Helaman 14:21, the two references to this earth refer to the entire earth, not to some part of it (see the discussion below regarding the phrase “upon the face of this earth” in 1 Nephi 22:18). So except for the one case of “the face of this earth” in 1 Nephi 22:18, the text otherwise has instances of only “the face of the earth”. For specific variants, we get the following statistics for the earliest text (excluding the case here in Helaman 14:21):
“the face of the earth” 39 times
“all the face of the earth” 10 times
“the whole face of the earth” 0 times
“the face of all the earth” 2 times
“the face of the whole earth” 7 times
total 58 times
David Calabro points out (personal communication) that the phrase “the face of this earth” (and its variants) is found nowhere in the King James Bible, while there are numerous instances of “the face of the earth”. In fact, the frequencies of the biblical variants are statistically similar to the Book of Mormon’s:
“the face of the earth” 25 times
“all the face of the earth” 3 times
“the whole face of the earth” 0 times
“the face of all the earth” 4 times
“the face of the whole earth” 6 times
total 38 times
The case of “upon the face of this earth” in 1 Nephi 22:18 is unique in its reference: here Nephi is referring to the last days and that great fire that will destroy the wicked and preserve the righteous (as explained in the preceding 1 Nephi 22:15–17). That fire, it would appear, will engulf the whole earth. On the other hand, when the Book of Mormon refers to the three days of darkness and destruction that occurred among the Nephites and Lamanites at the time of the Savior’s death, the text otherwise uses the, not this, before earth in the phrase “the face of the (whole) earth”:
In all these cases, “the face of the (whole) earth” is equivalent to “the face of the (whole) land”. Yet when the word is actually land, the text has instances of both “the face of the land” and “the face of this land” when referring to the three days of darkness and destruction:
There is additional internal evidence in support of the earth in Helaman 14:21: namely, the similarity in language between verses 21 and 22 of Helaman 14 argues that the original text in both places read “upon the face of the (whole) earth”:
Helaman 14:21 (𝓟) Helaman 14:22
the rocks which is in broken fragments
upon the face of the earth upon the face of the whole earth
which is both yea both
above the earth and beneath above the earth and beneath
Of course, one could argue that in Helaman 14:21 an original this earth was changed to the earth under the influence of the following occurrence of the earth (“which is both above the earth and beneath”). But the use of the parallel “upon the face of the whole earth” in verse 22 argues that the earth is indeed correct in verse 21.
All in all, there does appear to be something wrong with the phrase “upon the face of this earth”, the 1830 reading. The critical text will assume that the original text read “upon the face of the earth” here in Helaman 14:21. Further, the source for the reading with this appears to be the previous occurrence of “upon the face of this land” in verse 20. There are actually two possibilities for Helaman 14:21:
The original text read “upon the face of the earth” in verse 21, but Oliver Cowdery accidentally wrote down “upon the face of this earth” because he had just written down “upon the face of this land”, the reading in the previous verse. When Oliver copied the text into 𝓟, he changed the this to the because he expected “upon the face of the earth”, which happened to be the correct reading. The 1830 compositor, on the other hand, followed his copytext (namely, 𝓞) and set this, thus maintaining the error that Oliver had introduced into 𝓞.
Oliver Cowdery correctly wrote down “upon the face of the earth” in 𝓞, but then the 1830 compositor accidentally changed the the to this under the influence of the preceding “upon the face of this land”, the reading in the previous verse.
When we look at the error tendencies for Oliver Cowdery and the 1830 compositor, we discover that the first scenario is the more likely one, even though it involves two textual changes. As explained under Helaman 14:20, Oliver frequently mixed up both the and this, and in both directions. In taking down Joseph Smith’s dictation, his first error (changing the to this) would have been the result of the preceding this in verse 20; his second error, reverting to the expected the for the phrase “upon the face of the earth”, would have occurred when he copied from 𝓞 into 𝓟. On the other hand, the 1830 compositor rarely mixed up the and this; in fact, the only example (in Mosiah 1:10) shows him replacing this with the, the opposite of what we have here in Helaman 14:21. Thus it would have been more likely for the compositor to have correctly set the reading of his copytext. But the important point is that under either scenario, the original text read “upon the face of the earth”, which is how the critical text will read here.
Summary: Restore in Helaman 14:21 the original determiner the in “upon the face of the earth”, the reading in 𝓟; this reading is supported by usage elsewhere in the text, in particular the parallel phraseology nearby in Helaman 14:22 (“upon the face of the whole earth”); 𝓞 itself may have actually read this, but as an error that entered during the dictation of the text and was then perpetuated by the 1830 compositor when he set the type from 𝓞; another possibility is that 𝓞 read correctly as the and the 1830 compositor was responsible for the change to this; in either case, the this appears to be an error resulting from the phrase “upon the face of this land” in the previous verse.