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Gospel Wiki Connections hel-kb-less-than-dust

Helaman 12:7 · Mosiah 4:2

Textual Shared phrasing

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Book of Mormon Helaman 12:7
"less than the dust of the earth"
Book of Mormon Mosiah 4:2
"less than the dust of the earth"

Shared words: less than the dust of the earth

The phrase 'less than the dust of the earth' occurs at exactly two verses in the corpus (Mosiah 4:2, Helaman 12:7). Two postures: at the temple the congregation said it of itself in penitence (Mosiah 4:2); in Helaman, Mormon says it of all mankind in editorial exasperation (Helaman 12:7). Both bind it to 'nothingness' (Mosiah 4:5 'a sense of your nothingness'; Helaman 12:7 'the nothingness of the children of men'). The discourse SOURCE of the dust figure is Benjamin's own argument minutes earlier -- Mosiah 2:25 'Ye cannot say that ye are even as much as the dust of the earth; yet ye were created of the dust of the earth' (not registered). The dust-OBEYS turn -- Helaman 12:8 'the dust of the earth moveth hither and thither… at the command of our great and everlasting God' -- is Mormon's ADDITION, no counterpart in Benjamin; reported as a textual fact. Tightest verbatim end is 12:7 (the phrase match); 12:8 carries the inversion. Tier-2 distinctive shared phrasing = textual.

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King Benjamin