More Problems with the "Oldest and Best" Cyberscripts

I ran across this riddle years ago in hard copy, and recently decided to go online and try a little more cybertextual criticism (earlier attempts can be found under this post). Here is a random webex that, on the basis of its several scansion problems, appears to have suffered corruption (by the way, if you can't solve the riddle, hold on--the answer will be provided in due course, after a series of clews).
I doubled all the lines to save space, and added line numbers:

1 Adam, God made out of dust But thought it best to make me first,
So I was made before man To answer God's most Holy plan.
A living being I became And Adam gave to me my name.
I from his presence then withdrew And more of Adam never knew.
5 I did my Maker's law obey Nor ever went from it astray.
Thousands of miles I go in fear But seldom on earth appear.
For purpose wise God did see, He put a living soul in me.
A soul from me God did claim And took from me the soul again.
So when from me the soul had fled I was the same as when first made.
10 And without hands, or feet, or soul, I travel on from pole to pole.
I labor hard by day, by night To fallen man I give great light.
Thousands of people, young and old Will by my death great light behold.
No right or wrong can I conceive The scripture I cannot believe.
Although my name therein is found They are to me an empty sound.
15 No feat of death doth trouble me Real happiness I'll never see.
To Heaven I shall never go Or to Hell below.
Now when these lines you slowly read, Go search your Bible with all speed
For that my name is written there I do honestly to you declare.

So, what have we here? Let's see if we can identify corruptions just from a single copy, conjecturing emendations as suggested by internal evidence:

1. In line 2, a syllable is missing: perhaps an article before 'man'.
2. Line 6 is also missing something: perhaps 'Ten thousand' for 'thousands of' and 'do' before 'on'.
3. Line 7 should perhaps read 'For purpose only God did see'.
4. Line 8 is missing something, perhaps 'then' after 'God'.
5. In line 15, 'feat' is obviously a scribal error for 'fear'.
6. Line 16 is missing quite a bit, probably by parablepsis.
7. Line 18 is the last line; further research will probably show that some scribes didn't like the Abrupt Ending and added one or another alternative endings.

So here are some alternate readings to the above variant units, found in the next webex on the search page (Webex a):

1. a So I was made sometime before man
2. a But seldom on earth do I appear
3. a For purpose only God did see
4. a The soul in me, God had fed, Until, finally, the soul had fled. I am the same As when first made.
5. a fear
6. a nor to hell far below.
7. a Short ending: The answer is one word.

Note that I made all the above conjectures BEFORE looking for variant webices. And that not all of them were resolved on the first go.  So we'll keep going.

Another webex, next one down on the list (Webex b):
1. b So I was made before man,
2. b but seldom on earth appear.
3. b For purpose wise which God did see
4. b  And when from me the soul had fled, I was the same as when first made.
5. b fear (same as a and the conjectured reading)
6. b or to hell below (the text reading)
7. b Prologue: "This riddle was written by a lady in California in 1890 in response to a gentleman in Pennsylvania who said he would pay $1,000.00 to anyone who could write a puzzle he could not solve. He failed to solve this puzzle and paid the lady the $1,000.00, a great sum at that time. An 8 year old boy figured it out." Here is the entire, cleverly worded, puzzle: What is one word and five letters that only appeared in the King James Version four times.
b Colophon: [solution redacted] mentioned 6 times.

Webex b then goes on to add a Longer Ending, appending the full references of all six times the word is mentioned in the 1611 KJV.

I found a few other textually independent webices that seem to have all derived immediately from one or the other of the above, with minor scribal errors. Due to the algorithms of the search engine, only the first couple of hits are likely to ever be electronically copied--a form of valuing number, rather than weight. But it really is incredible that even in this cut-and-paste electronic age, the same kind of errors that we see in ancient manuscripts continue to to be made: just in the above three samples we see omission, substitution, addition, transposition, and interpolation. Multiple dislocation also occurred, as we shall see shortly.  Itacism seems to be the only scribal variant to have been eliminated by the electronic revolution (thanks to Spellcheck--which, ironically, is a conserving influence on the letter level, but an innovating influence on the word level), although capitalization and punctuation still vary widely.

Ah, yes, the clews (you may have noticed that I used the archaic spelling, however current within the present lifetime). The first is that the answer can only be found in the King James Version--which, ironically, only has it two times, none in a passage rather crucial to solving it, but incorporated therein by reference; and--likewise crucial to solving the riddle--with a different form of the word two more times.

The answer will be added as an edit, before my next post. But feel free to comment until then; just be prepared to explain your answer.

And finally, dear reader, here is your author's own recension of the riddle--all 20 well-scanned lines of it--online here for the first time. The considerable textual differences from ALL the webices are largely due to it being based on a pre-internet archetype that underwent major dumbing down at the hands of less literate scribes over the decades it was transmitted in hard copy. I trust you'll see that this eliminates the need to conjecture emendations to solve the problems noted above. And that the oldest webices are far from the best, the most major rescension having occurred in their electronically inextant ancestors.

God made Adam out of dust, but thought it best to make me first.
So I was made before the man, according to God's holy plan.
My body he did make complete--but without arms, or legs, or feet--
My ways and actions did control, as I was made without a soul.

A living creature I became; 'twas Adam gave to me my name.
Then from his presence I withdrew--no more of Adam ever knew.
Ten thousand miles before me reared; I seldom from the land appeared.
I did my Maker's laws obey; from them I never went astray.

Then God some pow'r in me did see, and put a living soul in me.
The soul in me the Lord did claim, and took from me that soul again.
And when from me the soul was fled, I was the same as when first made.

So without hands, or feet, or soul, I travel on from pole to pole;
My work the same by day or night--to fallen man I give great light.
Great hordes of people, young and old, do by my death great light behold.

No fear of death doth trouble me, and happiness I cannot see.
To heav'n above I ne'er shall go; nor to the grave, nor hell below.
No right or wrong can I conceive; the Scripture I cannot believe.
Although my name therein is found, they are to me an empty sound.

And when, my friends, these lines you read, go search the Scriptures with all speed;
And if my name you can't find there, it will be strange, as I declare.

ETA: Congratulations to Lydia for identifying and explaining the correct solution: whale.
The clues are right in the riddle: What other footless creature travels ten thousand miles from the North to the South Pole, seldom appearing from land? Also, whales were famous back then for not having a grave--no whale carcasses were being found buried on land.
Now, the reason this only works in the King James is that "whale" and "whales" translates two completely different words in the KJV: tannin in the OT, and keta in the NT. The former word actually refers to a reptilian monster, and the latter simply to a large sea creature. "Whale" as a modern English word can only be a subset of the latter definition, and in fact there is nothing in Scripture to specify that the creature in whose belly Jonah spent 3 days and 3 nights was a cetacean. It could have been a shark or other giant fish. So to recap, Jonah could have been swallowed by a whale, and God did make whales the day before Adam, but the Bible doesn't mention what we now know as whales specifically anywhere. Thus the riddle only works for someone wearing blinders imposed by the translation choices of the KJV editors.

So how many times ARE whales mentioned in the Bible--two, four, or six? Actually, as the Bible has been translated into pre-modern English, there are TWELVE different verses that mention 'whale' or 'whales' (including, as did the 1611 KJV, the Apocrypha), but none of them specifically referring to a cetacean:

 Genesis 1:21 And God made great whales, and every living reptile, which the waters brought forth according to their kinds, and every creature that flies with wings according to its kind, and God saw that they were good.
 Job 3:8 But let him that curses that day curse it, even he that is ready to attack the great whale.
 Job 7:12 Am I a sea, or a whale, that thou settest a watch over me?
 Job 9:13 For if he has turned away his anger, the whales under heaven have stooped under him.
 Job 26:12 He has calmed the sea with his might, and by his wisdom the whale has been overthrown.
 Ezekiel 32:2 Son of man, take up a lamentation for Pharaoh king of Egypt, and say unto him, Thou art like a young lion of the nations, and thou art as a whale in the seas: and thou camest forth with thy rivers, and troubledst the waters with thy feet, and fouledst their rivers.
 Daniel 3:23.5 (LXX)  Then the three, as out of one mouth, praised, glorified, and blessed, God in the furnace, saying, Blessed art thou, O Lord God of our fathers: and to be praised and exalted above all for ever.  . . . O ye whales, and all that move in the waters, bless ye the Lord: praise and exalt him above all for ever.
 Jonah 2:1 Now the Lord had commanded a great whale to swallow up Jonas: and Jonas was in the belly of the whale three days and three nights.
 Jonah 2:2 And Jonas prayed to the Lord his God out of the belly of the whale,
 Jonah 2:11 And the whale was commanded by the Lord, and it cast up Jonas on the dry land.
 Sirach 43:25 For therein be strange and wondrous works, variety of all kinds of beasts and whales created.
 Matthew 12:40 For as Jonas was three days and three nights in the whale's belly; so shall the Son of man be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth.