Chiastic Structuring of the Genesis Flood Story: The Art of Using Chiasm as an Effective Compositional Tool for Combining Earlier Chiastic Narratives

Steven R. Scott, “Chiastic Structuring in the Genesis Flood Story: The Art of Using Chiasm as an Effective Compositional Tool for Combing Earlier Chiastic Narratives,” argues contrary to David Wenham, who argued that the presence of a chiastic structure for the whole of the flood story points to the story being composed by a single author, that careful structural analysis of the text actually upholds the twosource theory. He finds evidence for two chiastic structures created independently by the Yahwist (J) and Priestly (P) authors, which were later combined by a Redactor (R). He concludes that chiasm as a compositional device was well known by the authors of the various elements of Genesis, and such knowledge aided the final editor(s) to combine effectively two authoritative traditions into a virtually seamless whole while remaining faithful to both.