Introduction

This book comprises fourteen of the papers presented at “Chiasmus: An Open Conference on the State of the Art,” held at Brigham Young University, Provo, Utah, on August 15–16, 2017. That date marked the fiftieth anniversary of events in Germany and Austria which soon grew into the publication of Chiasmus in Antiquity: Structures, Analyses, Exegesis (Hildesheim: Gerstenberg, 1981), edited by John W. Welch. Generated forty years ago, that widely-cited volume with a preface by David Noel Freedman featured contributions by authors including Yehuda T. Radday, Jonah Frankel, Bezael Porten, Wilford G. E. Watson, John W. Welch, and Robert F. Smith, about chiasmus in Ugaritic, Hebrew, Greek, Latin, and other literatures.

 

This present volume now reflects and assesses the current state of the art regarding the use of chiastic analysis in an equally wide-ranging body of languages and texts, including the Hebrew Bible, Babylonian epics, the New Testament, the Book of Mormon, and even Mayan inscriptions. Overall, the academic state of chiastic affairs is productive, insightful, innovative, wide-spread, expanding, and well established. The bibliography at the conclusion of this collection lists only the most useful and reputably recognized studies published since 1981, thus updating the bibliography found in Chiasmus in Antiquity.