Evidence #6 | September 19, 2020

Book of Mormon Evidence: Chiasmus Overview

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Scripture Central

Abstract

The Book of Mormon’s pervasive and often complex chiastic structures are better explained as having come from various ancient writers than as having been created by Joseph Smith, especially under the circumstances described by the witnesses of the translation.

Introduction

Chiasmus is a type of literary structure that has been used in both poetry and prose for thousands of years in a variety of cultures and languages. It can be described as an inverted parallelism, where key words, phrases, or ideas in the first half of the structure are reversed and repeated in the second half. For example, Jesus taught that “many that are first shall be last; and the last shall be first” (Matthew 19:30). To help readers keep track of corresponding elements, chiasms are often formatted as follows:

   Amany that are first
    Bshall be last;                                                                                                                                           
    Band the last
   Ashall be first.

Not all chiasms, however, are so simple or follow precisely the same pattern. This more developed chiasm from Christ’s Sermon on the Mount has a 7-layer structure:

   AYe shall know them by their fruits.
    BDo men gather grapes of thorns, or figs of thistles?
     CEven so every good tree
      Dbringeth forther good fruit;
       EBut a corrupt tree
        Fbringeth forth evil fruit.
         A good tree                                                                                             
        Fcannot bring forth evil fruit
       Eneither can a corrupt tree 
      Dbring forth good fruit.
     CEvery tree
    Bthat bringeth not forth good fruit is hewn down, and cast into the fire.
   AWherefore by their fruits ye shall know them. (Matthew 7:16–20)

Notice that in this chiasm the middle element (G) stands on its own without being repeated. Moreover, instead of being similar or the same, elements C  are related but opposite concepts (the first instance discusses men who gather fruit for harvest and the second mentions the fruit-bearing trees being cast into a fire to be destroyed). Thus, while the fundamental parallel structure (inverted repetition) is always present, chiasmus can be implemented in a variety of nuanced ways.

Criteria for Identifying Chiasmus

In the last fifty years, scholars in many fields have found, or proposed to find, chiasms in ancient Ugaritic, Hebrew, Aramaic, Greek, Latin, and Mesoamerican writings, as well as in Medieval, Renaissance, Arabian, Hindu, and Modern literatures, including Shakespeare, Montaigne, and beyond. It has also been abundantly identified in the Book of Mormon.1 

Some researchers have overzealously engaged in what can be called chiasmania—seeing chiasmus everywhere in writings, whether it was likely intended or not.2 Others, meanwhile, have argued that chiasmus may have occurred by mere chance in the Book of Mormon or in other texts.3 These opposing perspectives attest to the need for reliable criteria to distinguish between chiastic patterns that were most likely deliberate creations and those that occur randomly. Fortunately, a number of scholars have addressed this issue and their efforts have now been brought together for easy comparison on the Chiasmus Resources website.4 The most widely agreed upon standards can be summarized as follows:

  • Chiasms should conform to natural literary boundaries.
  • A climax or turning point should usually be found at the center.
  • A chiasm’s inverted pattern should display a relatively well-balanced symmetry.
  • Most of a chiasm’s repeated words or ideas should have significant meaning.
  • Chiasms should manifest little, if any, extraneous repetition or divergent material.
  • Chiastic structures should typically not compete or overlap with other strong literary forms.

While these criteria are helpful, the evaluation of chiastic structures necessarily remains an interpretive exercise. Hence, rather than advancing absolute, final judgments, those proposing chiastic arrangements in a text should recognize that all “chiastic passages manifest varying degrees of chiasticity.”5 It is even possible that different individuals will agree generally that a passage is chiastic, but may disagree on the particulars of its arrangement. In the final analysis, one can never definitively prove that an author intended to implement a chiasm. Yet, when a given proposal meets many or all of the most widely accepted standards, a chiasm’s likelihood of being intentional significantly increases.

In this regard, some researchers have sought to reduce the role of reader subjectivity by using statistical methods to evaluate chiastic patterns.6 These methods are able to determine that some proposed chiastic patterns were very likely to have been created deliberately, but they cannot prove if others which, statistically speaking, could plausibly have occurred by chance, actually did occur by chance.7 As such, statistical analysis is best used together with additional criteria to evaluate the merits of any proposed chiasm.8

Chiasmus in the Book of Mormon

John W. Welch

The presence of chiasmus in the Book of Mormon was discovered by John W. Welch in 1967 while he was serving as a missionary in Germany.9 After returning home from his mission, Welch further developed and eventually published his findings,10 which helped initiate a wave of new literary studies on the Book of Mormon, including many more explorations of its use of chiasmus.11 Since then, various scholars and researchers have proposed hundreds of chiastic structures in its pages (see Chiasmus Resources).

These chiasms vary in length, complexity, and persuasiveness, but many of them measure up well against even the strictest sets of criteria. For example, statistical analysis conducted by Boyd and Farrell Edwards indicates that some of the Book of Mormon’s chiasms—namely Alma 36Mosiah 3:18–19Mosiah 5:10–12, and Helaman 6:9–11—are very unlikely to have occurred randomly or by accident.12 More recently, Dennis Newton has applied the same statistical technique to 15 chiasms in 1 and 2 Nephi, finding “there is strong likelihood that nine of these were composed intentionally and that it is probable that another three were intentional.”13 

Although the verses in Helaman 6:9–11 are statistically significant on their own, a good case can be made that the chiasm should be expanded to include Helaman 6:7–13.

Overall, the Book of Mormon manifests a remarkable degree of chiasticity. Even if some of its proposed chiasms were not deliberately intended by the text’s authors, there are so many good candidates that it is hard to see them collectively as having been produced unintentionally or by random chance. For a comprehensive list of formatted chiasms in the text, see the Appendix.

Could Joseph Smith Have Known about Chiasmus in 1829?

William Shakespeare. The Chandos portrait  (held by the National Portrait Gallery, London). Image via Wikipedia.org. 

Some Renaissance authors,14 especially William Shakespeare,15 made use of chiasmus in English texts. And to varying degrees the inverted structure persisted into the 19th century.16 However, discussions of chiasmus (or related concepts) seem to crop up rather infrequently in either the literature of Joseph Smith’s day or in the extensive volumes of literary criticism that have since been published about the literature of his time.17 Even when chiasmus has been identified in 18th or early-19th century texts, most proposed instances are simple A-B-B-A patterns.18 Some examples of macro chiastic structures (sometimes referred to in literary studies as “ring compositions” or “ring forms”) are also found in texts from that era,19 but such large structures are rather different from most of the proposed chiasms in the Book of Mormon.20

It is also possible that Joseph Smith could have learned about chiasmus from emerging biblical studies, but the relevant research was primarily being published across the ocean in London. In his investigation of this subject over the years, Welch has found no evidence that the published research had “reached America, let alone Palmyra or Harmony, in the 1820s.”21 As close as one can find is a brief summary of John Jebb’s 1820 work that was included in the second, 1825 edition of Thomas Hartwell Horne’s massive introduction to the critical study of the Bible, printed both in London and Philadelphia.22 Yet, as Welch has argued, it is unlikely that Joseph Smith ever came across this summary.23 

Thomas Hartwell Horne’s three-volume Introduction to the Critical Study and Knowledge of the Holy Scriptures. These are from the 1818 edition printed in London. Image via abebooks.com.

Finally, some may assume that Joseph Smith simply noticed chiasmus in the Bible or in Shakespeare’s writings or from some other source. This possibility can never be completely ruled out, but it should be remembered that anything much more complex than chiastic couplets are typically not consciously noticed by readers. It took over 130 years for anyone to draw attention to the pervasive, complex chiastic structures in the Book of Mormon. And likely millions of people have read extensively from the Bible without ever recognizing its many chiasms. It is simply not a literary structure that readers—especially Western readers—are prone to consciously notice without it being pointed out to them.24 

What Does Chiasmus Prove in the Book of Mormon?

The Book of Mormon indicates that it was written in an Egyptian script by ancient American prophets who preserved the literary tradition of their Hebrew ancestors. That being the case, it is noteworthy that chiasmus shows up anciently in Egyptian texts,25 and it was a “dominant, if not essential, element of Hebrew writing” in the centuries surrounding Lehi’s day.26 Preliminary evidence also suggests that chiasmus was prominent in early documents from Mesoamerica27—where many Latter-day Saint scholars and researchers believe the primary events recorded in the Book of Mormon took place. The large quantity of chiastic structures identified in the Book of Mormon is therefore what readers might expect to find, based on the text’s own claims about its origins and Joseph Smith’s understanding of its geographical setting.

Lehi, Nephi, and Jacob utilizing the plates. Image via Book of Mormon Central.

On the other hand, the Book of Mormon’s pervasive chiastic structures seem to be out of place for an early 19th century text. Perhaps further research will someday demonstrate that other texts from that literary era are comparable in their quantity and variety of complex, multi-layered chiasms, but until then, the Book of Mormon appears to have a remarkable—and perhaps unparalleled—degree of overall chiasticity for its time.

It should also be remembered that multiple witnesses described the Book of Mormon, a notably lengthy and complex book, as having been rapidly dictated (historical evidence suggests it was completed in approximately 60 working days28) by an uneducated farmer who didn’t make use of any outlines, reference materials, working notes, or substantive revisions.29 How an inexperienced author like Joseph Smith could have implemented so many impressive chiastic structures under such constraining circumstances remains to be explained by naturalistic theories about the text’s origins.30 At the very least, the text’s extraordinary chiasticity places a heavy burden on such theories, while at the same time helping affirm the Book of Mormon’s claimed ancient origins.

Further Reading
Endnotes

 

Literary Features
Parallelisms
Chiasmus Overview
Book of Mormon

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