CHIASMS IN THE BOOK OF MORMON

Earlier I posted a critique of John Welch's attempt to demonstrate that the Book of Mormon exhibited one of the key characteristics found throughout the Bible, namely a literary structure called a chiasm, or chiasmus. (see “John Welch's Literary Analysis of the Book of Mormon”) This is an update to that post.

My information concerning Welch's study had come from a blog post on the internet, and it was not quite clear if Welch himself had written it or one of his followers within the Mormon community. So I decided to go back to the original source and purchased the book he edited entitled Chiasmus in Antiquity. Within it, he wrote a chapter on the Book of Mormon.

To understand what follows, here is a quick review of what is meant by the word “chiasm.” It is basically a symmetrical way of writing in which the first sections of a book match up with the last sections in a mirror-image fashion. The matching may be in terms of similar wording or subject matter or both. A common way of diagramming such a literary structure is shown below:

    A

        B

            C

                D

            C'

        B'

    A'

Each capital letter represents a different section, which may be as small as an individual verse and as large as several chapters. The order of appearance of each section can be read from top to bottom. Parallel sections are visually indicated by having the same capital letter and similar indentations. In addition, when these occur within books of the Bible (as they often do), each individual section can usually be analyzed in terms of symmetrical literary entity also.

In his book, Welch offers several examples of chiasm in the Book of Mormon that only comprise a few verses each. However, there are two book-length examples that he was able to come up with. The most elaborate of the two by far concerned the book of I Nephi. As portrayed on the internet, it certainly had the superficial appearance of a detailed chiasm. But as I demonstrated in my first post, this analysis was riddled with errors, omissions, and downright deception.

I was curious as to why Welch, a law professor at a prestigious university (BYU), would even resort to such means to try to make it look as if this book were actually an orderly chiasm. Then I read his earlier analysis of I Nephi found in Chiasm in Antiquity.  In that work, Welch offers a quite different structure even more obviously lacking in complete symmetry. Without actually describing the contents of each unit (which often do not match the units found in the on-line posting), here is how that earlier analysis looks:

A. (Ch. 1)

    B. (2:2-15)

        C. (2:16-4:38)

              D. (4:9)

                    E. (5:1-9)

                           F. (5:10-6:6)

                                G. (7:1-5, 22)

                                    H. (7:6-21)

                                            I. (8:1-38)

                                                    J. (10:1-22)

                                                        K. (11:1-36)

                                                    J. (12:1-14:30)

                                            I'. (15:1-36)

                                G'. (16:1-8, 34-35)

                                    F'. (16:9-17, 26-33)

                                        D'. (16:18)

            C'. (17:1-18:4)

                                        H'. (18:11-16, 20-21)

                                            E'. (18:17-19)

        B'. (18:23-25)

A'. (chs. 19-22)

Welch still claims that this constitutes a chiasm in spite of its obvious lack of symmetry, but at least he doesn't resort to trickery to make it look better. Even within this present disorganized state are the following anomalies: D and D' are actually part of the larger sections C and F', respectively; H belongs inside of G; E' is actually within H'; and missing entirely are chapter 9, 16:19-26, 18:5-10, and 18:22.

It is no wonder that the later internet version, which I now suspect was penned by someone else in the Mormon community, attempted to present the book as appearing, at least on the surface, to possess a more symmetrical structure.

The only other book-long chiasm that Welch offers in his book is that of 2 Nephi, and he admits that it is not very detailed:

A. The testament of Lehi; his death (chs. 1-5)

    B. Jacob's commentary on Isaiah 50-51 (chs. 6-10)

        C. Isaiah 2-14 as “third witness” (chs. 11-24)

    B'. Nephi's commentary on Isaiah 2-14 (chs. 25-30)

A'. The testament of Nephi (chs. 31-33)

I certainly agree with him that a much more detailed structure would have been expected for a book of 33 long chapters, especially since none of the five pictured sections above possesses any literary symmetry in itself. There are also two nitpicking points to mention: Chapter 5 does not actually contain any testament of Lehi, and one would expect the death of Nephi to be reported at the end of A' for complete symmetry.

Lastly, I would propose a slightly modified structure that is more true to the contents of the book. It is still symmetrical but not strictly speaking a chiasm:

    A. The testament of Lehi (chs. 1-4)

        B. The reading of Isaiah 50-51 (chs. 6-8)

            C. Commentary on Isaiah 50-51 (chs. 9-10)

        B'. The reading of Isaiah 2-14 (chs. 11-24)

            C'. Commentary on Isaiah 2:14 (chs. 25-30)

    A'. The testament of Nephi (chs. 31-33)

Concerning the other books in the Book of Mormon which he does not discuss, Welch states that “aside from occasional, limited usages, the occurrences of chiasmus in the last sections [i.e. the final third] of the Book of Mormon diminishes significantly.” He attributes it to either economic pressures on the authors, the fact that they were no longer living in a “renaissance” period, or that their books were heavily edited. My own cynical take on the situation is that Joseph Smith simply got tired of trying to imitate the biblical style any more and gave it up as taking too much effort.