In Part 1, I discussed some ways in which literary clues could be used to properly divide biblical writings into their component sections. The next step is a little harder and involves analyzing how these individual literary units each possess their own literary order as well as how the various units relate to one another in an orderly manner. And it all begins with a consideration of how individual verses of biblical poetry are constructed.
The key to understanding the poetic writings in the Bible is to recognize first of all that repetition is the foundation of everything, repetition of ideas. This repetition can take several forms, and each of them can be understood as the basic building blocks used to organize whole books of the Bible. Let us begin with one of the two basic types of repetition in poetry – identical, or synonymous, parallelism.
The Parallel Structure of Psalm 82:3
A. Give
B. justice to
C. the weak
D. and the orphan
A'. Maintain
B'. the right of
C'. the lowly
D'. and the destitute
The two lines express the same basic idea. Right off the bat this form of poetry can be used for apologetic purposes. Number one: it is a great aid to insuring an accurate translation when some of the Hebrew words are a bit obscure in meaning, which happens especially in the poetic literature. If a translator is not quite sure of the meaning of “weak” for example, he can go to a parallel line within the verse to at least get a rough synonym. Secondly, poetry in most languages is notoriously hard to translate into another language without sacrificing the original meter, rhyme or the meaning. But poetry in the Bible can be translated into any language while losing virtually none of the original intent. This is especially important since almost 1/3 of the OT is composed as poetry. By contrast, years ago I got an English translation of the Koran and began reading it. I had to admit to a Palestinian neighbor of mine that I wasn't exactly impressed with what I had read so far. He replied, “Of course you can't appreciate it; you have to read it in the original Arabic or you won't understand it at all! Not exactly a universal text for all cultures.
Now imagine that each of those capital letters above represents not just 1-3 words, but whole sentences, paragraphs or chapters and you will get a good idea of this type of symmetry in Scripture: parallel cycles. And you don't have to go far in the Bible to come across the first example.
The Parallel Structure of Genesis 1:1-2:3
Initial Conditions: Chaos (1:1-2)
Light Created; light and darkness separated (1:3-5)
Dome of the sky created; waters above and below separated (1:6-8)
Land and seas created when they are separated from one another (1:9-10)
Plants are brought forth from the land (1:11-13)
Lights in the sky separate night and day (1:14-19)
Birds inhabit the sky, and the water brings forth living creatures (1:20-23)
Land brings forth living creatures, including man (1:24-28)
Plants are designated as food for creatures and man (1:29-31)
Final Conditions: Rest (2:1-3)
This is my own slight variation on what has been called the Framework Hypothesis and it presents the order of creation thematically rather than in a chronological manner. Realms are first created by God's acts of separation and then populated in exactly the same order.
An even more ubiquitous type of repetition in the Bible is called introverted parallelism, or chiasm.
Introverted Structure of Psalm 103:1
A. Bless the LORD,
B. O my soul;
B'. and all that is within me,
A'. Bless his holy name!
You can see that in this case the second half of the verse repeats the basic idea of the first one with, however, the elements given in reverse, or mirror-image, order. When utilized on a larger scale, this method of organization can be used to understand the flow in more extensive passages such as the example of Deuteronomy 30 discussed at the end of Part 1 of this introduction:
A. Consequences of obedience or disobedience explained (30:1-10)
B. God's will is known to you (30:11-14)
A'. Consequences of obedience or disobedience explained (10:15-20)
This particular example above is technically called a 3-part chiasm, whereas Psalm 103:1 would be labeled as a four-part one. Such mirror-image structures, containing anywhere from three to many elements, are evident throughout the Bible.
Revisiting the example of Philemon mentioned in Part 1 of this introduction, where scholars can't seem to agree on how it is to be divided up, one can propose a chiastic organization for the letter, which helps decide the issue:
The Structure of Philemon
A. Opening Greetings and Blessing (vv. 1-3)
B. Expression of Confidence (vv. 4-7)
C. “I am sending him back to you” (vv. 8-14)
C'. “Receive him as you would receive me” (vv. 15-19)
B'. Expression of Confidence (vv. 20-22)
A'. Closing Greetings and Blessing (vv. 23-25)
Almost every literary unit in the Bible from individual verses to whole books can be explained in terms of these two basic building blocks of parallelism and chiasm, in which many variations are possible. For example, the parallelism in some cases may be (1) incomplete with one of the elements understood but not stated (incomplete parallelism), (2) the parallel units may actually be intended contrasts rather than expressing the same idea (antithetic parallelism), or (3) each unit may start out with something in the previous unit but extend the idea further each time (stair-step parallelism). This last variation is especially important since it appears almost exclusively in apocalyptic writings. Without understanding that is how these cryptic books are organized, many prophecy experts have gone quite astray in attempting to construct their various time lines of future events. Here are two examples of stair-step parallelism so that you can understand what I am talking about, beginning with a simple example of elevated prose from John:
Stair-Step Parallelism: John 1:4-5
In him was life
and the life was the light of men
the light shines in the darkness
and the darkness has not overcome it.
More extensive examples are seen in the Book of Daniel. For one thing, consider the various reigns in which each section takes place and note that the second half of the book backs up to an earlier time period as well as moving forward in time:
Nebuchadnezzar (chs. 1-4)
Belshazzar (ch. 5)
Darius (ch. 6)
----------------------------------------------
Belshazzar (chs. 7-8)
Darius (ch. 9)
Cyrus (chs. 10-12)
The same phenomenon appears in the visions and dreams that are described throughout the book.
When there are a number of such units in a book such as Revelation, each repeating previous material but advancing forward at the same time, the phenomenon has been called progressive recapitulation. If one fails to see this as the organizing factor behind that book, one ends up with a very complicated scheme in which the same or similar events appear to take place more than once (such as several divine reigns on earth, more than one Armaggedon, two different releasings of Satan, Babylon falling twice and up to seven different judgments, etc.)
Just as parallelism can take many forms, chiasms can also exist as dual or overlapping types. And a final complicating factor is that often elements of parallelism and chiasm are combined within one literary structure, such as below:
The Structure of Ephesians
I. Introduction (1:1-2)
II. Position with God through Christ (1:3-14)
III. Power in Christ (1:15-23)
IV. Gentiles’ Past and Present Position Contrasted (2:1-22)
V. The Mystery of Christ: Position and Power (3:1-21)
IV'. Gentiles’ Past and Present Behavior Contrasted (4:1-5:20)
II'. Position with Others through Christ (5:21-6:9)
III'. Power in Christ (6:10-20)
I'. Conclusion (6:21-24)
Note how the overall organization of the book is from the two ends to the center. From this, we can deduce that at least one of the main points of the book will be found in Section V. But in addition, II-III and II'-III' constitute a parallel pair, and in such cases the intended emphasis will usually fall on the last items in each series, i.e. III and III'. Note how all three of these highlighted sections discuss the subject of godly power.
In conclusion, I must admit that actually coming up with an analysis that does justice to the intent of the author is more of an art than a science. Often the book divisions one derives from principles described in Part 1 of this presentation do not match exactly with the overall organization showing the symmetrical elements described in the current Part 2. At that point, it is usually a process of tweaking the limits of each section and/or their proposed parallels with other sections in an iterative process until the best overall fit is obtained.
Even under the best conditions, you will find that not all scholars agree on the final structure of a given passage or book in the Bible. But it is always satisfying to see when different commentators arrive at very similar conclusions even if they approach the problem in quite different ways. And when there are wide differences between “experts” in this field, some of these can easily be traced to hidden assumptions that each scholar is making.
Thus, there are several noted examples of authors who do not admit to any sort of literary structure other than a simple chiasm. And one of them even tries to force-fit all of his structures into seven-part chiasms exclusively. In addition, I could mention several commentators who are satisfied to declare that they have found an adequate parallelism if they can find one or two minor verbal similarities within different sections, no matter how extended those passages may be. Others ignore that particular hallmark of parallelism and are content if two passages demonstrate a rough thematic similarity – an approach that is highly subjective at best. In fact, the composition of each book of the Bible is unique and requires the utilization of every available tool in order to discern how it is put together. Even then, the structural analyst must take the approach of every good scientist and remain open to correction as more facts come to light.
My own structural analyses of each book in the Bible are summarized in individual posts on this site. Just search for “(name of book): Introduction to Literary Structure.”
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