Chiasmus: Methodology

Jonathan Robie jonathan at texcel.no
Tue Mar 2 11:14:39 EST 1999


At 10:37 AM 3/1/99 PST, George Blaisdell wrote:

>A Guide to Detecting Chiastic Patterns

I think this is generally pretty good, and I enjoyed reading this book,
though I haven't worked my way through it very thoroughly. 

There's one emphasis that I'd like to be careful about, though: the goal,
when approaching a text, should be to detect whatever patterns are there,
whether or not they are chiastic.

>To help the reader acquire some facility in detecting chiastic patterns 
>throughout the Bible, the following steps are offered as a guide.
>
>1.  Acquire a study Bible you can freely mark up with a pencil.

This is *always* good when studying a text intensely. I like to print up a
text in Greek, using wide margins. The easiest way for me is generally to
select the text, bring it into my word processor, format it with wide
margins so that I have plenty of room to work.

>2.  Try to detach yourself from the divisions in the printed text, 
>paying as little attention as possible to paragraphs or verse and 
>chapter numbers.

Obviously, if you reformat it in your word processor, you can eliminate
these divisions entirely.

>3.  Look for units of text - several lines at most - that begin and end 
>with similar terms or themes [A:A'      inclusion].  When you find such 
>correspondences, mark them off from the rest of the unit with brackets      
>[...].  

I find it very helpful to search for repetition in themes, images, or
words, progressions in time or space, ask myself the "who, what, when,
where, why, and how" questions, etc. One way I've found helpful is to use
colored pencils, and just intuitively underline things that seem to be
related, then try to come up with a word that summarizes what unifies what
I've underlined in one color, and write that word in the margin using the
same color I used to underline.

Note that chiasm is only one possible structure for repeated elements - for
instance, there may be parallelism, or a progression in time or space.

>4.  Read the passage through several times to sense its narrative flow 
>[from A to A'], before attempting to discover other parallel 
>elements in it.
>
>5.  Move from the extremities toward the center: try to identify the 
>presence and limits of B:B', then C:C',      etc.

I think it's important to consider other possibilities as well:

o	Is there a chiastic structure with a logical center?
o	Is there parallelism?
o	Is there a progression in time?
o	Is there a progression in space?

This appendix seems to suggest that parallels automatically imply chiasm. 

Yours in the ongoing struggle against Procrustean interpretation,

Jonathan
___________________________________________________________________________

Jonathan Robie		jwrobie at mindspring.com

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