"Syntactical Chiasmus"

Wayne Leman wleman at mcn.net
Sun Jan 28 17:49:41 EST 2001


Steven asked:

> I wonder if you are merely making a wild guess as to what you surmise
might
> be true? I would have had more confidence in your statement if you would
> have backed it up with concrete examples. Please show me real examples
> where in Biblical Hebrew the chiasmus effects Hebrew syntax.

You're asking the decisive questions, Steven. I'm researching now to see
what I can come up with. Unfortunatelly, most of my exegetical library is in
a storage locker 40 miles away, since it won't fit into the little cottage
we now live in on a reservation.

I suspect you are aware of a number of exx. in Greek literature (at least NT
Greek) where there is literary chiasmus. But I think you esp. want to know
about exx. where the so-called inverted parallelism actually changes
meaning, i.e. that there is a syntactic difference that affects meaning.

There are many webpages on chiasmus, but many of them, I think, lack that
sine qua non of scholarly definiteness that we need at this point. The
following webpage may have substantive scholarship behind it. Check it out:

"New historicism and chiasmus and Mark 8:35":
http://www.cc.emory.edu/COLLEGE/RELIGION/faculty/robbins/SRI/Examples/textur
es/ideological/chiasmus.html

I'm in this with you, since I would like to know myself if there is decisive
data supporting chiastic readings that make a meaning difference.

More later,
Wayne
---
Wayne Leman
Bible translation site: http://www.geocities.com/bible_translation/




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