Biblical Reasons Ministry
Dispensing with Chiasmus
by Brian Horner, participant at CARM.org LDS discussion board.
A frequent bit of “evidence” cited by Mormons as support for the
authenticity of the Book of Mormon being from an ancient Hebrew civilization is
the presence of “chiasmus” in its text. Before we can determine if this claim
really is evidence of authenticity we must first understand just what a
“chiasmus” is.
What is a “chiasmus”?
A chiasmus is simply a particular grammatical structure. According to the
Oxford Dictionary it is: “a figure of speech by which the order of the terms in
the first of two parallel clauses is reversed in the second”. An example given
by the Oxford dictionary is Byron’s quip: “Pleasure's a sin, and sometimes sin's
a pleasure”. My biker friends often create chiasmus when they chant: “live to
ride and ride to live”.
Some chiastic structures are more complex, inverting whole concepts in
each clause and not just a word or two. For example:
Some have an idea that the reason we in this country discard things so readily is because we have so much. The facts are exactly opposite--the reason we have so much is simply because we discard things so readily.
-- Alfred P. Sloan
It is certainly true that chiasmus are common in the Bible. God himself
said things like “Whosoever shedeth the blood of man, by man shall his
blood be shed”. Jesus said “The first shall be last and the last shall
be first”. These are clear examples of chiastic structures. But are
these kinds of linguistic structures unique to scripture, or even to
Hebrew or Greek? The answer is ABSOLUTELY NOT. As seen above, from Byron
to bikers, chiasmus are very common. Like palindromes,
redundancies and antithesis, a chiasmus is simply a clever way of
structuring a comment. There is nothing unique to any language about
such figures of speech. Virtually all languages contain examples of all
of these structures.
Chiasmus in the Book of Mormon
Mormons claim that there are chiasmus in the Bible AND in the Book of
Mormon and from those facts infer that both the Bible and the Book of
Mormon have a common religious, cultural and linguistic heritage.
Are there chiasmus in the Book of Mormon? Yes.
Does the presence of chiasmus in the text of the Book of Mormon serve as
evidence of the books alleged Hebrew origins? No. Here's why...
First of all, chiasmus are simply NOT unique to Hebrew. Chiasmus are
virtually universal and are obviously very common in English – the
native language of Joseph Smith. There is no reason whatsoever to infer
that they represent a uniquely Hebrew (or “Reformed Egyptian” – whatever
that is) characteristic.
Secondly, Joseph Smith obviously copied whole sections out of his King
James Bible into the Book of Mormon (as demonstrated by his inclusion of
KJV anomalies and translation errors). It is little wonder, therefore,
that there are chiasmus in the BoM. Not only did Mr. Smith simply copy
these structures verbatim, from the KJV in the course of borrowing the
KJV text, he also obviously caught onto the very common form and was
able to duplicate it at will in his original (i.e. non-KJV copied)
material. Like Smith's use of biblical phrases such as “and it came to
pass...”, there is no mystery as to how such phrases could find their
way into the Book of Mormon even in the total absence of any real,
original “Book of Mormon”. Such common linguistic structures certainly
do not require any "divine inspiration" to create. Otherwise, we need to
start attributing divine inspiration to the chants of the Hell's Angles.
Thirdly, there are chiasmus in Ethan Smith’s “View of the Hebrews” and
Solomon Spaulding’s “Manuscript” and many other English works available
to Joseph Smith. If we are to believe that the presence of chiasmus in
the BoM is evidence of its actual sources, then why are we to somehow
accept that these chiastic structures could ONLY have come from the
“Reformed Egyptian” of the original golden plates? Do the presence of
the chiastic structures in the BoM AND in the works of Spaulding and E.
Smith (and who knows how many other English works) not point equally to
these other works as well? In fact, since the works of Spaulding and E.
Smith et. al. contain chiasmus and ALSO contain many of the
plot points and events that are virtually identical to the BoM, the
presence of chiasmus points far more readily to the BoM having been
drawn from these works than from the non-existent golden plates.
Finally, while chiastic structures are quite common in many languages
(including Smith’s own native English), we have no reason whatsoever to
believe that there were any chiastic structures in the language Joseph
Smith called “Reformed Egyptian”. In fact, we have no evidence
whatsoever that this entire language ever even existed, nor even any
evidence that the civilization which supposedly employed it ever even
lived. As usual, when it comes to Mormon claims, we have nothing to even
begin making any of the necessary comparisons IF we are even to be able
to determine the truth of these claims.
The presence of chiasmus in the Book of Mormon is no more evidence of its
authenticity in representing some alleged ancient Hebrew civilization
than it is evidence of it being an original English composition.
Thank you
-BH
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