Much More than a Reader: The Latest in Chiastic Studies for Interested Scholars and Lay Readers Alike - a podcast by PDF feed of Interpreter: A Journal of Latter-day Saint Faith and Scholarship

Review of Chiasmus: The State of the Art, edited by John W. Welch and Donald W. Parry (Provo, UT: BYU Studies and Book of Mormon Central, 2020). 358 pages. $24.68, paperback.

Abstract: This collection of essays represents the latest scholarship on chiasmus. They were selected from papers delivered at an academic conference at Brigham Young University in 2017. Articles reflect both “the state of the art” and the state of the technique in chiastic studies.





In the academic world, readers are published collections of articles that represent the breadth, depth, variety, and history of the best scholarship on a given theme. Readers may reflect the current nature of scholarly understanding or indicate a turning point in the intellectual interest in a subject. They often supplement textbooks as principal sources in undergraduate lower or upper division courses.

This new collection of essays edited by Jack Welch and Donald Parry is an academic reader in multiple senses:



* It introduces students of all ages and experience levels to the latest research in chiastic studies as manifest in a variety of ancient literary sources, including the Hebrew Bible (six articles), Christian Bible (two articles), Book of Mormon (one article), and Mayan texts (one article). In addition, Professor Welch himself illustrates the comparative value of chiasmus in analyzing several homicide narratives in the Bible and Book of Mormon.

* [Page 266]It complements and updates the standard and still valuable collection of articles on chiastic studies published four decades earlier, also edited by Professor Welch.1

* It offers an operational definition of this ancient literary convention and considers its rhetorical value for writers, redactors, editors, readers, and critics.

* It includes an extended bibliography of published works on chiasmus.



But this volume is much more than an academic reader. Collectively, these essays are also a statement of respect for Professor Welch, who recently retired as one of the leading international contributors to this scholarly tradition and who introduced chiastic studies to Latter-day Saint scholars a half century ago after he had discovered the traditional Hebrew literary convention used throughout the text of the Book of Mormon.2 Scholarly studies of the Book of Mormon have not been the same since. The event that gave rise to this “state of the art” publication was an academic conference at Brigham Young University in August 2017.3 This celebration brought together dozens of scholars and clerics to reflect on this standard but not uncontroversial literary convention of (primarily) the ancient Near East.

Those who are more than a little familiar with this convention recognize chiasmus as a specialized and complex expression of parallelism, an even more ubiquitous literary convention of biblical Hebrew.PDF feed of Interpreter: A Journal of Latter-day Saint Faith and Scholarship

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