How can we ensure a given "chiasm" was intentional by the author, and is not merely fanciful eisegesis?

Question

What is 'chiasm'?

Chiasm is a literary technique by which the contents of a portion of text are structured in such a way that they could be laid out in a ">" shape...

A) This is an example of a chiasm
    B) which has been reformatted to illustrate the concept
        C) that each element in a chiasm corresponds to another element
            D) except, perhaps the central element, which is often being emphasized. 
        C') Otherwise each element corresponds to another element in the chiasm
    B') and if you were to reformat the whole thing in a '>' shape it would be clear
A') that it is in fact a chiasm.

...so A corresponds to A', B to B', C to C', etc. Sometimes there is a central element, in which case, the chiasm often points the reader to that central element, where the emphasis of the entire chiasm lies.

A more Biblical example

I found this by doing a quick Google search for "chiasm Bible". The author of the site claims that Genesis 3:5 – 3:22 is a chiasm.

A) You will be like God, knowing good and evil (5)
    B) They made coverings of fig leaves (7)
        C) Wife as yet unnamed (8)
            D) Adam questioned (9)
                E) Eve accused and questioned (12-13a)
                    F) Serpent accused (13b)
                    F') Serpent’s curse (14)
                E') Eve’s curse (16)
            D') Adam’s curse (17-19)
        C') Wife is named Eve (20)
    B') The LORD God made them tunics of skin and clothed them. (21)
A') Man is like one of Us, to know good and evil. (22)

Pretty cool, eh?

My concern

Here is my concern. I'm looking at the "chiasm" I just included, and I'm wondering... what happened to verses 6, 10-11, and 15? Maybe they were insignificant to the chiasm so they weren't included... So then, how do we decide which verses to include in our chiasm and which to leave out? Do we just tinker with the text until we are able to "make something work"? Then I'm wondering, why doesn't it start at verse 4, or verse 1? Do we just pick a convenient verse that allows us to call it a chiasm? Aside from verse selections, the text has to be summarized in just the right way to make it look chiastic. This whole procedure can quickly begin to sound more like eisegesis than exegesis.

To make matters worse, it is relatively easy to "see" a chiasm where none exists. To prove my point, I went to Bible Gateway and typed in some random book+chapter+verses and fit them into chiastic structures. There are three examples provided below. These are not actual chiasms! I made them up to show how easy it is to succumb to "chiasmania." Again, take note that these chiasms are artificial and are not to be trusted!

Ephesians 2:5-12:

Formerly dead (5a)
    God made us alive in Christ (5b-7)
        By grace (8a)
            Through faith, which is a gift (8b)
        Not by works (9)
    God made us alive in Christ (10)
Formerly dead (11-12) 

James 2:6-14:

James confronts those guilty of showing partiality (6-7)
    The royal law (8)
        You are a transgressor! (9)
            Whoever stumbles in one point becomes guilty of the whole law (10)
        You are a transgressor! (11)
    The law of liberty (12)
James confronts those guilty of showing partiality (13-14),

Luke 4:13-19:

an opportune time for the devil (13)
    Jesus' mission field (14)
        Jesus the teacher (15)
            Jesus prepares to read (16)
                Isaiah was handed to Him (17a)
            Jesus prepares to read (17b)
        Jesus the preacher (18a)
    Jesus' mission field (18b)
the favorable year of the Lord (19)

Again, I literally made these by just randomly picking some book+chapter+verses off the top of my head, typing them in at Bible Gateway to see what they said, and then forcing them into a chiastic structure. There is no reason to think any of these were actually intended to be chiasms.

My question

When we think we are seeing a chiasm in the Biblical text, how can we be sure that we are actually seeing something that was intended by the author, and not just imposing our own chiasmaniacle agenda on the text? Is there an exegetical procedure for identifying a chiasm that can help us to ensure that we are being faithful to authorial intent?

Answer 1

Here are a few proposals. I'll update this post as I learn more, or delete it if a better answer is posted that addresses these points.

1. Chiasmus is a way of structuring a literary unit... if it is not a literary unit, then it is not a chiasm.

Given the purpose of chiasmus -- to organize a literary unit, to make the literary unit more memorable, and perhaps, to emphasize the central point of a literary unit -- I propose that we can begin by assessing whether or not the text contained within an alleged chiasm is actually a complete literary unit.

For example, if an alleged chiasm starts in the middle of one sentence or paragraph, and ends in the middle of another sentence or paragraph, it is not actually an authorially-intended chiasm. The chiasm must span an entire coherent literary unit -- no more, no less. (Please note, however, that this literary unit could be a single sentence, several paragraphs, or even an entire book in length.)

2. Chiasmus is a way of structuring an entire literary unit... if the entire literary unit cannot be included in the chiasm, then it is not a chiasm.

Given that chiasmus is used to organize an entire literary unit and make the entire literary unit more memorable, it would not make sense for significant portions of the text to be unrelated to the chiasm. I propose that we can quickly evaluate whether we may be looking at a chiasm by assessing whether or not all of the text contained within an alleged chiasm actually fits into a chiastic structure.

For example, if an alleged chiasm fits 80% of the text in a literary unit into a chiastic structure, but 20% of the text has to be excluded in order to make it look chiastic in structure, it is not actually an authorially-intended chiasm. The chiasm must account for the entire literary unit, not just selected portions of the text. (Please note that this does not imply that every word must have a parallel, but major concepts and points of focus cannot be excluded simply for convenience.)

3. Chiasmus is a way of structuring a text to make the text itself more memorable... if the reader has to rewrite the text in order to make it look chiastic, it is not a chiasm

Given that chiasmus is used to organize a text to make it more memorable, it would not make sense for the reader to have to re-write the entire thing in overgeneralized terms in order to make it look chiastic, because then the reader would have to (A) memorize the chiasm with the rewritten text, and then (B) somehow connect that back to the text to be memorized.

For example, the saying, "I mean what I say and say what I mean" may be considered chiastic, since the text itself creates a chiastic parallelism:

I mean
    what I say
    and say
what I mean

However, if I were to say, "I often think to myself about the state of affairs in America and wonder why God has not yet wiped us off the face of the planet. I'm glad He hasn't -- don't get me wrong, but let's face it: things are getting pretty bad here." An interpreter might call this a chiasm on the basis of:

the state of things in America is troubling
    God's judgment on America
    God's judgment on America
the state of things in America is troubling

...but notice here that I had to rewrite the original words in order to create structural and linguistic parallels. While this does aide in making it look chiastic, it would not aid a reader in memorizing the original text -- in fact, it makes it harder, because now they have to memorize two texts. The chiasm must make the original text more memorable through structural and linguistic parallelism without requiring a rewriting of the entire text.

Answer 2

You seem to be thinking of chiasm as a binary – something that is either there or not there. In reality there is a spectrum of chiasms that exist in the Bible on the scale of a single verse or an entire book.

Imagine you're a literary theorist looking at poetry written in English. Your method shouldn't be to take two random lines from a random poem and ask: “rhyme or no rhyme?” In poetry you have internal rhymes, half-rhymes, accidental rhymes, slant rhymes, eye rhymes, and many others. Rhymes exist within a stylistic context as a way of enriching a piece of writing. Whether or not a rhyme was intended by an author is secondary to how the rhyme affects the sound and impact of the piece at hand.

Whenever I'm writing a formal essay, I try to end on an idea or a theme that I started with – chiasm. These chiasms aren't mathematical chiasms, but reflect a writing style which is natural to me. Chiasm is way of achieving clarity or poetic beauty and providing a sense of closure – this can be used on the scale of a single sentence, chapter or a book. I would argue that the chiasm you found is valid in the sense that it is one point on a spectrum of chiasms in the Bible and is representative of a format and style commonly employed.

Answer 3

Thank you for your post. It is easy, as you showed, to turn texts into chiastic-like structure. Why is this so and how do we know which ones if any were the author's actual intent?

One reason that it seems easy to make some texts look like a chiasm, even if they were not the author's intent, is because the texts in general have actually been written using a ring composition with chiastic structure. When you get used to seeing and feeling the structure, it is as if the biblical texts have a rhythm, so as we work with the texts, sometimes we can see something that really isn't actually intended. So how do we know which ones were intended, if at all? I have been working on this for many years.

In my work, I show that the parable of the prodigal son is constructed of a five section, five part structure. In chiastic language it is the ABCB'A' structure used five times in a row. I call it the parable blueprint.

Five contiguous ABCB'A'sections actually create hundreds of hidden parables in the Bible and are the blueprint of how biblical texts have been purposely constructed with great effort.

Though the texts do not look like parables as we think of parables, they were constructed and created as hidden parables to conceal comparisons. In effect, a narrative that uses comparisons for teaching are parables. In other words, a parable does not have to be an allegorical type of narrative.

You can find out more about this work at my website: http://parableblueprint.com

Answer 4

This was asked a long time ago, but here's my two cents.

I think there's a problem in your question: it assumes that a chiasm has to be intentional to be valid. I don't think that's true. I think chiasms are built into the structure of reality.

For instance, a story, by definition, consists of a beginning, a journey of some kind (growing up, battle, conflict, quest etc), and an end. The end and the beginning must relate to each other at some level. That corresponds to an ABA structure. So, chiasms don't have to be conscious to be valid: they may be a product of reality, or of how the author's thought as much as anything else.

A good example is Robocop. It's perfectly chiastically structured: https://dejareviewer.com/2014/04/29/cinematic-chiasmus-robocop-is-almost-perfectly-symmetrical-film/ But look in the comments. One of the writers of the film commented and said that although they never talked about chiastic structure, it was still a good analysis. There's a case of unintentional chiasmus.

A second consideration is that chiasms can operate on more than one level. You can have multiple chiastic structures operating in one passage (see here: https://www.inthebeginning.org/chiasmus/examples.html) That may mean that some sections don't fit neatly into one chiasm, but it doesn't invalidate the chiasm.

Where I would say that chiasms are not present in a text is (as other commenters have pointed out) when you have to re-write the text, or interpret it in an implausible way. If you have to make something fit, it probably doesn't.

Answer 5

Some physicists wrote a paper suggesting that Chiasms can be statistically evaluated to be shown as intentional or not, and whether or not its statistically significant in its randomness or intentionality. Criteria include measuring the number of repeating elements in the chiasm which fit the chiastic form, the number of repeated elements that do not fit the chiastic form, how likely this chiasm could have appeared in the work as a whole by pure randomness, etc.

For example, Many Dr. Seuss works could be said to contain chiasms. However you can easily take the number of repeated elements and the total number of words in the text and find that the odds of a Dr. Seuss text containing a chiasm simply by virtue of its simplicity are incredibly high.

This paper was written with analysis of the Book of Mormon in mind, as it contains one very long and detailed Chiasm in it and critics have long argued it's just chance.

https://digitalcommons.usu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1565&context=physics_facpub

Answer 6

You asked,

"How can we ensure a given 'chiasm' was inten[ded] by the author, and is not merely [a] fanciful[, self-imposed] eisegesis?" and

"Is there an exegetical procedure for identifying a chiasm that can help us to ensure that we are being faithful to authorial intent?"

By the way, if you or any other readers of BH beta haven't already read an excellent overview of chiasmus' importance in the interpretation and exegesis of the Bible, I encourage you to do so. See "Chiasmus: An Important Structural Device Commonly Found in Biblical Literature," by Brad McCoy. McCoy's monograph seems to me to be quite thorough, well balanced, and well documented, with footnotes galore [1 and 2, below].

In answer to your first question: Eisegesis, as you point out, can be problematic, though biblical scholars in general and Hebrew- and Greek scholars in particular-- despite their fallibility--can often provide useful guidance and correction, since both they and us (in their absence) can be guided by the Holy Spirit.

R. W. Emerson said,

"A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines."

In answer to your second question, manias of any kind (i.e., foolish consistencies; seeing chiasm, for example, where there is none) seem to be antithetical to good hermeneutics and exegesis. On more than a few occasions, seemingly well-meaning Christians have gone off the deep end by mounting a hermeneutical hobby horse and riding it to death, thereby upsetting their faith and the faith of others. Balance is the key.

These hobby-horse Christians may justify their seeming obsession with an unwarranted method of interpretation by saying, "But God revealed it to me!" That attitude, however, is fraught with peril, especially when they ignore the interpretations of respected, reputable scholars whose interpretations are at odds with theirs.

A simple recognition that 1) chiasmus was part and parcel of the Hebrew mind, and 2) its primary use was to organize texts and make them more memorable, are two guiding principles that go a long way, I believe, in keeping us on the "straight and narrow," interpretively. These two factors, if you will, comprise the forest. What about the trees?

Chiasmus is but one tool of many in the rhetorical panoply of biblical writers. A tool is a means to an end, which in biblical interpretation is to enable any servant of the Word to handle correctly, or "rightly divide," the word of truth (2 Timothy 2:15). We should not expect, on balance, to find chiasmus everywhere, any more than we should expect to find irony, sarcasm, litotes, metonymy, synecdoche, or any other figure or trope everywhere.

One tree in the forest of interpretation, then, could be familiarity with the real thing. Just as FBI agents hone their skill of spotting counterfeit money by scrutinizing the real thing, so too should biblical interpreters develop the ability to distinguish true chiasmus from pseudo-chiasmus by finding and studying the genuine article, as you have done.

Here is where biblical scholars who have specialized in identifying the genuine article can be invaluable resources for exegetes. Even pagan rhetoricians from the Greek and Roman traditions (e.g., Plato, Aristotle, Cicero, Isocrates, Longinus)can provide us with insights into figures of speech that both Jews and Gentiles used.

Interestingly, Jesus himself gave us some principles of interpretation, one of which was, ironically enough, the principle that He used more than occasionally, and it involved deliberate obfuscation so as to expose the spiritual blindness and deafness of unbelievers:

To you [, my disciples,] has been granted to know the mysteries of the kingdom of God, but to the rest [my teaching] is in parables, so that SEEING THEY MAY NOT SEE, AND HEARING THEY MAY NOT UNDERSTAND"(Lk 8:10b)!

In John 6, after Jesus called Himself "the bread of life," the Jews started arguing among themselves about how in the world this Jesus could give them His flesh to eat. Then Jesus hammered home His point by saying,

. . . Unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink His blood, you have no life in yourself. He who eats My flesh and drinks My blood has eternal life . . .. My flesh is true food, and My blood is true drink. He who eats My flesh and drinks My blood abides in Me, and I in him (vss. 52-56).

In verse 63 of the same chapter, however, Jesus in His response to His disciples' complaint about His having used such "a difficult saying," patiently interpreted for them His teaching. He said,

It is the Spirit who gives life; the flesh profits nothing; the words that I have spoken to you are spirit and are life.

Jesus was saying in other words, "Don't interpret all of my words literally; sometimes I am speaking figuratively, so interpret my words spiritually!"

Jesus also teaches us that each of His parables has a central idea/point/thesis, and that being overly literal in our interpretation can cause problems. Frequently He would patiently explain His parables to the inner circle of His disciples to ensure they got the point He was making.

While Jesus never used a figure of speech or any literary unit without consciously knowing how and why He did so, the same cannot be said, I believe, of the human writers of the Bible. Perhaps more often than not they did know; at other times, however, the wording the Holy Spirit chose trumped their own preconceptions about how and why they were writing as they did. Remember, each writer was, as Peter reminds us, being borne along by the Holy Spirit, as a boat's sails catch the wind and bear the boat along its course (see 2 Peter 1:20-21).

Scripture is, after all, God-breathed and not man-breathed, although the human writers God used to pen His word were not automatons to whom God dictated! Ultimately, in answering the question "What was the author's intent in this passage?" we need to go beyond the human author and to the Divine Author! Will we always be successful? No. Should that prevent us from trying? No.

The human authors' educational backgrounds, their facility with languages, their personalities, temperaments, and the significant others in their lives--all these factors and more informed the original manuscripts, and God in turn has miraculously preserved His word, ever since the writer of Job first put quill to parchment.

One final thought. God has a remarkable way of using His word to accomplish His purposes in the lives of people. Even if an active preacher or teacher is way off base in his or her interpretation of a given scripture (with the exception of clearly erroneous doctrine), God has a way of using His word to accomplish His purposes and to bring glory to Himself and blessing to others.

God's sovereignty in these matters does not therefore give us license to play fast and loose with the Scriptures. Again, they need to be "rightly divided," exegetically and hermeneutically. Keep in mind, however, no one person or one denomination has a corner on the truth in this regard, and Church schisms have occurred over arguments about relatively insignificant differences in interpretation, with perhaps well meaning people on both sides making theological mountains out of what are in fact molehills.

Even then, God can still bring good out of evil, but I'd like to think He'd prefer that we stick to His plan A, which often involves agreeing to disagree agreeably! We all, at times, need to pick our battles wisely and lovingly.

Answer 7

If Jesus wanted everyone to know what he was talking about, he would have spoken plainly. He spoke in parables to separate those who were spiritual minded from those who were more literal minded. He also spoke in parables so he could speak about sensitive issues in a way that would allow him to speak openly without getting shut down (though they still tried to stone him). Parables is the language of secrets. Ancient writers used the chiasm for the same reason. To conceal hidden treasures that are not meant for everyone. A secret code. People who use codes are intentionally deceptive/tricky when they write. They realize how normal people think, and they throw in stumbling blocks to confuse them. Thus, the only way to know how to define a chasm is to know what they were all trying to hide.