Abstract: While Alma 36 has long been one of the most admired examples of classical Hebrew chiasmus in the Book of Mormon, critiques in the last two decades have questioned whether, in fact, it really meets the requirements of classical biblical chiasms. The principal objections have pointed to the large sections of the chapter that are not easily included in the chiasm as outlined by John W. Welch and other proponents. Until now, this debate has not taken note of dramatic new developments in the analysis of Hebrew rhetoric over the last fifty years. The following essay turns to the discoveries made in this new approach to Hebrew rhetoric and shows that when the new “levels analysis” is incorporated into a study of Alma 36, the entire text does have a role to play in the extended chiastic structure of the chapter.

 

[Editor’s Note: An abbreviated version of this paper was presented at the 2019 Sperry Symposium and was included in that shortened form in the symposium volume. See Give Ear to My Words: Text and Context of Alma 36–42, edited by Kerry M. Hull, Nicholas J. Frederick, and Hank R. Smith, Religious Studies Center, 2019, 451–72. This complete and updated version is herein published by Interpreter with permission of the RSC.]

In 1967, John W. Welch was serving as a missionary in Germany and noticed a scholar’s explanation of chiasmus as a rhetorical structure that recurs in various parts of the Bible. While the penchant for parallelism that characterized Old Testament writers was widely recognized by that time, the discovery that reverse parallelism was also commonly used by Old and New Testament writers was relatively recent and not yet widely accepted. Welch was no ordinary missionary in terms of his scholarly and scriptural preparation, and he immediately saw the possibility that Nephi and his successors may have been familiar with that rhetorical pattern and may have used it in the writings we now know as the Book of Mormon. He went [Page 280]to work immediately and found numerous examples of chiastic structures in the Book of Mormon text, prominent among which was Alma chapter 36. These discoveries fueled Welch’s 1970 master’s thesis and a long list of subsequent publications that presented additional discoveries and further refinements in his understanding of the phenomenon, addressed both to Book of Mormon readers and to biblical scholars generally.

In his 1991 abbreviated summary of his earlier writings on chiasmus, Welch reports that “Alma 36 was one of the first chiasms I discovered within the Book of Mormon” and that it continues to be one of his favorites. “It is a masterpiece of composition, as good as any other use of chiasmus in world literature, and it deserves wide recognition and appreciation.”1 By that time, Alma 36 had also become a favorite of informed readers of the Book of Mormon and had even been included in non-Latter-day Saint publications on biblical chiasmus.2 Welch himself had become well known and much appreciated by Bible scholars for his insightful compilations and his comprehensive bibliography of chiasmus studies across all relevant disciplines.