Leviticus appears to be arranged in a chiastic order (see here). That is, it is arranged in a mirror-image. This is best understood visually.
Tag: Chiasm
We have all been on the receiving end of a good joke told poorly. There was nothing wrong with the content, the problem was delivery. Somehow, words that are hilarious when told one way lose their power when told another. The point is that delivery is just as important as content, and the same goes for the Bible. In fact, it’s been said that the words of a Scripture give half of the meaning but the literary structure gives the other half. That is, the way the words are arranged are just as important as the words themselves! To be good readers, we must be clued in to the literary strategies of the authors of Scripture.
» Read the entire post: How Literary Structure Tells Half the Story (Mark 1:21-28) »
I’m generally skeptical of large-scale suggestions such as this (though I’m intrigued by Wingo’s proposal that Job is a chiasm!) but I think Hamilton is onto something here by suggesting in his new book With the Clouds of Heaven that the entire book of Daniel is a chiasm. After showing that Daniel is broken up into 10 units (closely corresponding to the first 9 chapters and then chapters 10-12), he notes that some chapters are clearly parallel:
» Read the entire post: Is the Entire Book of Daniel a Chiasm? »
I was studying Job a few months ago in the hopes of teaching a class on it but the Lord had other plans. During that time I posted a chiasm from Job 1 and hoped to share some more throughout my studies. With my studies are on hold, most of my ideas for Job have to follow also, but here’s a freebie that I intended to share a while ago.
Chiasmus is a fun word. It turns out the Bible is full of chiasms. But what are they? Wikipedia, trustworthy as it is, has a fairly good description. Here’s another. A simple example is Jesus’ words in Matthew 20:16:
