This website has been set up to encourage personal Bible discovery by paying attention to the literary structure of Scripture and the flow of thought. Look out for chiasms in daily Bible reading – and after that compare with what others have proposed. The website also includes tables on bible echoes.
This blog is supported by Mumbles Christadelphians –
http://www.mumbles-christadelphians.com/
and Jered Bolton – https://notjustcode.co.uk/
All proposals made here should be considered as provisional and may be subject to modification as we learn more. (Posts marked with an * make some reference to an academic work directly or indirectly in the posts or comments).
The contributions to this blog have come in the main from those of us who are following the Bible Companion bible reading planner – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bible_Companion which covers the Old Testament once and the New Testament twice in a year, To a large extent this explains the sequence of scripture passages as they have appeared.
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Bible study tool
http://www.the-boltons.co.uk/ss/
“Whilst it’s easy to find the root of a given word, it’s rather tricky to go in the opposite direction and find words that stem from a given word. This utility searches for words in the other direction “.
There is possibly a chiasm from Dan 11v40-12v4:
A: ‘Time of the end’.
B: King of North vs King of South (Armageddon).
C: Countries escape.
D: Destruction of other nations.
E: Troubling news.
F: Come to his end.
F’: Michael stands up.
E’: Time of trouble…
D’: …for nations.
C’: ‘Your people shall be delivered’.
B’: Resurrection and judgement (happening at the same time as Armageddon).
A’: ‘Time of the end’.
As you can see, the focal point is with the destruction of the King of the North and the coming of Jesus with the resurrection.
I like the analysis in the first section of Luke 2. However, the middle can be further structured as follows:
D. praising God, and saying,
(14) Glory to God
in the highest,
and on earth
peace,
good will toward men.
Luke 2;13
Sorry, I forgot that indentation does not work in comments
D. praising God, and saying,
E (14) Glory to God
F in the highest,
F and on earth
E peace,
D good will toward men.
This shows a nice comparison between heaven and earth. It also shows that the awkward phrase in English “and on earth peace” is excellent Hebrew poetry.
It would be really helpful to have some sort of rating system for all the various chiasm proposals. That way there would be a mechanism for everyone to offer whether or not they think the proposed chiasm is accurate or not. Maybe a 1-5 star system.
Chiasm in quotations direct quotations of Isaiah in the gospel of Matthew. Note that A and A’ only refers to “a prophet’ or ‘it is written’ and does not explicitly name Isaiah in the Matthew quote.
A. Beginning of the house / birth of Jesus (Matt 1:22-23; Isa 7:14)
B. The need for change (Matt 3:3; Isa 40:3)
C. Darkness and the need for light (Matt 4:14-16; Isa 9:1)
D. The suffering servant (Matt 8:17; Isa 53:4)
D’. Behold my servant (Matt 12:17-21; Isa 42:1-4)
C’. Dullness and the need for healing (Matt 13:15-15; Isa 6:9-11)
B’. The need for change (Matt 15:7-9; Isa 29:13)
A’. A house of prayer (Matt 21:13; Isa 56:7)
I think that these quotes were included to show his Jewish readers that Israel had turned their backs on God’s house and so needed to change. This would happen through a light shining to the whole world, including the gentiles, in the form of God’s beloved suffering servant.