Chiasmus and the Book of Mormon

A Hebrew literary form unknown to 1830 America — found throughout the Book of Mormon

What Is Chiasmus?

Chiasmus is a literary structure in which a sequence of ideas is presented and then repeated in reverse order. The pattern is A-B-C-C′-B′-A′: the first idea corresponds to the last, the second to the second-to-last, and so on, with the central idea receiving the greatest emphasis. The name comes from the Greek letter chi (χ), which looks like an X — two lines crossing at the center, which is the visual structure of the form.

In ancient Hebrew literature, chiasmus was a sophisticated poetic and rhetorical device used to organize arguments, emphasize central truths, and create memorable structure. It appears extensively throughout the Old Testament — in the Psalms, in Genesis, in the prophets. It is a distinctly Semitic literary form. It is not a structure that appears in English literature, in nineteenth-century American religious writing, or in any text that Joseph Smith is known to have read.

Western biblical scholars did not systematically identify and describe chiasmus as a literary structure until the mid-twentieth century. The recognition that it pervades the Old Testament was a scholarly discovery, not common knowledge.

John Welch’s Discovery — Munich, 1967

In August 1967, a young Latter-day Saint missionary named John W. Welch was attending a Sunday morning discussion on chiasmus in the New Testament in Munich, Germany. As the teacher explained the Hebrew structure, Welch had a sudden thought: if the Book of Mormon was genuinely translated from an ancient Hebrew-based text, chiasmus might be there too.

He went home that afternoon with his copy of the Book of Mormon and began looking. Within hours he had found chiastic patterns in multiple passages. Over the following months and years, he documented chiasmus across the full text of the Book of Mormon — not occasional or marginal instances, but sophisticated, extended, intentional chiastic structures of the kind that appear in the most accomplished Hebrew literary compositions.

Welch later became a professor of law at Brigham Young University and one of the foremost scholars of the Book of Mormon. His initial discovery, published in scholarly form, prompted extensive subsequent research that has confirmed and extended his findings.

Chiasmus in the Old Testament

Before considering what chiasmus in the Book of Mormon means, it is worth establishing that chiasmus in the Old Testament is extensive and recognized by mainstream biblical scholarship. Examples include:

Old Testament Chiasmus Examples

• Genesis 6–9 — The flood narrative is arranged as an extended chiasm with the dove's return at the center
• Psalm 22 — Structured in chiastic form with the central cry of desolation surrounded by expressions of trust
• Deuteronomy 18 — Moses's law code arranged chiastically
• Leviticus 24 — Extended chiasm across the full chapter

This is not a fringe theory. It is mainstream Old Testament scholarship. Chiasmus was a real, sophisticated literary device used by ancient Hebrew writers — writers who were the ancestors of the Nephite civilization that the Book of Mormon claims to represent.

Chiasmus in the Book of Mormon

Chiasmus appears throughout the Book of Mormon in a pattern consistent with its use in Hebrew scripture. It is not occasional or trivial — it is woven into the structure of extended doctrinal passages, prophecies, and narratives in ways that require intentional literary craft. The chiastic structures in the Book of Mormon are often multi-layered, with smaller chiasms nested within larger ones.

Particularly significant examples appear in Mosiah 5:10–12, 1 Nephi 1, and most impressively in Alma 36 — an entire chapter that is a single extended chiasm of extraordinary complexity.

Alma 36 — The Most Complex Example

Alma 36 is Alma the Younger's account of his conversion, addressed to his son Helaman. The entire chapter — 30 verses — is arranged as a single chiasm. The outer terms (A) establish the foundational promise of God to those who keep commandments. The structure moves inward through Alma's rebellion, his being struck down, his torment, until the center point (verse 18) where Alma remembers Christ and calls upon him. The remainder of the chapter mirrors the first half in reverse, as Alma's joy corresponds to his earlier anguish, his memory of his mission corresponds to his earlier rebel state, and the promise of deliverance returns at the end.

Alma 36:18 — The Center of the Chiasm

“Now, as my mind caught hold upon this thought, I cried within my heart: O Jesus, thou Son of God, have mercy on me, who am in the gall of bitterness, and am encircled about by the everlasting chains of death.”

The central point of the chiasm is the moment of conversion — the name of Christ, the mercy of God, the pivot from death to life. This is not accidental placement. The chiastic structure draws the reader's eye to the center as the most important point, exactly as Hebrew literary convention dictated.

Alma 36 has been analyzed by scholars who specialize in Hebrew literature and ancient Near Eastern literary forms. Their conclusion is consistent: the chiasm in Alma 36 is of a sophistication and intentionality that places it among the finest examples of the form in any literature.

Why Joseph Could Not Have Known

The critical fact is chronological. The scholarly recognition of chiasmus as a pervasive Old Testament literary form developed in the twentieth century. Johann Jebb's 1820 work was an early step; Bishop Robert Lowth had noted parallelism in Hebrew poetry in the eighteenth century; but the systematic analysis of chiasmus as it appears in biblical literature was not achieved until the mid-twentieth century, well after Joseph Smith's death in 1844.

Joseph Smith had a third-grade education. He had no access to the scholarly biblical literature that was beginning to identify these forms. He was not reading Jebb or Lowth or any of the early investigators of Hebrew poetics. He was a farmer in New York who dictated the Book of Mormon in approximately 65 working days without a manuscript, without revision, without notes.

The chiasmus in the Book of Mormon — pervasive, sophisticated, and consistent with how ancient Hebrew writers used the form — is not something Joseph Smith could have deliberately constructed. He could not have known to put it there.

What This Proves About the Book’s Origins

Chiasmus is one piece of a convergent evidentiary case for the Book of Mormon's ancient origins. Together with the Nahom inscriptions, the Bountiful identification, the Isaiah variant alignments with the Dead Sea Scrolls, and the eyewitness testimony of the eleven witnesses, it builds a case that is difficult to explain away.

No single piece of evidence requires you to accept the Book of Mormon as divine scripture. But taken together, these evidences support a simple conclusion: the Book of Mormon is what Joseph Smith said it was — an ancient record, written by people who used ancient literary forms, in an ancient cultural setting, translated by divine power and preserved for a modern audience.

The chiasmus is there. Welch found it. Scholars have confirmed it. Joseph Smith put it there without knowing what chiasmus was. The most reasonable explanation for that is that the authors of the original record did know — because chiasmus was the literary air they breathed.