Talk:Alma 36:1-5

This is the longest Chiasmuth in the Book of Mormon. I have heard there are others, but where, and how many I have never been told. if anyone could enlighten me with some history and locations of the Chiasmuths, I would really appreciate it. --Jaromhanson 9 Sep 2005

Comment about poetry and prose in the Hebrew writings.

We often think that when we see structural and stylistic elements that we have come to associate with poetry, that we are looking at actual poetry. But Kugel has pointed out that the biblical texts make no broad distinction between poetry and prose. In fact, there is no word for poetry in the Hebrew Bible. Instead, we find a wide variety of texts that employ "poetic" literary devices with more or less frequency in both passages that we have come to associate with poetry as well as those that we consider prose (cf. James L. Kugel The Idea of Biblical Poetry, New Haven: Yale University Press, 1981, pp 59-95). It is not out of place, then, to find literary devices that we equate with biblical poetry--parallelisms and chiasmus--utilized in Alma 36, a passage which is primarily a simple narrative. --Steven Barton 09:04, 16 Sep 2005 (CEST)