Why Chiasms and Inversions?

Biblical scholars are increasingly aware of rhetorical patterns to be found in the Scriptures. Although the patterns were often discussed by grammarians and rhetoricians in antiquity, biblical commentators often ignored them until the past several decades. If one were to consult most commentaries written after the time of the Reformation, one would see that they tend to outline the argument of a book of the Bible using headings with Roman numerals (I, II, III, etc.), interspersed with letters (A, B, C, etc.), which in turn are interspersed with Arabic numerals (1, 2, 3, etc.). In short, the books of the Bible are made to look like college freshman essays in their organization. However, in the past half century or so, there has been a quiet revolution that recognizes various structures that would make literary works easier for the listener to understand. While books for the past few centuries have been written primarily with the eyes of the reader in mind, older books were written primarily with the ears of the listener in mind, since it was common for books to be read aloud by a literate person to several illiterate ones. Books written in such a milieu would be unlikely to employ a complicated outline that required eyes to see the pattern. Instead, they used such patterns as parallelisms and inversions.

The latter is often erroneously called a chiasm, which properly refers to words that are organized in an ABBA pattern, where the first and last words are similar and those in the middle are similar to each other. Inversion is a chiastic pattern spread over several phrases or sentences rather than merely words, and inversion can become quite complicated, having any number of component parts, such as ABCDCBA. Ken Bailey, among others, has outlined the inversion structure found in many of the parables and indeed in the arrangement of larger passages such as Luke’s Journey Narrative (Luke 9:51-19:48).

But why should ancient authors have used inversions? Isn’t one structure as good as another? Consider the following example Ken Bailey gives of a modern conversation between two teenagers or young adults (Poet and Peasant, page 50):

            A: Are you coming to the party?

            B: Can I bring a friend?

            A: Boy or girl?

            B: What difference does it make?

            A: It is a matter of balance.

            B: Girl.

            A: OK.

            B: I’ll be there.

At first glance it appears as an ordinary, free flowing conversation between two people. But Bailey argues that there is a chiastic structure to this dialogue, as he demonstrates (loc. cit.):

            A   Are you coming to the party?

                        B   Can I bring a friend?

                                    C   Boy or girl?

                                                D   What difference does it make?

                                                D’   It is a matter of balance.

                                    C’   Girl.

                        B’   OK.

            A’   I’ll be there.

Bailey comments: “A fascinating number of such illustrations have come to my attention and demonstrate that the use of the inversion principle is relatively universal and subconscious….Usually there is a ‘point of turning’ past the center of the structure. The second half is not redundant. Rather it introduces some crucial new element that resolves or completes the first half.” Thus, if an author uses this kind of a structure (and builds rather elaborate inversion structures—more so than would be ordinarily used in common speech), it is because this is the way that people often talk and think. As the medieval thinkers said, ars est artem celare, very loosely translated as “great art always looks as if no art were involved.”

Bailey, however, gives no explanation as to why people should talk or think in this way. But it makes sense if you think about it. In the example that he cites, each question spurs on another question until finally four questions have been asked. In each instance the individual cannot answer the previous question until a question of his own has been answered. The first boy wants to know if the second boy is coming to a party, but the second boy has to know if he can bring a friend. But the first boy doesn’t want to give a carte blanche invitation, and the second boy doesn’t understand why his friend is being so nosey. Once the second boy understands the first boy’s concern for balance, he can explain whom he is considering inviting. That allows the first boy to give his permission for the additional guest to come, which in turn prompts the second boy to come, since he won’t be there by himself.

It is all rather like taking some mechanical gadget (such as a carburetor) apart to fix something that is the inside. First, you remove the housing, then some of the more exterior parts, and finally get to the heart of the problem. Then you put it back together in reverse order, but with a twist: now the device is working as it should. In the same way, the first part of an inversion breaks away the outer layers of the problem one by one until we get at the heart of that matter. Once the issue has been resolved, we can add the layers again, but now we see them no longer as the obstacles to our getting the problem fixed, but rather manifestations of the correction that has been made. Thus, as long as there are problems to be solved, inversions will be a natural way to present material.

Jesus, the Metaphorical Theologian

I’ve been reading a lot of Kenneth Bailey the past year or so. I find him a particularly valuable exegete because (1.) he knows the culture of the Middle East and is therefore attuned to cultural aspects that get overlooked by Western eyes, (2.) he is attentive to the literary structures of the parables and even the seemingly “disorganized” material of 1 Corinthians, and (3.) he understands Jesus as a metaphorical theologian. It is the last point that I want to explore a little further. As Bailey outlines in his introduction to Finding the Lost: Cultural Keys to Luke 15 and chapter 21 of Jesus through Middle Eastern Eyes, there are two ways to do theology: conceptually or metaphorically. We in the West tend to choose the former. We think in ideas—often abstract ideas—and then (if necessary) occasionally use a story or simile as an illustration. This is how the Apostle Paul seems to operate, and thus most Westerners find him a more sophisticated theologian than the story-telling Jesus. (I know, I know. Jesus is the Son of God who has all the intelligence of the Divine, but He seems to be too simplistic a thinker. He can’t even write a sentence that stretches out to half a chapter as Paul does!) But a metaphorical theologian finds the metaphor or parable as the primary thought and any conceptual interpretation around it as secondary. The hearer is to step inside the world of the metaphor and view the metaphor as the firmest reality; if need be, the concepts can be explained.

Bailey refers to Jesus’ parable as houses where one can look around and see a wide variety of truths. Eschewing the allegorical method and the quick “make one point of comparison and exit” method, he argues that the parables present a worldview that bears detailed examination—but not the kind that ignores the cultural roots from which they stem. Bailey also is quick to point out the intertextuality of our Lord’s parables. Our Lord’s Good Shepherd motif of Luke 15 and John 10 build on Old Testament passages such as Psalm 23, Jeremiah 23, and Ezekiel 34 (Finding the Lost, p. 68). The metaphor of the relationship between God and His people is the same throughout these passages, but there are subtle differences. The Jeremiah, Ezekiel, John, and (as Bailey argues) Luke passages speak of bad shepherds, while that is not the concern of Psalm 23. Ezekiel and our Lord (in John) distinguish between bad and good sheep, but none of the others do. All the passages speak of sheep being returned to the fold, but in Psalm 23 and Luke 15, it is a return to God, in Jeremiah it is a return to the land, and in Ezekiel it is both. Thus, a metaphorical theologian such as our Lord (and for that matter, most if not all of the Old Testament prophets) are not content to tell a story, but to craft and re-craft old stories, adding here and trimming there and altering elsewhere to cast a new emphasis on a familiar story. And thus Isaiah’s story of Israel as the bad vineyard becomes our Lord’s story of the Sanhedrin as the bad vineyard workers—a similar overall conceptual frame, but a different emphasis.

If you read the Scriptures carefully, you will find that a phrase or word in the Pentateuch (first five books of the Old Testament) often provokes an image or metaphor in the mind of one of the prophets, which in turn prompts our Lord to construe a parable in a particular way. Far from being haphazard or merely cute, these parables of our Lord have a theological depth that we wrongly underestimate.

I am too much of a Westerner to be a metaphorical theologian. But reading Bailey on this topic has not only allowed me to understand the parables of our Lord better, but also to explain why I have disliked most of the sermon illustrations I have heard over the years. I have always discerned that such stories were trying to be as profound as our Lord’s parables, but failed somehow or another. Most sermon illustrations have little to do with the text or even the point being made by the preacher, but are simply ear candy to keep the listeners engaged. Bailey’s division between conceptual and metaphorical theology explains why those sermon illustrations fall flat: they are mere illustrations of the “more important” abstract concepts that the preacher is trying to communicate. They are huts or ragged tents compared to the solid houses our Lord built.