© 2024 The Interpreter Foundation. A 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization.
All content by The Interpreter Foundation, unless otherwise specified, is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. Permissions beyond the scope of this license may be available here.
Interpreter Foundation is not owned, controlled by or affiliated with The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. All research and opinions provided on this site are the sole responsibility of their respective authors, and should not be interpreted as the opinions of the Board, nor as official statements of LDS doctrine, belief or practice.
Here is a note about the role the text of verse 11 plays in the proposed chiasm:
The text of verse 11 belongs both to element B and element C in the proposed chiasm of the Book of Enos. It proves to be a difficult choice for analysts who have attempted to visually depict text that belongs to two adjacent elements of a chiasm. The usual course of action most often employed by analysts is not to depict the feature but simply to describe it in the analysis.
In deciding to attempt to depict it visually, I chose to have the editors place a horizontal line between the text of verse 10 and the text of verse 11, as is shown in the full-text rendition of the proposed chiasm. See page 257 of my article.
Probably a better way to have done that would have been to use a dashed horizontal line between verses 10 and 11 and a dashed horizontal line between verses 11 and 12 and accompany that with an explanation. That would have shown the double-role played by the text of verse 11.
Here is an explanation of the feature:
A verse, a pericope, or a section of text that belongs to each of two adjacent elements of a chiasm is called a “bridge verse,” a “bridge pericope,” or a “bridge section.” Sometimes it is simply referred to as a “transition” or a “transitional statement” and sometimes it is labeled a “weaving factor.” Dashed lines above and below the text of Enos 1:11 in the depiction on page 257 would have more clearly identified the text of that verse as a “bridge verse,” a “transition” verse, or a “weaving factor.”
The concept of a “bridge verse,” where one verse of text both concludes one element and, at the same time, also begins the next subsequent element, is discussed by Father George Mlakuzhyil both in his The Christocentric Literary Structure of the Fourth Gospel (Rome: Editrice Pontificio Istituto Biblico (1987) 104‒05 and in his Christocentric Literary-Dramatic Structure of John’s Gospel (Rome: Gregorian & Biblical Press, 2011) 304‒05. The equivalent concept, called a “weaving factor,” is discussed by John W. Welch in his “A Masterpiece: Alma 36,” in Rediscovering the Book of Mormon, ed. John L. Sorenson and Melvin J. Thorne (Salt Lake City: Deseret Book and FARMS, 1991) 127. And that same concept, called a “transition,” is discussed by Charles D. Myers, Jr. in his “Chiastic Inversion in the Argument of Romans 3‒8,” Novum Testamentum XXXV, 1 (1993) 43, where Myers states that “the references to present suffering and future glorification in 8:18b serve as a transition to 8:18‒39, where all of the prominent themes of 5:1‒11 recur.” And the equivalent concept, called a “transitional statement” by Jiří Moskala, is discussed by him (and by Umberto Cassuto upon whom Moskala relies), where, as Moskala states, speaking of the first creation account of Genesis 1:1‒2:4a and the second creation account of Genesis 2:4b‒25, “Gen 2:4a belongs to both stories as a transitional statement.” See Jiří Moskala, “A Fresh Look at Two Genesis Creation Accounts: Contradictions?” Andrews University Seminary Studies 49 (Spring 2011) 45 n.1, and see also Umberto Cassuto, A Commentary on the Book of Genesis, Part I, From Adam to Noah (Jerusalem: The Magnes Press, The Hebrew University, 1961) 96‒100.
This is briefly explained at 5:57 in a video depicting the role verse 11 plays in the proposed chiasm of the Book of Enos (see at 5:57 in the video at https://gendocs.org/ENOS.mp4).
The only other instances where I have found an attempt to visually depict a bridge verse or a bridge passage is the original 1981 printing and the subsequent 1998 reprinting of John W. Welch’s book, Chiasmus in Antiquity: Structures, Analyses, Exegesis (Hildesheim: Gerstenberg Verlag, 1981), where on pages 78 and 79 of Yehuda T. Radday’s chapter, “Chiasmus in Hebrew Biblical Narrative” (pp. 50‒117), Radday sought two times to depict two instances of the feature as it appeared to him in the chiasms of the text of 1 and 2 Samuel. Otherwise, so far as I can tell, the feature is only described by scholars but not depicted visually.
Stephen Kent Ehat
Comment by Stephen Kent Ehat (author):
I received on February 9, 2024, the following very insightful observation from Dr. Stanley A. Johnson, retired Professor of Ancient Scripture in the Department of Ancient Scripture, BYU College of Religious Education, whom I quote with his permission:
“I’ll share something l’ve enjoyed in Alma 44:5 where Moroni tells Zerahemnah why the Nephites are going to overpower the Lamanites (think of this in the context of preserving the Word of God) ‘…by our faith, by our religion, and by our rites of worship, and by our church, and by the sacred support which we owe to our wives and our children, … yea, and also by THE MAINTENANCE OF THE SACRED WORD OF GOD, TO WHICH WE OWE ALL OUR HAPPINESS….’ That is quite a statement in connection to the Word of God and its preservation!”
Thank you. Enos wanted us to learn some very powerful lessons. Your article focuses me more clearly on Enos’s message. I am grateful for Enos’s (and your) contribution.