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2020

BYU Studies

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Full-Text Articles in Arts and Humanities

At The Intersection Of Scribal Training And Theological Profundity: Chiasm As An Editorial Technique In The Primeval History And Deuteronomy, Bernard M. Levinson May 2020

At The Intersection Of Scribal Training And Theological Profundity: Chiasm As An Editorial Technique In The Primeval History And Deuteronomy, Bernard M. Levinson

BYU Studies Quarterly

There can be little doubt that ancient Near Eastern scribes, including those in ancient Israel, were well-trained in a wide range of technical devices associated with the composition, copying, transmission, editing, collation, revision, reworking, and interpretation of texts.1 My focus in the present study will be on one of the most interesting of these devices, the literary chiasm, in which textual content is ordered in an ABC::CʹBʹAʹ chiastic, or “x-shaped,” pattern. In many cases, once this pattern is recognized within a chapter or literary unit, an ostensibly haphazard or difficult to follow textual sequence gains a sense of order, as …


The First Vision As A Prehistory Of The Church Of Jesus Christ Of Latter-Day Saints, Kathleen Flake Apr 2020

The First Vision As A Prehistory Of The Church Of Jesus Christ Of Latter-Day Saints, Kathleen Flake

BYU Studies Quarterly

Most scholarly attention to the First Vision is dedicated to determining whether it happened or whether whatever happened is reliably described in the few primary accounts we have of it. My interests lie in a different direction. I am interested in the First Vision accounts insofar as they tell us something about religion, not about history, and not least because my wager is that this story, as a story, exceeds the limits of history, especially when it becomes understood as scripture. Which is to say, I want to better understand the work done by this story among the members of …