Dartmouth collection - Stephen Ehat

STEPHEN KENT EHAT wrote a detailed review of a podcast by Corbin Velluz titled "New Research Changes EVERYTHING -- Chiasmus Destroyed." 

Ehat provided several other documents as additional reference material, including documentation about chiasmus in the Book of Mormon. Links to Ehat's material are found below.

This page includes the text of his review below the links to his other material. 

Partial Review of “New Research Changes EVERYTHING—Chiasmus Destroyed” by 

STEPHEN KENT EHAT 

Abstract: This paper addresses only a small handful of assertions made in a  recent podcast at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rIAgsNvWDkU&t=23s. Comprehensive reviews can be advanced by others. But this present review is  limited to two matters. First, I address a small handful of items regarding the  

evidence advanced to support the notion that Hyrum Smith’s exposure to rhetoric  education at Moor’s Academy ultimately led to the inclusion of chiastic passages  in the Book of Mormon. And second, I address to a handful of issues regarding  evidentiary support for the “laying down heads” theory that the podcast suggests may be the means by which chiasmus came to appear in the Book of Mormon. 

On March 14, 2026, Mormon Discussion Inc. released a podcast featuring Corbin Trent  Volluz (aka “Radio Free Mormon”) and Dr. Randall Bell, presenting what is described  as new, “ground-shifting” research concerning Hyrum Smith, Dartmouth College, and  

the implications of that setting for understanding chiasmus in the Book of Mormon. The present  paper responds to that presentation by undertaking a careful evaluation of the historical sources  invoked, the manner in which those sources are interpreted, and the inferences drawn from them.  In doing so, it will engage both critically and constructively with the arguments advanced,  identifying points of strength as well as areas of overreach or insufficient support. The analysis  will likewise consider the responses of both critics and apologists, agreeing where the evidence  warrants and disagreeing where the reasoning or use of sources falls short, with the aim of  providing a balanced and methodologically rigorous assessment of the claims at issue. 

Because of my long-standing interest in chiasmus, I received an email sent to me on March  18th with a link to the podcast. In reacting here to some of the points made in the podcast, I want to be accurate. So I have produced a transcription of the podcast, featuring screenshots taken  from the YouTube video as well as line numbers and page numbers for reference. I have  endeavored to capture every word spoken by Volluz and Bell and eliminated false starts and the  common “uh” and “you know” interjections wherever they are not material to the discussion. 

I approach this response as a faithful member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day  Saints, seeking to manifest respect and charity, pursuing the questions presented as fairly as I  can, as I perceive Messrs. Volluz and Bell portray themselves as doing the same (though their  treatment of Daniel Peterson at page 8, lines 7–11 seems intemperate). 

I am concerned here mostly with the use of historical sources to support the assertions made. 

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Preliminary Essay Regarding “Sources in Historical Research.” 

Volluz and Bell present their podcast in two parts, discussing: (1) issues relating to the  relationship between Hyrum Smith and Dartmouth College; and (2), starting at 1:15:55 in the  video of the podcast (page 56 of the transcription), issues relating to chiasmus in the Book of  

Mormon. Both parts deal with history and sources relied on to understand that history. I will be  evaluating the sources used in the podcast to support assertions of fact. Therefore, I here describe  my use of terms to conduct my evaluation. Volluz and Bell themselves rightly concern  themselves with the need to rely on “primary sources” (see p. 48, lines 6–8; p. 49, lines 21–23; p.  55, line 18). I will differentiate between “original,” “non-original,” “primary,” “secondary,” and  tertiary sources,” and the like. I will touch here briefly also on related aspects of evidence that  help us evaluate the sources we rely on. 

Historians do not treat all information alike. The first task of historical method is to classify  what kind of source one is dealing with before deciding how much weight it deserves. One  important distinction is between an original source and a non-original source. An original  source is the first surviving embodiment of information: an original letter, diary, signed deed,  manuscript sermon, court record, inscription, or attendance register. A non-original source is a  copy, transcript, extract, edition, scan, paraphrase, or later reproduction of that original. A copy  is not worthless; sometimes a copy is all that survives, and sometimes it preserves the earlier text  quite accurately. But historians immediately ask different questions of it: who copied it, when,  from what exemplar, with what possible omissions or alterations, and how far removed it is from  the lost original. Thus “original” versus “copy” concerns the transmission history of the  information, not yet its truth. 

A second and more familiar distinction is between primary, secondary, and tertiary sources.  A primary source is ordinarily one produced by a participant, observer, or institution close in  time to the events in question: a contemporaneous journal, a sermon manuscript, a property  record, a school roster, a newspaper printed at the time, or a witness statement by someone  actually present. A secondary source is a later analysis built from primary and other evidence: a  scholarly article, monograph, documentary history, or interpretive essay. A tertiary source is one  step farther removed still: an encyclopedia, textbook, quick-reference article, timeline, or  summary website that digests the work of others. These categories are useful, but they are not  magic labels. A primary source can be biased, confused, forged, incomplete, or incompetent. A  secondary source can be careful, critical, and immensely valuable. A tertiary source can be  helpful for orientation but too compressed or too derivative to carry much evidentiary weight by  itself. Good historical reasoning does not stop at classification; it asks what the source is actually  good for. 

That is why historians also care deeply about the question of witnessing. An eyewitness is  someone who claims knowledge through sight. An earwitness is someone who claims  knowledge through hearing, as in hearing a sermon, speech, conversation, or cry. More broadly,  one may speak of a competent witness: a person who did not merely perceive something 

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through the senses but was in a position to understand what was perceived. Competence matters  because seeing is not the same as comprehending. A child may witness a legal proceeding  without understanding it. A lay observer may hear a medical discussion without grasping its  significance. By contrast, an informed participant, trained observer, clerk, physician, minister, or  family member directly involved in household decisions may be a much more competent witness  to certain matters. Historians therefore ask not only, “Was this person there?” but also, “What  exactly could this person perceive, understand, remember, and later report accurately?” 

Another key distinction is between direct testimony and hearsay. If a source says, in effect,  “I saw this” or “I heard this,” it claims direct sensory knowledge. If it says, “Someone told me  this,” then it is reporting secondhand information. Historians do not automatically discard  hearsay, because much ancient and early modern history would vanish if they did. But hearsay  usually receives less weight unless it can be corroborated, traced to an identifiable firsthand  informant, or supported by independent evidence. A chain of transmission matters. So do motive,  memory, distance from the event, and the possibility of embellishment. A later family memoir,  for example, may be genuine and invaluable, but it is still retrospective; a contemporaneous  register may be narrow but exact. Historical method therefore proceeds by comparison, not by  naïve acceptance of whatever sounds vivid or confident. 

For that reason historians subject sources to two broad tests: authenticity and credibility.  Authenticity asks whether the document is what it purports to be: genuine, correctly dated,  unaltered, and properly attributed. Credibility asks whether its contents deserve belief and to  what extent. Was the author in a position to know? Was the statement contemporaneous or  recollected decades later? Was the writer biased, careless, polemical, or guessing? Is the  statement corroborated elsewhere? Does the source report facts, impressions, interpretations, or  motives? These questions apply whether the source is a manuscript, a sermon transcript, a  memoir, a newspaper article, an archaeological object, a map, or a modern scholarly book. In  practice, historians assign sources differing degrees of weight rather than simply “accepting” or  “rejecting” them wholesale. 

In the end, historical work is not a matter of collecting quotations indiscriminately. It is the  disciplined ranking of evidence. An original contemporaneous record may be strong for one fact  and silent on another. A later memoir may be weak for exact dates but strong for family  relationships or lived experience. A modern scholarly study may be indispensable for gathering  scattered archival material, yet still remain an interpretation rather than a witness. The historian’s  task is to keep these distinctions clear: original versus copy, primary versus secondary versus  tertiary, eyewitness versus hearsay, witness versus competent witness, and authenticity versus  credibility. Only then can one speak responsibly about what the past most likely was. 

I have analyzed every assertion of fact—from the mundane and inconsequential to the  important and essential—set forth in the transcription of the podcast. That analysis is set forth in  the document titled “FIFTEEN TABLES” that accompanies this paper.

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The 1811–1817 Question 

Do Bell and Volluz offer podcast viewers any primary, direct, credible evidence from a  contemporaneous source that is competent to establish that Hyrum Smith attended Moor’s Indian  Charity School (Moor’s Academy) at any time prior to August 28, 1814? From among the fifty seven students enrolled in Moor’s Academy for the quarter extending from August 28, 1814 to  November 19, 1814, Hyrum is listed as one of ten “Charity Scholars” who paid no tuition, his  name appearing as “Hiram Smith,” his studies listed not as “Virgil,” not as “Greek Testament,”  not as “Navigation,” not as “English Grammar,” and not as “reading,” but as “arithmetic,” his  residence being listed as “Lebanon”: 

So the document depicted at the  

left comprises contemporaneous  

evidence that Hyrum attended for  

some period of time during that  

quarter. But what direct, primary,  

contemporaneous, evidence is  

presented by Bell and Volluz to  

establish that Hyrum attended  

Moor’s Academy prior to or after  

then or that he ever attended  

Dartmouth College itself at any  

time? 

Historians, protagonists, apologists,  

and all others—whether writing  

essays that appear on the Church’s  

website or publishing their  

thoughts on the matter—should  

present the best evidence possible  

and if they do not, they are simply  

relying on the best efforts of others,  

who may or may not be correct in  

their evaluation of historical events  

they did not participate in. 

Secondary sources are what most  

have made recourse to in  

addressing the question of the  

timing of Hyrum’s studies at  

Moor’s Academy. 

Image from: https://dartmouth.access.preservica.com/uncategorized/IO_57a46d6d-5f56-4a51-ab32-2f12a1265b0f/

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The most important secondary source is that of Lucy Mack Smith who states that it was upon the  family’s move to Lebanon that they “settled ourselves down, and began to reflect with joy and  satisfaction upon the prosperity which had attended our recent exertions; and we doubled our  diligence to obtain more of this world’s goods in order to assist our children; besides, as is quite  natural, we looked forward to the decline of life, and were making provisions for its wants, as  well as its comforts. And, as our children had in a measure been debarred the privilege of  schools, we began to make arrangements to attend to this important duty. To this end we  established our second Son (Hyrum [Smith]) in an academy at Hanover; and the rest that were of  sufficient age, we sent to a common school, which was quite convenient . . . .” 1 Thus, clearly,  whenever Hyrum started his studies at Moor’s Academy, it was the first time he had been given  an education outside the home, having been previously “debarred” of that privilege. Whether his  studies there in the Fall of 1814 constituted the first time that he went to the Academy is the  question. Bell and Volluz cite to the timing of a “flu” epidemic to time that first arrival at school. 

Lucy notes specifically that “The typhus fever came into Lebanon, and raged tremendously; and  among the number seized with this complaint; was first Sophronia, and then Hyrum, who was  taken while at School and came home sick.” Do Bell and Volluz offer podcast viewers any  primary, direct, credible evidence from a contemporaneous source that is competent to establish  when the typhus epidemic occurred? 

The North Star, published in Danville, Vermont  

on Saturday, May 7, 1814, reports the ongoing  

prevalence of a typhus fever epidemic “not only  

in this State, but in many parts of the U. States.  

. . .” 2 Recourse to secondary sources regarding  

the timing of the typhus fever epidemic may be  

helpful in the research, but it is primary,  

contemporaneous evidence that is most helpful.  

According to page 6, the Preface, of his  

Medical and Surgical Memoirs (Baltimore:  

William A. Francis, 1831), Nathan Smith’s  

“Essay on Typhus” was “first published in  

1824” On pages 75–75 of that secondary  

source, Smith states, “In the autumn of 1812,  

Professor Perkins, now of New-York, and  

myself, attended between fifty and sixty cases  

of Typhus in the vicinity of Dartmouth College,  

and many of them students of that institution.” 

1 Lucy Mack Smith, History, 1845, p. 56, The Joseph Smith Papers, accessed March 25, 2026,  htps://www.josephsmithpapers.org/paper-summary/lucy-mack-smith-history-1845/63 2 htps://www.newspapers.com/image/518521401/

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The “Professor Perkins” referred to in that secondary source is Cyrus Perkins (1778–1849) who  received his medical doctor degree from Dartmouth in 1810 and began at that time to serve at  Dartmouth as Professor of Anatomy and Surgery.3 

So, is the 1824 recollection of Dr. Smith good-enough evidence?4 Referring to the transcription  of the podcast, two questions can be asked: 

• Is there presented in the transcription any primary, direct, credible evidence from a  source that is competent to establish contemporaneously that Hyrum studied at the  Moor’s Academy at any time prior to one quarter in 1814? 

• Is there presented in the transcription any primary, direct, credible evidence from a  source that is competent to establish contemporaneously that it was an epidemic of  typhus (or flu) that occurred prior to November of 1814 (and even as early as 1811) that  caused Hyrum to leave school in Hanover, NH and return home to Lebanon, NH? 

Based on the podcast transcription itself, the answer to both questions is no. 

For (1), the transcription does not present any contemporaneous, original, primary, direct, credible source establishing that Hyrum studied at Moor’s before the one documented quarter in  1814. All sources cited by Bell and Volluz (and by others who assert a pre-1814 timeframe for  Hyrum’s studies in Hanover), are secondary sources. Bell and Volluz expressly acknowledge  that the named document is the 1814 attendance record, and Bell’s effort to push the attendance  earlier relies instead on: Lucy Mack Smith’s later recollection, Behrens’s reconstruction, Bell’s  claim of missing records, and later secondary LDS sources such as Encyclopedia of Mormonism,  BYU/Susan Fales, BH Roberts Foundation material, MormonR, and the Church website. Bell  himself says “there is a reference” with Hyrum’s name in the 1814 attendance records, but that  “there’s other evidence” beyond that; the “other evidence” he then adduces is not contemporane ous Moor’s/Dartmouth documentation naming Hyrum before 1814. 

More specifically, the pre-1814 argument in the transcription rests chiefly on Lucy Mack Smith’s  retrospective history—quoted in the podcast as saying Hyrum was established “in an academy at  Hanover” and later “was taken while at school and came home sick”—plus Bell’s and Volluz’s  inferences from that recollection. Bell calls Lucy’s statement “eyewitness testimony” and says it  “puts it at about 1811,” but that is Bell’s inference from a later recollection, not a contemporane ous school record. The later supporting materials he cites likewise give date ranges like 1811– 1815 or “at age 11,” but they are presented as later scholarly or institutional summaries, not as  contemporaneous original documents from Moor’s Academy naming Hyrum before the 1814  quarter. 

According to the only known Moor’s Academy/Dartmouth College contemporaneous, original,  primary, direct, and credible document to name Hyrum,5 he is listed as one of ten “Charity  

3 htps://archives-manuscripts.dartmouth.edu/agents/people/7771 4 Smith’s 1824 “Essay” is available at htps://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=njp.32101037396395&seq=81 5 Available at https://dartmouth.access.preservica.com/uncategorized/IO_57a46d6d-5f56-4a51-ab32- 2f12a1265b0f

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Scholars” who paid no tuition, his name appearing as “Hiram Smith,” his studies listed not as  “Virgil,” not as “Greek Testament,” not as “Navigation,” not as “English Grammar,” and not as  “reading”—as with the other “Charity Scholars” listed—but as “arithmetic,” his residence being  listed as “Lebanon.” He is listed among the fifty-seven students enrolled in Moor’s Academy for  the quarter extending from August 28, 1814 to November 19, 1814. 

Other contemporaneous primary documents list students attending Moor’s Indian Charity School  for the year from August 30, 1813–August 20, 18146 and students who took part in the annual  examination in August 1814, 7 August 1815, 8 and August 1815. 9 Among the scores of students  named in those documents Hyrum’s is not listed. 

For (2), the transcription likewise does not present any contemporaneous, primary, direct,  credible source establishing that an epidemic of typhus (or flu) prior to November 1814 caused  Hyrum to leave school and return home. What the transcription does present is Lucy Mack  Smith’s later recollection that “the typhus fever came into Lebanon” and that Hyrum “was taken  while at school and came home sick.” Bell and Volluz then argue from that recollection, but  again that is a retrospective source, not a contemporaneous medical, newspaper, school, or town  record introduced in the podcast. 

The transcription then becomes even less secure on the disease identification and dating. Bell at  one point calls it “the flu epidemic” and says he thinks it was 1813 or 1812, spanning the winter  of 1812 into 1813; Volluz says an AI lookup indicated the severe epidemic was “spotted fever”  in 1812 and mentions Alan F. Rumrill’s article; and Bell later accepts a BH Roberts Foundation  

quotation from Bruce A. Van Orden saying “a severe epidemic of typhoid fever” broke out about  two years after Hyrum entered Moor’s. So, within the transcription, the disease is variously  described as typhus, flu, spotted fever, and typhoid fever, and the chronology is reconstructed by  inference from later sources, not established by any contemporaneous primary evidence  presented there. 

So the cleanest answers are these: 

For question (1): No. The transcription presents no contemporaneous primary evidence prior to  the 1814 quarter naming Hyrum at Moor’s. It presents only the 1814 attendance record plus  retrospective or secondary material used to infer earlier attendance. 

6 Available at  

htps://github.com/faenrandir/a_careful_examina�on/blob/main/documents/moors_charity_school/Mss 813900.1_Report_for_1813-14.pdf 7 Available at  

htps://github.com/faenrandir/a_careful_examina�on/blob/main/documents/moors_charity_school/Mss 814469.1_Report_of_1814_Examina�on.pdf 

8 Available at  

htps://github.com/faenrandir/a_careful_examina�on/blob/main/documents/moors_charity_school/Mss 815460_Report_of_1815_Examina�on.pdf 

9 Available at  

htps://github.com/faenrandir/a_careful_examina�on/blob/main/documents/moors_charity_school/Mss 815460_Report_of_1815_Examina�on.pdf

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For question (2): No. The transcription presents no contemporaneous primary evidence establishing that a pre-November-1814 epidemic of typhus or flu caused Hyrum to leave school.  It presents Lucy Mack Smith’s later recollection and then later interpretive/secondary discussion  with inconsistent disease labels. 

Regarding the epidemic, it should be noted that the Richmond Enquirer reports the following on  page 3, cols. 3–4 of its issue dated Wednesday, January 11, 1815: 

CONTAGEOUS DISTEMPER. 

Extract of a letter from a gentleman in the county of 

 Stafford, to his correspondent in this city dated Fal- 

 mouth Jan. 3. 

 “I have seen James Waller to-day, just from Aquia; he  

had been in pursuit of a Doctor to attend his brother  

William, who was taken yesterday with a complaint which  

has destroyed so many of our inhabitants. Mr. Garnett died  

a few days ago at Aquia. The distemper is distressing  

beyond anything that you can imagine. It takes off whole  

families. I am fearful to send any of my family to Aquia.  

John Cook lays at the point of death; his father has been  

down to see him and was fearful to go into the house. If  

the disease does not abate, I am apprehensive it will  

destroy the greater part of our inhabitants. In King George,  

there was a family of ten—the whole dead except a little  

boy, who went to a neighbor’s house, after starving a day  

or two, and asked for some bread. The neighbor asked him  

if he had not a plenty of bread at home; he said that his  

father, and the rest of the family were asleep, and that he  

could not wake them. He was asked how long they had 

been asleep? He said a day or two. The neighbours went  

over and found nine of them dead! They were so much  

alarmed they concluded it would be the best way to set fire  

to the house and burn them up; which was done. Poor  

Andrew Leach, his wife, son and daughter, are dead. Old  

Mr. James Steward has lost his son Stephen and his  

daughter Sally; his daughter Nancy is now very ill at Mr.  

Norman’s place. Old Mr. Carpenter and his son is also  

dead. Mr. Ball, just below the Court-house, has made 13  

coffins in the course of 8 or 10 days.” 

 The alarming disease, noticed in the above letter, has  

existed for several weeks in some of the portions of the  

seaboard. In the Northern Neck, especially, it has made  

the greater ravages. It frequently kills from 6 to 13 hours  

– it principally preys upon the heartiest and most robust  

patients. The physicians are at some loss to describe or to  

treat it. Some describe it as a Typhus fever – others as a  

violent inflammatory sore-throat, the most of them as a  

putrid sore-throat. It affects the throat most violently and  

obstructs the circulation of the air through the wind-pipe.  

In a few instances, as in the one above stated, the houses  

in which the dead have laid, have been burnt down to  

prevent the diffusion of the contagion. 

 * * * Communications of cases successfully treated and  

described, will be respectfully received at this office. 

The account identifies the “alarming disease” as one that “some describe” as a “Typhus fever.”  The reference in the account to Nancy Steward being “now very ill at Mr. Norman’s place” is a 

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reference to the place of residence—in Edge Hill in Widewater, Stafford County, Virginia—of  Edward Norman (1752–1814) and his wife, Jane (Stewart) Norman (c.1756–1814), along with  their two sons, James S. (c.1777–1814) and Matthew Norman (c.1779–1814):

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The typhus fever epidemic waged in 1812, 1813, and 1814 in America. And while Volluz asserts  that “there is an article by the Historical Society of Cheshire County called ‘The Spotted Fever  Epidemic of 1812,’ by Alan F. Rumrill” and “this certainly appears to be something that  historians have acknowledged and pinpointed pretty much to 1812” (according to Volluz). But  when one reads every word of Rumrill’s second-hand account, one sees that Rumrill himself also  states that the epidemic endured to “the end of 1814” and thus “ran its course in 1814.”9F10 Rumrill is consistent with the newspapers and the headstones; Bell and Volluz are consistent  with their misreading of Rumrill and their reliance on secondary sources. 

1811 As A Start Year Is Untenable, Repeated, Secondary-Evidence Conjecture 

Bell and Volluz’s 1811 starting date is not merely thinly documented; it creates a chronology  that becomes progressively harder to reconcile with the surviving record the more closely one  examines it. Their own podcast concedes that the one contemporaneous school document actually naming Hyrum is the Moor’s Academy quarter record for 28 August to 19 November  1814. In that record he appears not as a Dartmouth College student, not as a pupil in classical  studies, and not as one already advanced through years of academy work, but as a “Charity  Scholar” from Lebanon studying arithmetic. Your review is therefore on solid ground in treating  1814 as the only directly documented quarter of Hyrum’s attendance presently established by  contemporaneous school evidence. Nothing makes sense in the scenario where, as Bell and  Volluz posit, Hyrum supposedly begins school in 1811.11 

If Hyrum had really begun at Moor’s in 1811, one would expect the surviving evidence to look  different. One would expect either earlier documentary mention of him or, at minimum, some  indication by 1814 that he had progressed beyond elementary arithmetic. Yet the primary  documents in evidence note that the other contemporaneous school materials brought into the  discussion—the report for 1813–1814 and the examination records for 1814 and 1815—name  many students but do not name Hyrum. That pattern does not sit comfortably with a theory of  multi-year attendance beginning in 1811, even if there is an absence during the epidemic. It fits  much more naturally with a late and limited period of attendance, reportedly interrupted almost  as soon as it began. Even if one allows for missing records, missing records cannot be made to  perform affirmative proof; they may explain silence, but they cannot convert silence into  evidence of three prior years of study.12 

10 Available at htps://hsccnh.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/02/The-Spoted-Fever-Epidemic-of-1812-by-Alan-F.- Rumrill.pdf (see unnumbered page 2 for both quota�ons). 

11 See the podcast transcript passages in which Bell and Volluz argue for an 1811 start date and acknowledge the  1814 record as the named attendance document. See also references in this present study that the only  contemporaneous, original, primary, direct, and credible document naming Hyrum at school places him in the  quarter from 28 August to 19 November 1814 as a charity scholar studying arithmetic. 

12 This study states that the contemporaneous documents for the year 30 August 1813–20 August 1814 and the  annual examination records for 1814 and 1815 name many students but do not list Hyrum. Bell’s appeal to missing  records appears in the transcript at page 43, lines 14–22.

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Lucy Mack Smith’s narrative, read at its own pace and on its own terms, points in the same  direction. On page 56 of her 1845 history, she says first that the children “had in a measure been  debarred the privilege of schools,” that the parents therefore began making arrangements for  schooling, and that “to this end” they placed Hyrum “in an academy at Hanover,” while the other  children attended a convenient common school. She then says, almost immediately, “But this  state of things did not long continue,” because typhus came into Lebanon; Sophronia fell ill first,  then Hyrum, who “was taken while at School and came home sick.” Read straightforwardly, that  is a compressed sequence: first formal schooling, then soon thereafter epidemic disruption, then  Hyrum’s departure from school. The narrative does not read like a recollection of a boy long  established in academy life since 1811. It reads like the memory of an educational beginning cut  short. 

The remainder of Lucy’s surrounding family narrative reinforces that impression. In the same  general movement of events come the family’s illness, Joseph’s severe sickness and leg  operation, prolonged convalescence, and, not far beyond, the family’s removal from New  Hampshire to western New York. Lucy’s account is retrospective and cannot bear the weight of  exact calendrical precision; but as a narrative of sequence it does bear weight. Its tempo is rapid,  not leisurely. The schooling episode is introduced as a new parental undertaking after years in  which the children had been “debarred” from ordinary schooling, and it is almost immediately  overtaken by disease and domestic crisis. That tempo is far easier to harmonize with a first, brief  academy experience around 1814 than with an unmentioned three-year period of prior attendance  beginning in 1811.13 

For that reason, the 1811 scenario does not fail only because direct proof is lacking; it fails  because it makes the primary evidence read against its grain. The one contemporaneous  attendance record places Hyrum in arithmetic in fall 1814. The associated examination materials,  the only other relevant primary evidence, do not supply his name in the years Bell and Volluz  need most. Lucy Mack Smith’s history does not naturally suggest a long academy career  beginning in 1811, but rather a first effort at formal schooling followed quickly by epidemic  interruption and family upheaval. On the present state of the primary evidence, the historically  disciplined conclusion is not that Hyrum certainly began in 1811 and the records were lost, but  that the 1811 claim is an inference built from later secondary repetition and imposed upon a  primary record that points the other way. 

The Secondary-Evidence Nature of the 1811 Conjecture: Disclaimers, Repetition, and  Evidentiary Limits in Bell and Volluz’s Argument 

In their March 2026 podcast “New Research Changes EVERYTHING—Chiasmus Destroyed,”  Dr. Randall Bell and Corbin Trent Volluz (“Radio Free Mormon”) rely exclusively on secondary  

13 The Joseph Smith Papers historical introduc�on explains that Lucy dictated this history in 1844–1845 and that it  is valuable but contains some da�ng errors, which is relevant to weight and use, not to its basic sequence of  remembered events. On the podcast’s own use of Lucy’s narra�ve as spanning mul�ple years, see the TABLES  summarizing Bell’s interpre�ve move.

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and tertiary sources to seek to provide support for their assertion that Hyrum Smith began his  studies at Moor’s Charity School (Moor’s Academy) in 1811, thereby placing him in  Dartmouth’s intellectual orbit for roughly five to six years (1811–1816/1817) before the family’s  removal to western New York.14 This timeframe is foundational to their larger thesis that  Hyrum’s exposure to rhetorical and theological training at Dartmouth supplied the compositional  tools—especially chiasmus—that later appeared in the Book of Mormon. Yet the claim rests  entirely on secondary evidence: later recollections, modern scholarly syntheses, and institutional  summaries that themselves repeat earlier secondary traditions. No contemporaneous primary  record from Moor’s Academy or Dartmouth supports an 1811 start date. The sole surviving  original school document naming Hyrum places him there only in the fall quarter of 1814 as a  charity scholar studying elementary arithmetic. 

The podcast’s chronology derives primarily from three categories of secondary material. First  and foremost is Lucy Mack Smith’s 1845 Biographical Sketches of Joseph Smith, the Prophet,  and His Progenitors for Many Generations. Lucy recalls that after the family settled in West  Lebanon, New Hampshire, “we established our second son Hyrum in an academy at Hanover”  and that this brief educational effort was soon interrupted by the typhus epidemic that struck  Sophronia first, in West Lebanon, and then Hyrum “while at School” in Hanover.15 Bell and  Volluz interpret the epidemic reference as fixing the start at approximately 1811 (or possibly  1812).16 Second, they rely heavily on Richard K. Behrens’s 2006 article “Dartmouth  Arminianism and Its Impact on Hyrum Smith and the Smith Family” (and his earlier unpublished  notes), which states flatly that “Hyrum…entered the Dartmouth community in 1811 and left in  1816,” citing Lucy’s history as the source.17 Third, Bell and Volluz compile a long list of  “faithful Mormon academics and scholars,” official Church publications (including Ensign articles and Church-history resources), and institutional summaries that repeat the 1811–1815 or  1811–1816 range.18 These latter sources function as tertiary repetitions—later digests that  recycle the same secondary tradition without independent archival verification. 

Each of these sources is secondary (or further removed) by definition. Lucy’s narrative was  dictated thirty years after the events, when she was in her seventies; it is a valuable family  memoir but retrospective, compressed, and—by the Joseph Smith Papers Project’s own  

14 Corbin Trent Volluz and Glen Randall Bell, “New Research Changes EVERYTHING—Chiasmus Destroyed,” Mormon  Discussion Inc. podcast, March 14, 2026, transcrip�on edited by Stephen Kent Ehat (“Transcrip�on of ‘New  Research Changes EVERYTHING -- Chiasmus Destroyed’ (with images and page and line numbers),” 1–3, 6–12. 15 Lucy Mack Smith, History, 1845, page 56, in The Joseph Smith Papers,  htps://www.josephsmithpapers.org/paper-summary/lucy-mack-smith-history-1845/63 (accessed March 28, 2026). 16 Transcrip�on of podcast, 11–12, 23–24 (Bell and Volluz interpreta�on of Lucy’s epidemic reference). 17 Richard K. Behrens, “Dartmouth Arminianism and Its Impact on Hyrum Smith and the Smith Family,” cited in  Transcrip�on of podcast, 12, 6; see also Ehat, “FIFTEEN TABLES,” Table 1, no. 31 (Behrens as source). 18 Transcrip�on of podcast, 12–13 (list of “faithful Mormon academics,” Ensign ar�cles, and Church-history  resources).

12 

historical introduction—contains demonstrable dating inaccuracies.19 Behrens, though a  Dartmouth alumnus who conducted archival work, explicitly grounds his 1811 date in Lucy’s  recollection and family tradition; he offers no contemporaneous ledger, receipt, or roster entry  predating 1814. The Church’s published materials (e.g., the 2005 Ensign article “The Early  Preparation of the Prophet Joseph Smith” and various online historical summaries) are likewise  syntheses: they cite Lucy or Behrens (sometimes referencing Behrens’s unpublished 2001 notes)  and present the date as settled history, yet they do not claim to rest on primary documents from  1811. In historiographical terms, this creates a closed loop of repetition: a single late memoir is  cited by a modern historian, who is then cited by official publications, which are then cited back  by Bell and Volluz as converging “evidence.” 

Disclaimers and cautions embedded in or applicable to these secondary sources underscore their  limited reliability for precise chronology. The Joseph Smith Papers Project, which has edited  Lucy Mack Smith’s history, explicitly notes in its historical introduction that the 1845 text, while  “valuable,” includes “some dating errors” and must be used with care for calendrical precision;  its strength lies in narrative sequence and family memory, not in exact year-by-year  reconstruction.20 Behrens himself, in presenting the Dartmouth thesis, does not claim to have  located an 1811 enrollment record; his work is interpretive reconstruction built on Lucy’s  statement and the known presence of the Smith family in the Lebanon–Hanover area. Official  Church resources, particularly those appearing under “Church History Topics” or in historical  essays on the Church’s website, routinely employ qualifying language—“according to Lucy  Mack Smith,” “family tradition holds,” or “historical summaries indicate”—precisely to signal  that certain details derive from later recollections rather than contemporaneous institutional  records. Such disclaimers reflect standard historical methodology: secondary sources may  establish plausibility or general context, but they cannot substitute for missing primary  documentation when assigning specific start dates to an educational career. Indeed, the 1814  quarter record itself, the only primary evidence, describes Hyrum as a beginning-level “Charity  Scholar” in arithmetic—not as an advanced pupil who had already completed several years of  academy work. The annual examination reports and school rosters for 1813–1814 and 1814– 1815 name dozens of other students but omit Hyrum entirely, a silence that secondary conjecture  cannot convert into affirmative proof of prior attendance.21 

19 The Joseph Smith Papers, historical introduc�on to Lucy Mack Smith, History, 1845,  

htps://www.josephsmithpapers.org/paper-summary/lucy-mack-smith-history-1845/1 (“contains some da�ng  errors”). 

20 The Joseph Smith Papers, historical introduc�on to Lucy Mack Smith, History, 1845. 21 Moor’s Academy quarter record, 28 August–19 November 1814; Report for 1813–1814,  htps://github.com/faenrandir/a_careful_examina�on/blob/main/documents/moors_charity_school/Mss 813900.1_Report_for_1813-14.pdf; Report of 1814 Examina�on,  

htps://github.com/faenrandir/a_careful_examina�on/blob/main/documents/moors_charity_school/Mss 814469.1_Report_of_1814_Examina�on.pdf; Report of 1815 Examina�on,  

htps://github.com/faenrandir/a_careful_examina�on/blob/main/documents/moors_charity_school/Mss 815460_Report_of_1815_Examina�on.pdf (none name Hyrum).

13 

This limitation is not incidental; it is often explicitly acknowledged by the very sources on which  Bell and Volluz rely. For example, the “Topics” essays published on the official website of The  Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints include a standing caution that historical  reconstructions necessarily depend on incomplete records and that interpretations may vary  among historians. These essays do not present themselves as definitive adjudications of disputed  details, but as informed summaries subject to revision in light of additional evidence. Such  disclaimers are not mere formalities; they are integral to responsible historiography. They signal  that the claims presented are contingent, probabilistic, and open to correction. When a secondary  source expressly cautions the reader in this manner, it cannot then be treated as if it were  supplying the kind of fixed, contemporaneous proof that only primary documentation can  provide. 

The same pattern appears in the broader scholarly literature. Modern historical works—whether  academic monographs, institutional histories, or interpretive essays—frequently include  methodological caveats concerning gaps in the record, the inferential nature of reconstruction,  and the possibility of error in earlier accounts. All can acknowledge that the early nineteenth century educational records of Moor’s Academy are fragmentary, that student lists are  incomplete, and that retrospective narratives may compress or rearrange chronology. In the  context of Moor’s Charity School, such disclaimers are especially salient: the surviving  documentation is uneven, and scholars must often infer attendance from indirect evidence. But  an inference drawn in the absence of direct documentation is not equivalent to documentation  itself. When later authors repeat such inferences without re-examining the primary record, the  result is a cumulative tradition that may appear well established while remaining evidentially  underdetermined. 

What emerges, therefore, is a classic example of what might be termed “secondary-source drift”:  an initial conjecture or assumption, formed in the absence of direct evidence, becomes embedded  in later summaries and gradually acquires the appearance of fact through repetition. The  TABLES illustrate how this process operates. Each successive layer of citation points not to  newly discovered primary evidence, but to prior secondary treatments, creating an evidentiary  echo rather than an evidentiary foundation. The presence of disclaimers within those secondary  sources underscores the problem. The cited authors themselves signal that their conclusions are  tentative and conditioned by limited data; yet in Bell and Volluz’s presentation, those same  conclusions are treated as if they were firm historical anchors. The methodological tension is  evident: a claim that originates in qualified, inferential scholarship is presented without those  qualifications as a settled historical datum. 

In light of these considerations, the 1811 starting date cannot be sustained as a historically  demonstrated fact. It remains, at most, a conjecture derived from secondary synthesis and  transmitted through tertiary repetition, accompanied—when one returns to the sources  themselves—by explicit cautions about reliability and completeness. A disciplined historical  method requires that such a conjecture be held at the level of possibility rather than promoted to 

14 

the level of established chronology. When the secondary sources are read with their own  disclaimers in view, and when their derivative nature is properly weighed against the absence of  contemporaneous documentation, the conclusion follows naturally: the evidentiary basis for an  1811 commencement of Hyrum Smith’s studies at Moor’s is not primary, not direct, and not  sufficient to bear the interpretive weight placed upon it. 

In short, the 1811 starting date advanced by Bell and Volluz is not drawn from primary records;  it is a conjecture constructed through successive layers of secondary repetition. Lucy Mack  Smith’s late memoir supplies the initial anchor; Behrens and other modern scholars interpret and  publish it; Church publications digest and recirculate it; and the podcast presents the resulting  consensus of conjecture as historical fact. The disclaimers inherent in these sources—explicit  cautions in the Joseph Smith Papers about Lucy’s dating inaccuracies, the interpretive nature of  Behrens’s reconstruction, and the qualifying language used in official Church summaries— highlight precisely why historians treat such material as suggestive rather than conclusive.  Primary evidence from Moor’s Academy establishes only that Hyrum was enrolled in the fall of  1814 as a charity scholar studying arithmetic. Any earlier attendance remains, on the present  state of the record, an inference imposed upon silence rather than a conclusion compelled by  documentation. The 1811 conjecture therefore illustrates a common historiographical hazard:  repeated secondary testimony can acquire the appearance of solidity through citation loops, yet it  cannot overcome the absence of contemporaneous primary attestation. 

ChatGPT-Generated Conjectural View of the Interior of Moor’s Indian Charity School (c. 1814)

15 

Dartmouth College: Are Podcast Viewers Being Shown Where Hyrum Studied While  Attending Moor’s Academy? 

The podcast uses visual two images to make a point about the location where Hyrum studied and  where Bell and Volluz say he lived. Here is what is shown and said about Dartmouth College: 

Of the above image, Bell states: “Now, this is Dartmouth Hall. And this structure, which is still  iconic to this day, this is a recent picture” (15:4–5). “Hyrum Smith went to school here” (15:16– 17). “[T]his is Dartmouth Hall. This is where Hyrum—I don’t know if they lived here or lived in  the dorms off to the side, but they certainly went to class here” (74:3–4). The “off to the side”  language is apparently meant to refer to one of the buildings to the side of Dartmouth Hall,  

perhaps as depicted in the above image (see  

the building visible to the viewer’s left of  

Dartmouth Hall) or as depicted in a portion  

of Bell’s slide appearing in the transcription  

at 13:16–18 (shown at left). 

Evidence from an 1890 map shows that at  

least at that late time a number of campus  

buildings had dormitories (Dartmouth Hall,  

Wentworth Hall, Thornton Hall, Reed Hall,  

Conant Hall, and Allen Hall).22 The  

November 1884 Sanborn Fire Insurance  

22 htps://collec�ons.dartmouth.edu/archive/object/hanover-dartmouth-maps/Hanover_1890?ctx=hanover dartmouth-maps

16 

Map for Hanover, N.H. identifies three of those buildings, ones that may be said to be situated  “off to the side” of Dartmouth Hall—namely, Wentworth Hall, Thornton Hall, and Reed Hall: 

Query: Do Bell and Volluz present any evidence—let alone primary, direct, credible evidence  from a contemporaneous source—that competently establishes that Hyrum “went to class” in  Dartmouth Hall? Do they evidence that Hyrum stayed in one of the dormitories that housed  

college students “off to the side” of Dartmouth Hall? Could not Hyrum have been housed in a  residence near to the Moor’s Indian Charity School? 

Regarding where Hyrum studied, Bell’s statements (e.g., “Hyrum Smith went to school here”), referring to Dartmouth Hall, is assertive but unsupported by primary evidence. Within the  transcription of the podcast no contemporaneous document is introduced placing Hyrum in  Dartmouth Hall to study. 

And regarding where Hyrum lodged while at school and while speaking of the students with  whom Hyrum lodged, Bell states, “I don’t know if they lived here [in Dartmouth Hall] or lived in  the dorms off to the side . . . .” That statement, too, is assertive but unsupported by primary  evidence, offering only the two alternatives of residence in Dartmouth Hall or in a college dorm. Bell offers no contemporaneous document placing Hyrum in Dartmouth Hall for lodging though,  commendably, Bell’s “off to the side” remark is explicitly speculative (“I don’t know if they  lived here…”). 

The statements regarding Hyrum’s place of studies and lodging are interpretive extrapolations,  not primary-evidence-based conclusions grounded in contemporaneous documentation.

17 

What Were the Dimensions of the School Hyrum Attended? 

While depicting the image of the massive Dartmouth Hall and stating that “Hyrum Smith went to  school here,” Bell offers to Volluz’s podcast viewers a mistaken idea of the school Hyrum attended. From contemporary primary and non-contemporary secondary sources we know the  approximate minimum size and the location of the Moor’s Academy structure. The minimum  size of the structure is evident from the Account of Monies Received in Tuition in Moor’s  I[ndian] C[harity] School from Augst 1814 to Augst 1815.23 That contemporaneous primary  account reveals that Hiram and nine others paid no tuition and forty-seven students did pay  tuition for the first quarter of the 1814–1815 year; Hyrum was not among the fifty-two tuition free and tuition-paying students who were enrolled in the second quarter, which extended from  November 20, 1814 to February 4, 1815; he was not among the forty-eight tuition-free and  tuition-paying students who were enrolled in the third quarter, which extended from March 4,  1815 to June 3, 1815; and he was not among the fifty-three tuition-free and tuition-paying  students who were enrolled in the fourth quarter, which extended from June 5, 1815 to August  23, 1815. Thus, the Academy accommodated from about 48 to about 57 students in that period. 

Contemporaneous evidence places the Moor’s Academy one-seventh of a mile to the west-by northwest of the location where Bell says Hyrum “certainly went to class.” In order to orient the  reader, imagine taking a photograph of Dartmouth Hall, as depicted in the image offered by Bell: 

You would be facing east toward Dartmouth  

Hall. Over your left shoulder and about 160- 

feet behind you to the northwest—and on a  

spot northeast of where today is located the  

Parkhurst Hall Administration building—is  

the site where the Moor’s Academy structure  

once stood.24 

Moor’s Academy is not depicted in the  

image at the left and documentary evidence,  

as we will see below, establishes the history,  

dimensions, original location, second-story  

use, and even its physical appearance (a photograph of the structure is presented below). 

Location. Regarding the exact location of Moor’s Academy we can first turn to secondary  sources to get our bearings. First is a map from 1892 published in Hanover P.O., Town of  Hanover, Grafton Co. (D.H. Hurd & Co., Boston. 1892), page 21725— 

23 DA-403_5396-2_320185 available at htps://dartmouth.access.preservica.com/index.php?name=SO_6454ec84- 4c53-4724-abee-5bb55058106c 24 See Google Maps at htps://maps.app.goo.gl/ad6YgmvDvebo5xVf6 25 Available at htps://www.davidrumsey.com/luna/servlet/detail/RUMSEY~8~1~31025~1150959:Hanover-P-O- ?sort=pub_list_no_ini�alsort%2Cpub_date%2Cpub_list_no%2Cseries_no&mi=6&trs=7&qvq=q:Hanover%2C%20NH ;sort:pub_list_no_ini�alsort%2Cpub_date%2Cpub_list_no%2Cseries_no;lc:RUMSEY~8~1

18 

Running north and south across the middle of the above map is Main Street. The massive  Dartmouth Hall is on the far right of the map. The site where Moor’s Indian Charity School  (Moor’s Academy) once was located is labeled on the map as “Moore’s School Bldg.” It is  

visible in the upper part of the map to the west of Main Street. However, the small black-filled  square representing the structure does not represent the size of the structure in which Moor’s  Academy held class. All residences on the map are shown with equally sized small squares. The  relative sizes of the public buildings and business blocks are consistent with their appearance on  the map. But the “Moore’s” school structure (built in 1791) had fallen into disrepair as early as  1835 and the above map dates from fifty-seven years later (1892). The structure depicted on the  map as “Moore’s School Bldg.” apparently does represent the location of  the site of the school and by the time the map was created, the school  

structure indeed may well have been transformed into a residence. The  

key to the map (or the so-called Explanation for the map, shown at right)  shows Moor’s School Bldg. as a “residence” but that may simply be  

mistaken. As noted further below, after 1835 a structure larger than the 1791 original was built  on the site and that building apparently was known as “Moore’s School Bldg.” The point here is  not the nature, use, or name of the later building but simply the location of the former structure.  The above map is only a secondary source providing a hint at the location. 

However, the location of the school site at the above-depicted place is confirmed by another  secondary source, John King Lord, A History of the Town of Hanover, N.H. (Hanover:  Dartmouth Press, 1928). On pages 48 and 49 and on the map interleaved between those pages in  that volume is information sufficient to confirm the site of the former Moor’s Academy. Lord’s  volume offers the map on a plate printed on the page interleaved between pages 48 and 49, depicted here in relevant part:

19 

On the right side is Dartmouth Hall (“D.H.”). Located 750-feet to the west-by-northwest of D.H.  is Chandler Hall (“Ch. H.”), south of the building labeled “C. H.” (for Crosby Home, the home of  Dr. Dixi Crosby). The “Ch. H.” building (Chandler Hall), built in 1835, later became the large  structure depicted in the map above after “several renovations and enlargements.”26 

Lord’s History reads in relevant part: “The lane leading to the cemetery dates from 1878.[ 27] . . .  On the corner of the lane and the street [Main Street] was built in 1791 Moor’s Academy, which  was used for many purposes, for a printing office and for private schools, but through neglect it  fell into a ruinous state and the building was sold in 1835, and in its site was erected an attractive  

26 Lord, A History, 49. 27 The above 1892 map does depict the “lane leading to the cemetery” as men�oned in the 1925 Lord text here  quoted from, but it is not shown as extending fully westward to the cemetery. The east-west street below the  center of the above map is not the “lane” spoken of (that is Sanborn Lane). This will be obvious from more maps.

20 

brick structure known for many years as the ‘Academy,’ which by several renovations and  enlargements has become the present ‘Chandler Hall.’”28 

Similarly page 48 of Lord’s History states that the Academy was built in 1791 and was located  “on the corner of the lane and the street” (meaning the lane leading to the cemetery and Main  Street—and not the “Tuck Drive” referred to in the prior sentence). The lane leading to the  cemetery is not labeled on the 1905 plate printed on the interleaved page but it is the east-west  road between the structure labeled “20” to the north and the structure labeled “C H” to the south  as will be seen from the following. According to the continuation of the sentence on page 49, the  “site” of the former Moor’s Academy is the spot on which “the present ‘Chandler Hall’” is  situated. That Hall was “known for many years at the ‘Academy,’” likely because of it having  been built on the spot where the former Moor’s Academy had been situated. It was by 1835 that  the Moor’s Academy structure had fallen “into a ruinous state” to be later replaced by Chandler  Hall. Specifically, page 48 of the Hanover history states that “the lane leading to the cemetery  dates from 1878” (which is prior to the 1905 interleaved map, and so that map depicts that lane  though it does not label it). But the modern-day map shows that the roadway between the Blunt  Alumni Center and Parkhurst leads westward to the cemetery (actually now labeled “Cemetery  Lane’ to the west of the area we speak of here). 

History. The structure existed until 1966. The 1791 building was a two-story wooden frame  schoolhouse constructed by Phineas Annis, the same craftsman responsible for the Dartmouth  Hall cupola.29 It was situated on the west side of North Main Street, occupying the ground that  sits today in the open space between the Blunt Alumni Center and Parkhurst Hall.30 

In 1835, the building was in a “ruinous state,” and the Trustees of Moor’s Charity School voted  to sell it to Phineas Clement for $115 on the condition that he move it from the site.31 This  removal was necessary to clear the footprint for a new brick building (the future Chandler Hall),  which was “replaced... on the same site” as the 1791 wooden structure.32 

Phineas Clement moved the 1791 wooden building to 34 North Main Street (the current site of  Choate House), where he fitted it up as a residence in 1839.33 Over the next century, it was  known alternately as the “Morse Place” and “East Hall” (when it served the Clark School).34 The  

28 Google Street View of former loca�on at htps://maps.app.goo.gl/TTgrVmCUTNPTFPnU9; pinned on Google  Maps at 43°42’15.6"N 72°17’23.1"W (htps://maps.app.goo.gl/MU5LRiLSLjYpzgsa6). 29 Scot Meacham, Notes toward a Catalog of the Buildings and Landscapes of Dartmouth College (2001), 57.  Meacham explicitly iden�fies Phineas Annis as the builder of the 1791 “Moor Hall” or “Moor’s Academy.” 30 Meacham, Notes toward a Catalog, 57. He describes the loca�on as “between today’s Blunt Alumni Center and  Parkhurst Hall.” 

31 John King Lord, A History of Dartmouth College, 1815–1909, vol. 2 (Concord: Rumford Press, 1913), 491. Lord  documents the $115 sale to Clement and the “ruinous condi�on” of the schoolhouse. 

32 Meacham, Notes toward a Catalog, 57. Meacham states: “Moor’s School replaced the Academy with a new brick  structure on the same site, later to be enlarged into Chandler Hall.” 

33 Meacham, Notes toward a Catalog, 57. “The College sold it in 1835 and its purchaser moved it to 34 North Main  Street, the site where the Choate House stands today.” 

34 Meacham, Notes toward a Catalog, 57. Men�ons the names “Morse Place” and “East Hall.”

21 

building stood at this second location until it was demolished in 1966 to make way for the  construction of Choate House. 35 

Dimensions. The dimensions are preserved through a combination of Sanborn Fire Insurance  Maps and the Dartmouth College Architectural Drawing Collection. When the 1791 building  was moved to 34 North Main Street and repurposed as “Morse Place” (and later “East Hall”), it  became a taxable, insurable property. This change in status triggered the creation of highly  detailed spatial records. The Sanborn Fire Insurance Maps present the primary data. The most  precise record of the building’s length and width exists in the Sanborn Maps for Hanover  (specifically the 1884, 1889, and 1904 editions). These maps were hand-drawn to an exact scale  (usually 50 feet to 1 inch) for insurance underwriters to calculate fire risk. 

By measuring the footprint on the 1884 map for the lot at 34 North Main, it can be seen that the  building was a rectangular block approximately 40 feet by 30 feet. The maps use color-coding to  show that it was a two-story wooden frame building (yellow tint) with a specific offset for a  porch or entry that was added after its 1835 move. 

The 1966 “Choate House” site survey evidences that prior to the 1966 demolition of East Hall  (formerly the structure in which Moor’s Academy was houses), Dartmouth’s Office of the  Trustees and campus planners conducted a pre-construction site survey for what would become  Choate House. This survey exists in the Dartmouth College Facilities Planning Records. It  includes a “plot plan” that shows the exact footprint of “East Hall” (the 1791 building) to be  removed. The survey confirms that while the core of the building remained the 1791 frame, it  had been “lengthened” by residential additions made by Phineas Clement in the 1840s. The  original 1791 core was approximately 1,200 square feet per floor. 

Regarding the 1791 wooden building itself, the Ammi B. Young drawings for the replacement brick building (Chandler Hall) also provide an “inverse” record. To build the new hall, Young  had to map the vacated site.36 His site sketches show the “Old Academy” footprint as the area to  be cleared, confirming it sat squarely in the middle of the current Parkhurst/Blunt gap. Summary  of dimensions: 

Source 

Record Type 

Estimated Dimensions

Sanborn Maps (1884) 

Scaled Fire Map 

~40’ x 30’

Trustee Accounts (1835) Descriptive Ledger 

“Two stories, 4 rooms”

Meacham Survey (2001) Architectural Catalog 

~1,200 sq. ft. footprint

Note: The online Sanborn Maps collection is incomplete. 

35 Meacham, Notes toward a Catalog, 57. Specifically notes: “the building was moved... and stood there un�l  demolished in 1966 for the construc�on of Choate House.” 

36 Source: Ammi B. Young Architectural Drawings, 1830–1840, Rauner Special Collections.

22 

Physical Appearance. 

This is how the structure appeared in 1961 before it was razed in 1966, showing the additions,  including the later-added front porch and its canopy:37 

Second-Floor Use. John King Lord’s A History of Dartmouth College, 1815–1901, Volume 2 establishes the use of the second floor of the 1791 Moor’s Academy building by a printer. In  Chapter XII, which deals with the history of the Charity School and the construction of the brick  

building (Chandler Hall), Lord provides a detailed account of the wooden structure’s varied uses  during its final years on the original site. On page 491, Lord writes: “The second story was  occupied for a time by Thomas Mann as a printing office, and here was printed the Dartmouth  Gazette for several years.” 38 The Dartmouth Gazette is historically significant as the paper by  which Daniel Webster published some of his earliest writings under the pseudonym “Icarus” while he was a student at the College. 39 

37 J. Slebbins. East Hall, 1961. Digital by Dartmouth Library. 

htps://collec�ons.dartmouth.edu/archive/object/PhotoFiles/PhotoFiles-Icon1647-0725-0000001. 38 John King Lord, A History of Dartmouth College, 1815–1901, vol. 2 (Concord: Rumford Press, 1913), 491. 39 John King Lord, A History, vol. 2, 491. Lord notes the occupancy by Thomas Mann and the prin�ng of the Gazette.  For the “Icarus” pseudonym specifically, see Frederick Chase, A History of Dartmouth College and the Town of  Hanover, New Hampshire (to 1815), ed. John K. Lord (Cambridge: John Wilson and Son, 1891), 1:599–600, which  discusses Webster’s early contribu�ons to the paper.

23 

Because Moor’s Charity School was often under-enrolled or lacked funding during the early 19th  century, the Trustees frequently leased out space in the 1791 building to private tenants to  generate revenue. The second floor was particularly well-suited for a printing office due to the  natural light provided by the windows on all sides of the frame structure.40 This occupancy is  also noted in the Accounts of Moor’s Charity School,41 which records the rent payments  received from printers and other tenants. Furthermore, Frederick Chase (in Volume 1, page 603)  mentions that while the lower floor was intended for school exercises, the upper floor was  “designed for a library and for the meetings of the Trustees,” but its actual use fluctuated based  on the School’s financial needs, eventually leading to the long-term lease to Thomas Mann. 42 

In short, Bell’s offered view of where Hyrum was schooled and lodged is not documented  and is based on conjecture, supported by unsubstantiated reliance on images chosen to  match his narrative rather than primary sources. While Hyrum’s place of lodging is not  apparent from any documents contemporaneous to the period of time while he was  situated in Hanover, a more realistic image of where Hyrum studied can be presented  below, a ChatGPT edit of the 1966 photograph of the building, with the post-1835 additions  removed from behind the building and the later-added front porch and its canopy  removed: 

40 Chase, History of Dartmouth College, 1:603, no�ng the “two-story frame” and the windows designed for the  second-floor “library and for the mee�ngs of the Trustees.” See also Scot Meacham, Notes toward a Catalog of the  Buildings and Landscapes of Dartmouth College (2001), 57. 41 Accounts of Moor’s Charity School, 1760–1925, MSS 789358, Rauner Special Collec�ons Library, Dartmouth  College. These ledgers contain the annual “School Accounts” which list receipts from “Rent of Rooms” as a  consistent line item during the early 19th century. 

42 Chase, A History of Dartmouth College, 1:603.

24 

CHIASMUS: FROM DARTMOUTH COLLEGE TO HYRUM TO JOSEPH? 

Introduction. Bell and Volluz rightly acknowledge that chiastic analysis is easily misused and  misunderstood, and its analysts often mistaken in their approach. With adherence to the right  level of rigor and the correct alignment of criteria, an analyst hopefully can discern chiasmus and  report it without creating or inventing it. It is a slippery thing this idea of looking at an ancient  religious text and wondering, What is happening as I hear or read this that makes it touch me so?  What is the artistic turn in this text all about? What am I feeling? What do my ears hear? What  does my heart feel? 

Volluz and Bell draw attention to important issues that surround the effort of readers to know if a  text is or is not chiastic and if so what it means. It is refreshing to hear that the Book of Mormon  is “riddled with chiasmus” (67:19, 20). Usually the clamor is “no it is not,” “there’s none of that  

there” and the difficulty of proving the negative stands not in the way of the proponent who  “says yes it is” there indeed is something there.” 

Bell asserts that the chiastic passages with which the Book of Mormon is “riddled” (apart from  chiasms quoted from Isaiah, of course) got there by way of Joseph placing a list of words or  phrases in the bottom of a hat (or for those who do not accept the hat theory) placing the list  within view; reading from it from top to bottom, and dictating out loud the words and phrases on  the list, using them to form phrases, sentences, pericopes, paragraphs, chapters, or lengthier  segments of text and then having reached the bottom of the list and the pinnacle of the thought  simply reversing course and employing the same technique from the bottom of the list back up to  the top, hiding all of the papers thus employed (and the process of writing them in the first place  (except from co-conspirators, of course), having learned the technique from his older brother  Hyrum while Hyrum was hearing from typhus fever or a not many day later while Joseph was  recovering from illness and surgery, which Hyrum learned over a period of years at nearby  Dartmouth College from chiasmus-prone preachers and teachers. Whether this passes the test of  occam’s razor is for podcast listeners to evaluate. As for me, I will simply attempt to bring  evidence to bear on the question of how the “laying down heads” theory of chiasmus presence in  the Book of Mormon squares with chiastic principles, criteria, and characteristics and the nature,  value, weight, and relevance are of the evidence that Bell brings forth to support his theory.  When chiasmus is “pulled out of a hat”—Bell would say by means of a “magic trick” to which  he makes repeated reference—105:4; 114:8, 12–115:1, 24, 27—the burden of proof and the  burden of persuasion is on him and it is shared by his listeners. 

The Reverend Roswell Shurtleff Does Not Help Bell and Volluz 

Bell performed a service for us in accessing the full text of “over thirty sermons” (94:1543) presented by the Reverend Roswell Shurtleff (94:15–17), whom Bell identifies as Hyrum’s  

43 See htps://archives-manuscripts.dartmouth.edu/repositories/2/archival_objects/329822 (the sermons are  available). Shurtleff papers are also available (htps://archives-manuscripts.dartmouth.edu/agents/people/5145).  Shurtleff began his pastoral du�es in 1804 and his appointment precipitated an important legal controversy (see 

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pastor (75:11–12) and whose sermons Hyrum listened to (83:4–5) over one thousand times  (95:24–25). This preacher’s sermons are represented to be “riddled” with chiasmus (83:3–84:1). In one of the sermons, delivered by Rev. Shurtleff on March 14, 1812 (94:9–10; 95:8–16), Bell  and his team (Bell refers to “we” at 94:16, 20; 95:18) found “nine chiasmus” (94:20; at 95:18–11  Bell and Volluz say that sermon featured “seven” chiasmus but that was merely a mistaken  number; it was nine). In another, delivered on March 14, 1812 (95:14–16), Bell and his team  found “a total of seven chiasmus” (95:18) and Bell offers us quotations of “the actual text from  two of them to demonstrate the concept” (95:18–19) of this preacher not only teaching chiasmus  in the classroom (95:20–24) but putting it “into action” (95:23) right across the street at the  church where he was preaching chiasmus in the pulpit (94:6–7). And Bell and his team found a  total of seven chiasmus (96:17–18) in a third sermon preached by Rev. Shurtleff on March 16,  1815 (96:17–19; 97:21) and Bell supplies us with “two more sample texts” (97:21) from that  sermon. 

Bell tells us that he and his team employed “advanced AI technology” (94:13) to “do word  frequency analysis and word analyses and see if he’s using chiasmus and laying down heads in  actual sermons Hyrum Smith actually attended” (94:13–15). And the result of the AI analysis  was that he and his team put their transcriptions of the full text of the thirty or more sermons  delivered by Reverend Shurtleff and “put them through the software and every single sermon had  multiple chiasmus” (94:15–17). Presumably the three samples that Bell shares therefore are  exemplary of the 30+ such chiasmus-riddled sermons. 

In the law there is the concept of “equal dignities” where the “equal dignities rule” requires that  an agent’s authority to sign a document, which itself must be in writing (such as a deed or  contract under the Statute of Frauds), must also first be granted in writing. It ensures the  authorization has the same legal formality as the act itself. It is a corollary to the Statute of  Frauds. If a contract requires a written document (e.g., selling real estate), the agent’s authority  to act must also be in writing. 

One gets the impression from the podcast that this is an interview between an attorney (78:1–6;  92:4–16) and a prospective client, where the client is seeking to convince the attorney that he has  a case and that the attorney might want to consider taking it up. So, assuming such an analogous  situation, we might want to employ here the “equal dignities rule” to the case. If Bell has thus  used “AI technology” (the precise identity of which “software” is not disclosed), then I might  disclose that I have employed six AI tools—ChatGPT, Grok, Perplexity, Claude (Anthropic),  deepseek, and Gemini—to analyze each of the six transcriptions offered by Bell, ask those AI  tools to analyze the transcriptions in light of the characteristics of chiastic texts and the criteria  identified by scholars as useful in the tasks of discerning and validating the presence of chiasmus  in texts, and report to me their evaluation whether the quoted passages are or are not chiastic. If  Bell asks AI to put in writing its evaluation and then Bell tells us the result, then I should do the  

htps://exhibits.library.dartmouth.edu/s/LimitsToPower/item/935 (calling the outcome of the case “a turning point  for our country”) and htps://archives-manuscripts.dartmouth.edu/repositories/2/resources/8198 (sample paper).

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same (and more); the following will share not only the inquiry made but the full text of the AI  responses, so that I do not come between the AI tools and the reader and do not characterize the  AI responses. 

Just a note here about the criteria. Over the years I have kept track of what scholars say about the  criteria that might be employed for the purpose of discerning and testing for the presence of  chiasmus. Those scholars include Nils Wilhelm Lund (1942), Paul Gaechter (1965), David J.  Clark (1975), R. Alan Culpepper (1981), David Noel Freedman (1981), Wilfred G. E. Watson  (1981), John W. Welch (1981 and 1995), Craig Blomberg (1989), George Michael Butterworth  (1992), John Breck (1994), Ian H. Thomson (1995), Mark J. Boda (1996), Bernard M. Levinson  (1997), Wayne Brouwer (1999 and 2000), David P. Wright (2004), Steven R. Scott (2010), and  James E. Patrick (2016). I compiled them into a document digitally titled “Chiasmus Criteria and  Characteristics as Proposed by Various Scholars,” a sixty-four-page document that lets the  scholars speak for themselves about the criteria. Then I gave each of the six AI tools full access  to the 64-page document and Bell’s quotations from Rev. Shurtleff’s sermons. Because Bell  identified keywords of the sermons that Bell felt were important to his own AI analysis, I made  sure to inform my six AI tools of his identifications. 

Here is the inquiry that I sent to each of the six AI tools (set forth here in blue font to clearly  identify where the inquiry starts and stops: 

I have uploaded a document that sets forth statements by various scholars that iden�fy rules,  laws, criteria, characteris�cs, or other tests that can be applied to a text to discern whether the  text is or is not chias�c. The scholars do not all agree on all details. But there are commonali�es  among them. 

I will type below six excerpts three sermons delivered by the Reverend Roswell Shurtleff in the  early 1800s. A modern analyst is atemp�ng to discern whether each of the excerpts does or does  not manifest a chias�c patern. I have my doubts. But I ask you to evaluate the excerpts yourself  and report the results of your evalua�on in light of the criteria for discerning the presence of  chiasmus. Please note that the modern analysis has bolded the text of various key words and key  phrases to draw aten�on to what the analyst iden�fies as keywords for the proposed chiasm.  Because your AI inquiry window does not allow me to replicate the analyst’s bold font, I have  placed asterisks around his bolded words and phrases. The ellipses are the analyst’s. I will number  the six excerpts. They are derived by the analyst from three sermons: 

March 14, 1812 -- 

Text 1: 

“In proving His *existence*, we necessarily establish His *eternity*, which must also involve His  *spirituality, independence, and immutability*. . . we infer that the *spirituality, independence,  and immutability* of God, as well as His *omnipresence and infinity*, are either involved in or  deducible from His *eternity*.”

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Text 2: 

“Some effects are so *connected to our wills*( that they occur if we *will their existence* . .  .mankind *cannot* live without air or ascend to the stars because these events are *not within  our control* in *God*, who has this *connec�on* in rela�on to *all possible events*, there must  be *infinite power*.” 

January 24, 1814 -- 

Text 1: 

“His *law* forbids it . . . The *unregenerate* . . . habitually *violate* the spirit of every command .  . . The *law* might well be expected to *condemn* such characters. And it does *condemn* them  in the most unequivocal terms . . . The *law*, which dooms the impenitent sinner to destruc�on,  is not only *just*, but infinitely *great & powerful*. . . It is God’s *own law* -- founded in his  *perfec�ons*, & equally *unchangeable* with them. . . He cannot *deny himself*. He cannot  *nullify his own law.” 

Text 2: 

“would it not be manifestly *improper* for a *father*, to put *enemies* among his own *dear  children*, who should *disturb & offend* them by *filthy conversa�on*, and *tempt* them to  *rebellion* by example of *hatred & opposi�on*? Where is the *parent* who could so  *adulterate* the *por�on* reserved exclusively to them, and promised as the *dis�nguishing  reward* of their *fidelity & love*?” 

March 16, 1815 -- 

Text 1: 

“God is pleased to treat his *church* somewhat like an *individual Chris�an* and by *training it  up* from *small beginnings* of light and grace to a *glorious body* having neither spot nor  wrinkle . . . The church as first *established* upon very *simple principles*. But *litle* was  expressly *required*; because a *small degree of light* only was granted . . . Addi�onal  *instruc�on* was afforded from �me to �me, un�l the *coming of Christ* . . . Knowledge is to be  *increased*, and a *higher degree of purity* to be atained . . . She is then to become an *eternal  excellency*. . . But even this is not the *consumma�on* of her light, and beauty, and blessedness.  *Perfec�on* dwells only in *heaven*.” 

Text 2: 

“the old dispensa�on was very different from the new in respect to the *privileges* immediately  to be enjoyed by the church. No inconsiderable part of the *promises* by which they were  encouraged respected *temporal prosperity*, health, and abundance in the land of Canaan. These  blessings, so far as they were merely *temporal*, were of such a nature that they might be 

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*enjoyed without inward sanc�fica�on*, and might therefore be connected with *external or  ceremonial holiness* . . . as if the *Chris�an church*, whose *peculiar privileges* are not of an  *earthly* but *spiritual nature*” 

Please present your analysis with complete sentences. Be rigorous. 

Here is the response from ChatGPT (https://chatgpt.com/share/69c1c3a6-4a64-800a-8bfc 282034fef8a6); I set it forth below in red font for ease of differentiating from other  responses): 

I do not find a persuasive case that any of the six excerpts, as presented, manifests a bona  fide chiasm. At most, a few of them contain local repetitions, thematic resumptions, or  rhetorical balancing. But the common criteria reflected in your uploaded survey point in a  stricter direction: a proposed chiasm should show objectively evident inversion, real  balance, a clearly marked or meaningful center, recurrence of significant words or concepts  rather than merely analyst-supplied labels, and a pattern that embraces the whole unit  rather than a few selectively harvested items. The cumulative impact of these criteria  matters; no single catchword or thematic resemblance is enough.  

More specifically, your uploaded document repeatedly gathers the following common  controls. Welch emphasizes objectivity, significant repetition, overall balance,  recognizably inverted order, and a marked center, while warning against importing a  pattern by “Procrustean design.” Watson insists that the whole stretch of text must be  involved, that one should prefer repeated words or traditional word-pairs over analyst imposed labels, and that the basis of the proposal must be stated clearly. Clark and Dewey  stress that content, form, structure, and word repetition may all contribute, but only  cumulatively; hook words by themselves are secondary and can be misleading, especially  if they are common or function differently in context. Freedman likewise stresses  inversion, balance, and climactic centrality.  

On that basis, my overall conclusion is this: the analyst’s proposals appear to rely too  heavily on thematic abstraction and too little on demonstrable inversion. In several  instances the alleged correspondences are simply semantically related terms within a  discursive paragraph, not mirrored units in reverse order. In others, the proposed “pairs” are uneven in length, grammatically unlike one another, or extracted from prose that reads  naturally as linear argument rather than as concentric design. In short, I see rhetorical  coherence, but not convincing chiastic architecture.  

March 14, 1812 — Text 1 

This is the closest of the six to a possible mini-ring, but even here the evidence is weak.  The excerpt runs from existence to eternity to a cluster of divine attributes, then returns  from that same cluster to omnipresence and infinity and then back to eternity. What is  actually present is not a clear A-B-C-B-A chiasm but a largely deductive sequence:  existence proves eternity; eternity entails spirituality, independence, immutability; and  from eternity one may also infer omnipresence and infinity. The strongest repetition is 

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simply the reappearance of eternity and the repeated cluster spirituality, independence, and  immutability. That produces resumptive argument, not necessarily inversion. There is no  clearly climactic center, unless one arbitrarily designates the attribute-cluster as the center;  and even then the passage does not mirror itself with enough precision on either side.  Moreover, the outer elements are not balanced: existence at the beginning has no true  counterpart at the end. Under Welch’s and Freedman’s criteria, the inversion and balance  are insufficient; under Watson’s and Dewey’s criteria, the repeated terms are real but do  not generate a strict whole-text chiasm. My judgment: not chiastic; at most, partially  concentric or resumptive in argument. 

March 14, 1812 — Text 2 

I do not see a chiasm here. The proposed keywords are connected to our wills / will their  existence / cannot / not within our control / God / connection / all possible events / infinite  power. But these do not form an objectively evident inverted sequence. Rather, the passage  contrasts human limitation with divine omnipotence. That is a straightforward antithesis,  not a chiasm. One could paraphrase the movement as: some effects follow human will,  many do not, but all possible events stand in such a relation to God, therefore God has  infinite power. That is linear syllogistic reasoning. The words connected/connection and  the semantic field of will/control do recur, but recurrence alone is not enough; Dewey and  Clark both caution that repeated language is significant only when the function and  position of the words within the overall pattern support the structure. Here they do not.  There is no balanced reversal, and the alleged center is not marked. My judgment: not  chiastic; a contrastive theological argument only. 

January 24, 1814 — Text 1 

This also does not persuade me as chiastic. The paragraph certainly has strong lexical  recurrence: law appears repeatedly; condemn recurs; unchangeable and deny himself underscore divine consistency. But repetition of a dominant word does not by itself create  chiasmus. In fact, the repetition of law here looks like ordinary sermonic hammering of a  theme. The progression is linear: the law forbids sin; the unregenerate violate it; the law  condemns them; the law is just and powerful; it is God’s own law founded in his  perfections; therefore God cannot deny himself or nullify his law. That is an escalating  chain, not an inverted one. The supposed matching of law at the beginning and end is too  generic; because law is the subject throughout, its recurrence is expected and therefore  structurally weak under Clark’s caution that common or pervasive words are less probative  than distinctive, strategically placed repetitions. There is no clearly delimited center that  turns the thought. My judgment: not chiastic; strongly repetitive and climactic, but not  inverted. 

January 24, 1814 — Text 2 

This text is the least plausibly chiastic of the set. It is an extended domestic analogy: a  father would not place enemies among dear children who would disturb them, corrupt  them, and tempt them to rebellion; likewise no parent would adulterate the portion 

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reserved as the reward of fidelity and love. The highlighted words—father, enemies, dear  children, disturb & offend, tempt, rebellion, parent, adulterate, portion, distinguishing  reward, fidelity & love—do not fall into an inverted arrangement. They unfold as a single  moral picture. One might detect a general movement from family relation to threat to  corruption to inheritance/reward, but there is no return in reverse order from inheritance  back through corruption and threat to family relation. Watson’s warning is especially apt  here: analyst-created labels could easily force an appearance of balance where the text  itself gives only flowing analogy. My judgment: not chiastic in any meaningful sense. 

March 16, 1815 — Text 1 

This is the strongest candidate for a broader developmental symmetry, but I still would not  call it a demonstrated chiasm. The passage moves from church likened to an individual  Christian, through training up, small beginnings, simple principles, little required, small  degree of light, then forward through additional instruction, coming of Christ, knowledge  increased, higher degree of purity, eternal excellency, and finally perfection in heaven.  That is unmistakably developmental and teleological. It is a growth schema. What it lacks  is reversal. The sequence does not move from small beginnings up to a center and then  back out by mirrored stages; instead it advances steadily from infancy toward  consummation. Even if one tried to mark coming of Christ as the center, the later terms do  not mirror the earlier ones in reverse order. “Small degree of light” does not come back as  a corresponding inverse element; nor do “simple principles” or “little required” recur in  transformed reverse sequence. The rhetoric is progressive, not concentric. My judgment:  not chiastic; rather, an ascending historical-theological progression. 

March 16, 1815 — Text 2 

I also do not regard this as chiastic. The paragraph contrasts old and new dispensations  with respect to the church’s privileges: under the old dispensation many promises concerned temporal prosperity and blessings that might be enjoyed without inward  sanctification and thus linked with external or ceremonial holiness; by contrast, the  Christian church has peculiar privileges that are not earthly but spiritual. This is classic  antithetical comparison, not inversion. There is perhaps a simple contrast between  temporal/external and spiritual/inward, but contrast is not the same as chiasm. For a chiasm  one would expect something like temporal–external–center–external–temporal, or old– blessing–holiness–blessing–new in a real mirror pattern. Instead the logic runs one way:  description of the old, explanation of why those blessings could coexist with merely  external holiness, and then contrast with the new. My judgment: not chiastic; a binary  contrast between dispensations. 

Putting the six together, I would classify them as follows. March 14, 1812, Text 1 shows  the nearest approach to a loose concentric turn, but still falls short of a rigorous chiasm.  March 16, 1815, Text 1 is rhetorically the richest, yet its shape is developmental rather  than inverted. The remaining four are better described as linear argument, antithesis, or  thematic reiteration. None of the six, on the evidence presented, satisfies the stricter  common criteria strongly enough to justify calling it chiastic. 

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A concise tabular verdict may be useful: 

March 14, 1812, Text 1: No — repeated concepts and partial resumption, but no  sufficiently balanced inversion. 

March 14, 1812, Text 2: No — linear contrast between human limitation and divine power. January 24, 1814, Text 1: No — sermonic repetition of “law,” but no mirrored structure. January 24, 1814, Text 2: No — sustained analogy, not concentric arrangement. March 16, 1815, Text 1: No — developmental ascent, not reversal. 

March 16, 1815, Text 2: No — dispensational antithesis, not chiasm.  

If you would like, I can take the next step and rewrite each excerpt into a formal chiastic test format, identifying proposed A/B/C elements, then stating point by point why each  alleged pair does or does not satisfy the relevant criteria. 

Next step, please. 

I will now formalize the analysis using a disciplined chiastic-test method. For each  excerpt I will (1) lay out the strongest possible reconstruction of the analyst’s implied  structure, (2) test each proposed pairing against standard criteria (lexical recurrence,  semantic equivalence, grammatical parity, positional inversion, and proportional balance),  and (3) state a reasoned verdict. 

I. March 14, 1812 — Text 1 

1. Proposed chiastic reconstruction (best-case) 

A — existence 

B — eternity 

C — spirituality, independence, immutability 

C′ — spirituality, independence, immutability 

B′ — eternity 

A′ — (implicit: divine nature inferred) 

2. Pair-by-pair testing 

A / A′ (existence // implied conclusion) 

This is the weakest link. There is no explicit return to existence. The ending moves to  eternity again, not back to the starting term. A true chiasm normally closes the frame  (Welch; Freedman). Here, closure is absent. 

B / B′ (eternity // eternity) 

This is a genuine repetition, but it functions as resumptive argument, not inversion. The  second occurrence is explanatory, not structurally mirrored.

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C / C′ (attribute cluster // same cluster) 

This is exact repetition, but again not inversion—merely restatement. True chiastic pairing  usually shows transformation, contrast, or at least positional mirroring with different  syntactic function. 

Center (C/C′ boundary) 

No marked pivot. The passage does not “turn” but continues deductively. 3. Structural assessment 

• Inversion: partial at best (B–C–C–B, but no A′)  

• Balance: uneven (opening and closing do not correspond)  

• Center: not climactic or marked  

• Whole-text involvement: yes, but only linearly  

4. Verdict 

Fails as formal chiasm. At most, a concentric restatement embedded in a deductive  chain, not a designed A–B–C–B–A structure. 

II. March 14, 1812 — Text 2 

1. Proposed reconstruction 

A — connected to our wills 

B — will their existence 

C — cannot / not within our control 

D — God 

C′ — connection to all possible events 

B′ — all possible events 

A′ — infinite power 

2. Pair-by-pair testing 

A / A′ (human will // divine power) 

Not equivalent. This is contrast, not correspondence. Chiastic pairs must match in semantic  domain. 

B / B′ (will their existence // all possible events) 

No meaningful lexical or conceptual equivalence. 

C / C′ (lack of control // divine connection) 

Oppositional, not mirrored. Again, contrast ≠ chiasm.

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D (God as center) 

God is central conceptually, but not structurally marked as a pivot through inversion. 3. Structural assessment 

• Inversion: absent  

• Lexical recurrence: weak (only “connection”)  

• Balance: artificial  

• Structure: syllogistic contrast  

4. Verdict 

Not chiastic. This is a linear theological argument with antithetical contrast, not a ring  structure. 

III. January 24, 1814 — Text 1 

1. Proposed reconstruction 

A — law forbids 

B — unregenerate violate 

C — law condemns 

D — law just and powerful 

C′ — law founded in perfections 

B′ — unchangeable / cannot deny himself 

A′ — cannot nullify his law 

2. Pair-by-pair testing 

A / A′ (law forbids // cannot nullify law) 

Thematically related but not equivalent. One is prescriptive, the other metaphysical. 

B / B′ (violation // divine immutability) 

No correspondence. Human sin vs divine nature are not parallel units. 

C / C′ (condemnation // foundation in perfections) 

Different conceptual domains—judicial vs ontological. 

D (center: law’s greatness) 

Not a pivot; merely escalation. 

3. Structural assessment 

• Dominant feature: repetition of “law”

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• Problem: repetition is pervasive, not structurally selective  • Form: cumulative intensification, not inversion  

4. Verdict 

Not chiastic. This is rhetorical amplification centered on “law.” 

IV. January 24, 1814 — Text 2 

1. Proposed reconstruction 

A — father 

B — enemies among children 

C — disturb / offend 

D — tempt to rebellion 

C′ — adulterate portion 

B′ — reward of fidelity & love 

A′ — parent 

2. Pair-by-pair testing 

A / A′ (father // parent) 

This is a legitimate synonym pair. 

B / B′ (enemies among children // reward of fidelity) No equivalence; these are contrasting narrative elements. 

C / C′ (disturb/offend // adulterate portion) 

Different actions; no mirrored function. 

D (rebellion) 

Not a structural pivot; simply part of the analogy. 

3. Structural assessment 

• One valid pair (father/parent)  

• All other pairings fail  

• No inversion of sequence  

4. Verdict 

Not chiastic. This is a continuous moral analogy, not a structured ring.

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V. March 16, 1815 — Text 1 

1. Proposed reconstruction 

A — church like individual 

B — training up 

C — small beginnings 

D — little required / small light 

E — additional instruction 

F — coming of Christ (center candidate) 

E′ — knowledge increased 

D′ — higher purity 

C′ — eternal excellency 

B′ — perfection 

A′ — heaven 

2. Pair-by-pair testing 

A / A′ (church // heaven) 

Not equivalent categories. 

B / B′ (training // perfection) 

Developmental relation, not mirrored equivalence. 

C / C′ (small beginnings // eternal excellency) 

Opposites, not correspondences. 

D / D′ (small light // higher purity) 

Again progressive, not inverted. 

E / E′ (instruction // increased knowledge) 

This is repetition, but forward-moving, not reversing. 

F (coming of Christ) 

Potential center, but not framed symmetrically. 

3. Structural assessment 

• Strong progression 

• No reversal 

• No mirrored descent after ascent 

4. Verdict 

Not chiastic. This is a teleological growth schema, not a concentric structure.

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VI. March 16, 1815 — Text 2 

1. Proposed reconstruction 

A — old dispensation privileges 

B — temporal promises 

C — temporal blessings 

D — no inward sanctification 

C′ — external holiness 

B′ — Christian church privileges 

A′ — spiritual nature 

2. Pair-by-pair testing 

A / A′ (old privileges // spiritual nature) 

Not equivalent; contrastive. 

B / B′ (temporal promises // Christian privileges) Not parallel categories. 

C / C′ (temporal blessings // external holiness) Different conceptual axes. 

D (center: lack of sanctification) 

Not structurally framed. 

3. Structural assessment 

• Pure contrast (temporal vs spiritual)  

• No inversion  

• No balancing  

4. Verdict 

Not chiastic. This is a binary theological contrast, not a ring. 

Final Synthesis 

Across all six texts, the same diagnostic pattern emerges: 

1. Repetition is present but not structurally selective. 2. Progression or contrast replaces inversion.

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3. Centers are conceptual, not structural. 

4. Pairings rely on thematic association rather than lexical or functional  equivalence. 

5. No passage demonstrates full A–B–C–…–C′–B′–A′ closure. 

Accordingly, under the convergent standards reflected in your uploaded scholarly criteria,  none of the six excerpts qualifies as a demonstrable chiasm. 

Here is the response from Grok (https://grok.com/share/bGVnYWN5_026457b3-579f-4254- 8ef2-730a6a726e21), the full text of which is set forth in green font: 

None of the six excerpts manifests a chiastic pattern when evaluated against the  criteria and characteristics proposed by the scholars in the document. The analysis  below applies the commonalities that emerge across those scholars (Lund, Gaechter,  Dewey/Clark, Culpepper, Freedman, Watson, Welch, Blomberg, Butterworth, and Breck,  among others), including: (1) inversion/reversal of order in corresponding elements; (2)  balance/symmetry in length, content, form, or language (catchwords/hook words); (3) a  clear central turning point or pivot (often with a shift in thought or antithetical element);  (4) framing by inclusion or repetition at the extremes; (5) cumulative, objective evidence  rather than imposed subjectivity; (6) use of central/dominant rather than peripheral terms;  (7) natural textual breaks respected; and (8) avoidance of forced patterns that could arise  by chance or selective labeling (as emphasized by Welch, Butterworth’s random “Isaiah  67” experiment, Blomberg’s nine tests, Watson’s “strict” and “whole-stretch” requirements, and Breck’s “inclusion + pivot + heightening + helical movement”).  Repetition alone (even of bolded keywords) is insufficient unless it produces inverted,  balanced parallelism with a focused center. All six excerpts are short prose arguments or  analogies; their bolded terms highlight repetition but fail to satisfy the cumulative,  structural tests. 

March 14, 1812 – Text 1: The passage opens with proving God’s existence establishing  His eternity (which involves spirituality, independence, and immutability), then infers that  the same three attributes plus omnipresence and infinity are deducible from eternity.  Repetition of “eternity” and the three attributes occurs, but the order is not inverted: the  attributes appear in the same sequence both times, with added terms (omnipresence and  infinity) expanding outward rather than mirroring or centering. There is no balanced  pairing of extremes around a pivot (Lund’s law 1 and 3; Welch’s inversion + balance;  Breck’s inclusion framing a thematic center). The structure is linear deduction (“proving  … establish … infer”), not chiastic. No antithetical shift at any center, no heightening from  A to A´ (Breck), and no cumulative verbal/conceptual parallelism at natural breaks  (Dewey/Clark, Culpepper). The bolding draws attention to repeats, but per Blomberg  criterion 5 and Butterworth, the terms are not uniquely structural; the pattern can be read as  ordinary theological inference without inversion. Thus, no chiasmus. 

March 14, 1812 – Text 2: The text analogizes human limits (“effects … connected to our  wills … will their existence … cannot … not within our control”) to God’s connection to  all possible events producing infinite power. The bolded terms create a contrast (human 

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inability → divine ability), but the sequence is forward-moving analogy, not reversal.  There is no pairing of corresponding elements in inverted order (Freedman’s inversion +  balance; Watson’s strict whole-stretch requirement). No central pivot shifts thought  antithetically (Lund law 2; Breck principle 2); the “center” (God’s connection) simply  escalates the point rather than focusing or framing extremes. Catchword repetition  (connected, will) is present but not in balanced positions or rare enough to mark structure  (Clark/Dewey on variable significance of catchwords; Welch on density of parallels). The  passage respects no chiastic literary unit boundaries and could equally be diagrammed  linearly. It fails Blomberg criteria 2–6 (no clear, multiple, central verbal/conceptual  parallels unique to the proposed pairs) and Breck’s helical movement. Hence, no chiasmus. 

January 24, 1814 – Text 1: The excerpt repeatedly invokes law (forbids, condemn(s),  just, great & powerful, own law, unchangeable, cannot deny/nullify). Repetition of “law” and related concepts (condemn, unchangeable, perfections) is dense, but the order is  cumulative and linear: the law forbids → violates → condemns → is  just/powerful/unchangeable. No inversion balances the first and second halves (Welch,  Watson, Freedman). The bolded terms do not frame extremes around a pivot with a  thought-shift (Lund laws 1–3; Breck principles 1–2); the passage builds a single argument  about the law’s justice and immutability without a climactic center worthy of that position  (Blomberg criterion 8). No symmetry of pericopes or content (Gaechter), no heightening  from A to A´ (Breck), and no unique structural catchwords beyond common theological  vocabulary (Clark/Dewey). Per Butterworth and Blomberg criterion 5, the repeats could  pair with many other non-chiastic passages. The natural flow is unbroken prose, not  chiastic. Therefore, no chiasmus. 

January 24, 1814 – Text 2: This rhetorical question contrasts a father/parent not placing  enemies among dear children (who would disturb & offend, tempt to rebellion by hatred &  opposition, adulterate the portion/reward of fidelity & love). The bolded terms form a  single analogy, not paired inversions. There is no reversal of order (A: father/children vs.  A´: parent/reward), no balance of length or form, and no central pivot (Freedman’s  climactic centrality; Lund law 1; Breck). The structure is one extended interrogative  sentence with progressive elaboration, lacking inclusion framing or helical focusing (Breck  principles 1, 4). Repetition (father/parent, disturb & offend/tempt) is thematic but not  positioned symmetrically or uniquely structural (Watson’s preference for whole-stretch  word repetition; Blomberg criterion 5). No multiple congruent parallels of  content/form/language (Dewey/Clark), and the passage could be outlined linearly without  loss. It fails Welch’s requirement that inversion and balance be “readily apparent” rather  than imposed. Thus, no chiasmus. 

March 16, 1815 – Text 1: The passage traces the church progressing like an individual  Christian from small beginnings/simple principles/small degree of light through  instruction/coming of Christ/knowledge increased/higher degree of purity to eternal  excellency/consummation/perfection in heaven. Bolded terms mark a progressive scale  (small → glorious → perfect), but the order is chronological and linear, not inverted. No  balanced pairing of extremes around a center (Gaechter symmetry; Lund law 1; Welch  inversion + balance). The “center” (coming of Christ or increased knowledge) does not 

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pivot antithetically or focus meaning concentrically (Breck principle 2); it simply  continues the ascent. No framing inclusion (Breck principle 1), no heightening that  reverses or mirrors (Breck principle 3), and no cumulative catchword structure at natural  breaks (Dewey/Clark). The bolding highlights progression, but per Blomberg criteria 1 and  7, conventional linear outline already resolves the structure without needing chiasmus.  Repetitions are not in reversed positions. Hence, no chiasmus. 

March 16, 1815 – Text 2: The excerpt contrasts the old dispensation (temporal prosperity,  temporal blessings enjoyed without inward sanctification, external or ceremonial holiness)  with the new/Christian church (peculiar privileges that are spiritual rather than earthly).  Bolded terms set up a binary opposition, but the structure is straightforward comparison  (“old … different from the new”), not chiastic inversion. No reversal of corresponding  elements (Freedman; Watson), no symmetry or multiple paired members (Blomberg  criterion 6), and no central pivot worthy of focus (Lund, Breck). The bolded contrast  appears once, not framed or balanced around a turning point. Catchwords (privileges,  temporal/earthly vs. spiritual) are thematic but peripheral and not uniquely positioned  (Clark on variable significance; Butterworth on avoiding common-word labeling). The  natural break is the explicit contrast itself; imposing chiasmus would violate Blomberg  criteria 7 and 9 (ruptures and exceptions). It is linear antithesis, not concentric. Therefore,  no chiasmus. 

In summary, the analyst’s bolding usefully flags repetitions, yet these do not produce the  objective inversion, balance, central pivot, or cumulative parallels required by the scholars’ criteria. The excerpts remain coherent linear arguments or analogies without the “helical,” “strict,” or “symmetrical” architecture that would distinguish genuine chiasmus from  ordinary prose. As Butterworth’s experiment and Welch emphasize, selective emphasis can  fabricate patterns that the text itself does not sustain. None of the six passages meets the  threshold for chiastic structure. 

Here is the response from Perplexity (https://grok.com/share/bGVnYWN5_026457b3-579f 4254-8ef2-730a6a726e21); I set it forth below in purple font for ease of differentiating from  other responses; the uploaded 64-page Chiasmus Criteria document is linked to after each  

paragraph of the response online at that URL and can be downloaded for the reader to  see): 

On the criteria in your uploaded survey, none of these six short prose excerpts provides  strong evidence of a deliberate, extended chiastic composition; any chiastic tendencies are,  at best, minimal and local rather than structurally controlling. 

Framework from the criteria 

The core “tests” that matter here (across Lund, Clark, Dewey, Blomberg, Thomson, Welch,  Butterworth, Breck, Patrick, etc.) include: (1) clear, repeated elements in inverted order;  (2) reasonably bounded units; (3) multiple, congruent parallelisms of content, form, and  language; (4) a marked, meaningful center or pivot; and (5) avoidance of selective use of 

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common words or fragmentary phrases to “force” a pattern. These criteria also insist that  the cumulative impact of evidence be strong enough that other well-informed readers can  recognize the structure without elaborate special pleading. 

With that framework, I treat each excerpt as a candidate micro-chiasm and ask: is there a  robust, objectively evident ABA / ABBA / ABC…CBA pattern, or only scattered repetition  and conceptual echoes? 

March 14, 1812 – Text 1 

Shurtleff’s first sentence links “existence → eternity → spirituality, independence,  immutability,” and the second infers “spirituality, independence, immutability …  omnipresence, infinity … from eternity.” This yields some lexical recurrence (“spirituality,  independence, immutability,” “eternity”), but not a clear, balanced inversion. 

• The sequence of ideas is essentially progressive and expository, not concentrically  framed; nothing like an ABC…CBA pattern with a central pivot emerges. 

• The repeated triad (“spirituality, independence, immutability”) functions as  reiterated content, not as symmetrically placed, oppositely ordered members; there  is no demonstrable shift at a center that resumes in reverse. 

• On Blomberg’s and Thomson’s concerns about selective catchwords, the analyst’s  highlighting of pieces of these phrases risks treating ordinary, doctrinal vocabulary  as if it were rare, structural “hook words.” 

By the standards of Lund’s laws, Clark’s emphasis on cumulative criteria, and Welch’s  objectivity and balance factors, this is discursive doctrinal prose with some repetition, not a  chiastic unit. 

March 14, 1812 – Text 2 

Here the analyst seems to propose a contrast between human agency and divine agency,  perhaps something like: 

• A: human “connected to our wills / will their existence” 

• B: human “cannot … not within our control” 

• B′: in God, events “not within our control” become “all possible events” • A′: “infinite power” as the consequence of God’s “connection.” 

But the surface does not actually show a clean ABBA or ABC…CBA pattern.

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• The human side is one continuous argument: some effects are under our will; other  things (living without air, ascending to the stars) are not under our control. 

• The God-side is a single inferential move: if God’s will has this connection to all  possible events, there is infinite power. 

• There is no marked central turning point that is lexically or structurally framed; the  “center” is simply the logical hinge (“in God … there must be infinite power”),  which is conceptually important but not formally bracketed by mirrored language. 

Dewey and Clark both insist that form, internal structure, and hook words must cooperate,  and that rare, well-placed repetitions count more than generic abstractions. Here the  highlighted terms (“connection,” “will,” “control,” “all possible events,” “infinite power”)  are conceptually related but not arranged in a rigorously inverted parallelism. At most, one  might speak of loose antithetical parallelism (human vs divine power), not of chiastic  structuring. 

January 24, 1814 – Text 1 

This paragraph on “law” and “condemnation” exhibits heavy repetition: “law,” “unregenerate,” “violate,” “condemn,” “own law,” “perfections,” “unchangeable,” “cannot  deny himself / nullify his own law.” It is natural for an analyst to see a thematic return  from “law forbids” to “cannot nullify his own law.” But the question is whether there is a  demonstrable chiastic order. 

• The flow is cumulative: law forbids → unregenerate violate → law condemns →  law is just, powerful, grounded in perfections and unchangeable → God cannot  deny himself or nullify his law. 

• There is no clear segmentation into balanced pairs with comparable length and  content (e.g., A “law forbids / condemn” – B “character of law” – A′ “cannot nullify  law”). Even if one enforced such divisions, the correspondences would be general  (law / condemn) rather than supported by distinctive lexical hooks in mirrored  positions. 

• Thomson’s requirement that balancing elements be of roughly similar length and  occur in strictly inverted order is not met, and Butterworth’s concern about using  very common words (“law,” “condemn”) as primary structural markers applies  directly. 

From Freedman’s and Welch’s perspective on inversion and climactic centrality, we do not  see a centered turn with clearly mirrored edges; instead we see linear theological  argumentation employing rhetorical repetition. So this does not satisfy the criteria for a  genuine chiastic structure.

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January 24, 1814 – Text 2 

This is a strongly rhetorical, two-sentence analogy about a father placing enemies among  his children and adulterating their portion, but again the structure is straightforward and  cumulative rather than concentric. 

• The first sentence: father → enemies among children → disturb/offend → filthy  conversation → tempt to rebellion via hatred/opposition. 

• The second sentence: parent → adulterate portion reserved exclusively to children  → portion is distinguishing reward of their fidelity and love. 

The highlighted terms (father/parent, children, enemies, disturb/offend, filthy conversation,  tempt, rebellion, hatred/opposition, adulterate, portion, reward, fidelity, love) do not repeat  in an inverted pattern; instead, they elaborate a single extended scenario. 

By Clark’s framework, there are no multiple, independent criteria aligning as parallel pairs:  no matching settings, no parallel sub-forms (e.g., controversy forms), no repeated hook  words anchoring mirror elements, and no central pivot with distinctive language. At most  one could say that the second sentence intensifies the first (from “improper” treatment to  “adulterating” an exclusive reward), which fits Breck’s “heightening” notion, but it is  heightening in a linear, not chiastic, sense. 

March 16, 1815 – Text 1 

This is the richest candidate, since it narrates church history from “small beginnings” to  “perfection in heaven,” and one might try to see an A–B–C–D–C′–B′–A′ progression:  small beginnings → simple principles / little required → additional instruction to Christ’s  coming → increased knowledge and purity → eternal excellency → not yet consummation  → perfection in heaven. 

Yet even here, the detailed criteria cut against reading it as a chiastic unit: 

• The text is explicitly chronological: small beginnings → more light and instruction  → coming of Christ → future increase of knowledge and purity → eternal  excellency → ultimate perfection in heaven. As Welch and others emphasize, where  a straightforward temporal or logical progression “more readily accounts” for the  ordering than an inverted scheme, chiastic explanations are less persuasive. 

• The supposed “center” (perhaps the coming of Christ, or knowledge increased /  higher purity attained) is not structurally marked—no distinctive hook words  limited to that central span, no formal break in sentence structure, no clear framing  of earlier/later clauses around a middle.

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• The vocabulary is distributed gradually (small beginnings / simple principles / little  required / small degree of light / additional instruction / coming of Christ /  increased knowledge / higher purity / eternal excellency / not consummation /  perfection / heaven) rather than in tight pairs of mirrored phrases. 

Blomberg’s requirement that central content be worthy of the pivot is satisfied in a  theological sense (Christ, perfection), but his other criteria—strong, localized verbal  parallelism, rarity of key terms, and avoidance of competing structuring principles—are  not met. Patrick’s insistence that a proposed concentrism must have superior explanatory  power over a linear alternative is also not met; a simple temporal development explains the  order more naturally. 

March 16, 1815 – Text 2 

This paragraph contrasts “old dispensation” and “new” regarding privileges, promises,  temporal prosperity, and the nature of holiness (external/ceremonial vs inward/spiritual). It  is, however, plainly bipartite and antithetical, not chiastic. 

• Old dispensation: privileges immediately enjoyed; promises of temporal prosperity  in Canaan; blessings that can be enjoyed without inward sanctification; connection  with external or ceremonial holiness. 

• New/Christian church: peculiar privileges not earthly but spiritual. 

There is no inversion of multiple elements around a center; it is “then/now,” not “A–B–C– B′–A′.” Language like “privileges,” “promises,” “temporal,” “holiness,” “spiritual” is used  once per side, not in mirrored placements, and there is no central pivot clause bounded by  

repeated vocabulary. Under Watson’s and Butterworth’s emphasis that “the whole stretch  of text must be involved” and that repetition of specific words or phrases is more valuable  than thematic labelling, this segment lacks the strictness required for a chiastic diagnosis. 

Overall assessment 

Applying the cumulative, rigorous criteria surveyed in your document, these six passages: 

• Exhibit ordinary rhetorical repetition and some antithetical structuring (especially  human vs divine, old vs new, law vs violation), but 

• Do not display clear, objectively demonstrable inverted parallelism across a  bounded unit, with balanced pairs, rare and well-placed hook words, and a marked  central pivot.

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In the terms used by Thomson, Welch, Blomberg, Butterworth, and Patrick, the analyst’s  proposed chiasms seem to over-rely on generic theological vocabulary as if it were  structurally decisive, to ignore more natural linear or temporal explanations for the order,  and to lack the cumulative force that would make the chiastic pattern compelling to other  readers. On that basis, your doubts are well founded: a cautious, criteria-driven evaluation  would not affirm any of these short excerpts as robust examples of deliberate chiastic  composition. 

Here is the response from Claude/Anthropic (https://claude.ai/share/f466474e-ee0a-4b0b 853d-f5bdb58a34b8) I set it forth below in dark orange font for ease of differentiating from  other responses): 

This is a substantial analytical task. I have carefully read both the scholarly criteria  document and the six sermon excerpts. My evaluation follows, organized by excerpt. 

Preliminary Framework 

The scholars surveyed — Lund, Welch, Blomberg, Thomson, Clark, Boda, Wright, and  others — converge on several essential requirements for identifying chiasmus. A genuine  chiasm requires: (1) inverted parallel order, such that an A-B-C-B´-A´ or analogous  structure is discernible; (2) significant verbal repetition or “catchwords” linking the  corresponding elements; (3) conceptual or content parallelism between paired elements; (4)  a meaningful center that functions as the pivot or climax; (5) balance between the two  halves; and (6) sufficient density and objectivity that the pattern is not merely imposed by  the analyst. Thomson insists that the symmetrical elements appear in precisely inverted  order. Welch stresses that the pattern must be evidenced in the text, not imported by the  reader. Blomberg demands that the center be worthy of its position, that verbal and  conceptual parallelism characterize most corresponding pairs, and that the parallels not  consist of words found everywhere in the text. Butterworth and Boda warn against  arbitrary labeling, arbitrary omission, and the use of high-frequency words to manufacture  apparent symmetry. These standards will govern the analysis below. 

Sermon of March 14, 1812 

Excerpt 1 

The analyst proposes that this passage exhibits chiasmus organized around the following  sequence: existence → eternity → spirituality, independence, and immutability →  spirituality, independence, and immutability → omnipresence and infinity → eternity. The  idea seems to be something like A (existence) : B (eternity) : C (spirituality, independence, 

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immutability) : C´ (spirituality, independence, immutability) : D (omnipresence and  infinity) : B´ (eternity), with A (existence) standing without a counterpart. 

Several problems emerge immediately upon applying the scholarly criteria. First, the  repetition of the phrase “spirituality, independence, and immutability” is not an inversion  but a direct restatement. Welch’s criterion of inversion — that “the second half of the  system should tend to repeat the first half in a recognizably inverted order” — is not met  here. The C and C´ elements are not inverted relative to each other; they are simply  repeated. Second, the proposed center, if one exists at all, is the repetition of “spirituality,  independence, and immutability,” but this center bears no special theological weight  beyond what surrounds it; it functions as a pivot only in the trivial sense that the same  phrase appears on both sides of an ellipsis. Blomberg’s criterion 8 — that the center  “should be a passage worthy of that position in light of its theological or ethical  significance” — is not satisfied. Third, the term existence at the opening has no counterpart  at the close, leaving the structure lopsided and violating Welch’s balance criterion and  Thomson’s requirement that elements appear in precisely inverted order. Fourth, terms like  eternity, spirituality, and immutability are the natural, unavoidable vocabulary for any  discourse on the divine attributes; their recurrence may well reflect the subject matter  rather than intentional chiastic design. Boda’s “frequency fallacy” and Wright’s “errors in  subjectivity” regarding high-frequency, topic-specific terms apply here with force. Fifth,  the ellipsis in the middle of the passage conceals how much intervening text separates the  proposed elements. Welch’s density criterion holds that “the more compact the proposed  structure, or the fewer irrelevancies between its elements, the higher the degree of  chiasticity”; omitted text undermines that assessment. 

The passage does exhibit a kind of rhetorical recapitulation — Shurtleff restates the  attributes he has already named and draws an inference — but recapitulation is not  inversion. On balance, the evidence for genuine chiasmus in this excerpt is weak. The  repetition is real, but it runs parallel rather than inverted, the center carries no special  weight, the structure is unbalanced, and the key terms are too common in theological  discourse to carry significant chiastic force. 

Excerpt 2 

The analyst seems to propose a chiasm built around: connected to our wills / will their  existence → cannot → not within our control → connection → all possible events →  infinite power. The proposed pattern is difficult to reconstruct with confidence even from  the bolded terms, which is itself a warning sign. Welch’s objectivity criterion requires that  the proposed pattern be “clearly evident in the text” and not depend on “distant parallels or  clever linkages that require imaginative commentary to explain.” 

Several deficiencies present themselves. First, the terms connected to our wills and  connection may be intended to serve as an A-A´ frame, and will their existence and all  possible events as B-B´, with cannot and not within our control as C-C´, and infinite power as the center. But this reconstruction requires substantial interpretive labor, and even if  accepted, the pairing of connected to our wills with connection relies on a common root 

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word appearing in a theological context where the concept of connection between will and  effect is the entire subject of the passage. This is precisely the kind of high-frequency,  topic-driven repetition that Boda and Wright caution against. Second, the proposed center  (infinite power) is introduced near the end of the passage and functions more as a  conclusion than as a pivot from which the structure turns and returns. The passage moves  in a single argumentative direction — from human limitation to divine omnipotence — rather than radiating outward from a center. Lund’s requirement that the center be the  turning point is not met. Third, the passage as quoted is fragmentary, with ellipses  concealing the full text; Watson’s criterion (b) that “the whole stretch of text must be  involved, not simply certain select parts” is violated by the omissions. Fourth, there is no  discernible return to the opening thought. Welch’s “return” criterion holds that “a chiasm is  more complete where its beginning and end combine to create a strong sense of return and  completion”; no such return is evident. 

This excerpt reads as a theological argument proceeding from premise to conclusion, not as  an inverted parallel structure. The evidence for chiasmus is not persuasive. 

Sermon of January 24, 1814 

Excerpt 1 

The analyst appears to propose a chiasm organized around the following bolded terms: law → unregenerate → violate → law → condemn → condemn → law → just / great &  powerful → own law → perfections / unchangeable → deny himself → nullify his own  law. The proposed structure seems to move from law → violation → condemnation → law  (as just and powerful) → law (as God’s own, founded in his perfections) → denial →  nullification. 

The most notable feature of this passage is the repeated appearance of the word law, which  occurs at least four times. Blomberg’s criterion 5 holds that “both the verbal and  conceptual parallelisms should use words and ideas not regularly found elsewhere within  the proposed chiasmus”; in this passage, law appears so frequently that it cannot function  as a chiastic marker in any meaningful sense. Clark’s discussion, following Dewey,  establishes that “rarer words are more significant than commoner words,” and in a sermon  about the moral law, law is the most common word of all. Similarly, the paired terms  condemn/condemn and deny himself/nullify his own law at the close of the passage exhibit  parallelism, but it is sequential and cumulative rather than inverted. The passage mounts an  argument — the law forbids, the unregenerate violate, the law condemns, the law is just,  the law is God’s own and unchangeable, therefore God cannot nullify it — and the  movement is forward and linear, not centripetal. Lund’s requirement of a turning point at  the center is not satisfied; the passage does not pivot and return. Thomson’s requirement  that “the symmetrical elements will be present in precisely inverted order” is not met.

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There is undeniable rhetorical structure in this passage — anaphora on law and a building,  climactic argument — but anaphora and climax are distinct from chiasmus. The evidence  for genuine chiastic inversion is absent. 

Excerpt 2 

The analyst proposes a chiasm organized around the concepts of improper → father →  enemies / dear children → disturb & offend / filthy conversation → tempt / rebellion /  hatred & opposition → parent → adulterate → portion → distinguishing reward →  fidelity & love. The proposed structure seems to place a domestic analogy (a father who  puts enemies among his dear children) in parallel with a father (parent) who adulterates the  portion reserved for them. 

This passage presents a rhetorical question — an analogy designed to illustrate the  impropriety of some action in God’s governance — and it is structured as a single  extended comparison, not as a sequence of inverted parallels. The opening question  introduces the premise (would it not be improper for a father to place enemies among his  dear children who disturb & offend them and tempt them to rebellion?) and the closing  question continues the same analogy (where is the parent who could adulterate the portion reserved for them and promised as the reward of their fidelity & love?). The second  question builds on and extends the first; it does not invert it. Welch’s inversion criterion — that the second half should repeat the first in a “recognizably inverted order” — is not met.  The bolded terms do not recur in reversed sequence; they progress. The passage lacks a  discernible center, violating Breck’s requirement of a pivotal center. Blomberg’s criterion  3 holds that verbal and conceptual parallelism “should characterize most if not all of the  corresponding pairs of subdivisions”; here, most of the bolded terms appear once only, and  the pairing between father and parent, or enemies/dear children and portion/fidelity &  love, requires interpretive mediation that amounts to arbitrary labeling in Boda’s sense. 

The passage is rhetorically effective as an analogical argument, but it does not manifest the  inverted, centered, balanced structure that chiasmus requires. The evidence for chiasmus is  not persuasive. 

Sermon of March 16, 1815 

Excerpt 1 

The analyst proposes a chiasm organized around the following progression: church /  individual Christian → training it up → small beginnings → glorious body → established / simple principles → little / required → small degree of light → instruction → coming of  Christ → increased → higher degree of purity → eternal excellency → consummation →  Perfection / heaven. This is the most elaborate of the six proposed chiasms. In  reconstructing the proposed structure, one might attempt: A (church as individual  Christian) : B (training up from small beginnings) : C (established on simple principles, 

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little required, small degree of light) : D (instruction, coming of Christ) : E (knowledge  increased, higher degree of purity) : F (eternal excellency) : G (consummation / Perfection / heaven). But there is no return, no inversion: the passage moves forward through time,  from the church’s early simplicity to its eschatological perfection. The bolded terms do not  recur in reverse; each appears once only, advancing the argument chronologically. 

This is perhaps the clearest case among the six of what Boda calls “methodological  isolation” and what Wright terms “frequency fallacy”: the analyst has bolded theologically  significant terms at regular intervals in what is an entirely linear, developmental argument  about the progressive sanctification of the church. There is no center, no inversion, no  return. Watson’s requirement (b) that “the whole stretch of text must be involved, not  simply certain select parts” is violated: the analyst has selected words and phrases while  the passage’s argumentative connective tissue — its logical structure — runs uniformly  forward. Welch’s centrality criterion requires “a well-defined centerpiece or distinct  crossing effect”; no such crossing is present. Thomson’s requirement of “precisely inverted  order” is not met at any level. The bolded terms could be rearranged in almost any order  without disrupting the analytical claim being made, which is itself a sign that the pattern is  being imposed rather than discovered. 

This excerpt exhibits no credible chiastic structure. 

Excerpt 2 

The analyst proposes a chiasm organized around: privileges → promises → temporal  prosperity → temporal → enjoyed without inward sanctification → external or ceremonial  holiness → Christian church → peculiar privileges → earthly / spiritual nature. The  proposed structure seems to contrast the old dispensation (characterized by temporal,  external, ceremonial blessings) with the new (characterized by spiritual, peculiar  privileges). There is genuine thematic contrast in the passage: Shurtleff does oppose  temporal to spiritual, external or ceremonial holiness to something implied as inward and  genuine. However, contrast is not chiasm. The passage moves forward from a description  of the old dispensation toward a characterization of the new, not from a beginning through  a center and back to the beginning in inverted order. 

The terms privileges and peculiar privileges appear near the beginning and end, which  could constitute an inclusio of the kind Breck describes — a framing device that marks the  boundaries of a unit of thought. But an inclusio alone does not a chiasm make; it is only  the envelope or frame. Breck himself carefully distinguishes inclusion from the full  chiastic pattern. If any element of chiastic structure is present here, it is at most this weak  inclusio, not the multi-level inversion the analyst implies. The terms temporal and earthly are natural semantic partners in any contrast between the two dispensations; their  recurrence reflects subject matter, not compositional artistry. Blomberg’s criterion 5 — that the parallels “should use words and ideas not regularly found elsewhere within the  proposed chiasmus” — is not satisfied. No genuine center is identifiable. The passage does  not invert, pivot, and return.

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As with the other excerpts, what is present is skilled theological rhetoric — antithesis and  contrast — not chiasmus. 

Overall Assessment 

None of the six excerpts, evaluated against the scholarly criteria for identifying chiasmus,  provides convincing evidence of genuine chiastic structure. Several share the same  fundamental problems: the bolded “keywords” are either high-frequency theological terms  unavoidable in their subject matter, or they appear once only without recurrence in inverted  order, or they participate in a linear, argumentative, or chronological progression that  moves in one direction rather than radiating from and returning to a center. In no excerpt is  Welch’s criterion of inversion clearly satisfied. In no excerpt is a meaningful, theologically  weighty center identifiable as a genuine pivot. In no excerpt do the corresponding pairs  exhibit the kind of rare, distinctive verbal repetition that Clark, Dewey, Blomberg, and  Butterworth all identify as the most reliable indicator of intentional chiastic design. 

The deeper methodological concern, voiced by the document you have provided and  consistent with your own expressed doubts, is what Scott, following Lund, identifies as the  descriptive rather than prescriptive character of these criteria when misapplied: the analyst  has identified terms that seem important, bolded them, and then proposed that their  arrangement constitutes a chiasm. But as Boda’s “symmetrical mirages” study  demonstrates, and as Butterworth’s experiment with the randomly constructed “Isaiah 67” confirms, it is possible to find apparent chiastic patterns in almost any sufficiently long  theological text by selecting terms strategically, especially when ellipses allow the analyst  to omit inconvenient material. Watson’s criterion (b) — that the whole stretch of text must  be involved — and Thomson’s constraint against the selective use of commonly occurring  words — are both violated across these excerpts. The patterns proposed appear to exist in  the analyst’s interpretive framework rather than in the structure of Shurtleff’s prose. 

Here is the response from deepseek (htps://chat.deepseek.com/share/usywww4fg0ux2bt1aw); I  set it forth below in aqua font for ease of differentiating from other responses; the uploaded  64-page Chiasmus Criteria document is linked to after each paragraph of the response  online at that URL and can be downloaded for the reader to see): 

Based on the extensive scholarly criteria for identifying chiasmus detailed in the document  you provided, I have evaluated the six sermon excerpts. My analysis applies a synthesis of  the most commonly cited, rigorous criteria, including: balance (equal length and number  of elements), clear inversion (a defined A-B-C-B’-A’ structure), verbal parallelism (use  of identical or rare keywords, not just themes), dominance (focus on central, significant  ideas), natural boundaries, and cumulative impact. 

The following analysis demonstrates that these excerpts do not manifest valid chiastic  patterns. While the modern analyst has bolded keywords, the proposed structures fail to 

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meet the objective standards set by scholars such as Welch, Blomberg, and Thomson, and  instead fall into many of the “fallacies” outlined by Boda and Wright. 

Evaluation of Excerpts 

Excerpt 1 (March 14, 1812 – Text 1) 

• Proposed Keywords: existence, eternity, spirituality, independence, and  immutability / spirituality, independence, and immutability, omnipresence and  infinity, eternity. 

• Analysis: This excerpt does not form a chiasm. It lacks a true inverted parallel  structure. The proposed elements appear in a linear sequence (A-B-C / C-D-B), not  a clear A-B-C-C’-B’-A’ arrangement. The repetition is not of the same words but  of a set of attributes, and the order does not invert; “spirituality, independence, and  immutability” appears in the first half and is then repeated in the same order in the  second half. This is a simple repetition or an inclusio (bookending), not a chiasm.  Furthermore, the “center” is not a distinct turning point but a continuation of the  list. 

• Conclusion: This is a case of parallel repetition, not chiastic inversion. It violates  Welch’s criterion of Balance and Centrality, and aligns with Boda’s “Arbitrary  Labelling” error. 

Excerpt 2 (March 14, 1812 – Text 2) 

• Proposed Keywords: connected to our wills, will their existence, cannot, not  within our control, connection, infinite power. 

• Analysis: This excerpt is highly problematic for chiastic identification. The  proposed keywords are not parallel in form or meaning. “Cannot” is a generic  negative auxiliary verb, while “not within our control” is a descriptive phrase. The  proposed elements are disparate and do not form an inverted parallel pair. The  analyst appears to be forcing a relationship between “connected” and “connection,” which are different parts of speech and separated by a significant amount of text,  without establishing a coherent pairing for the other terms. 

• Conclusion: The excerpt fails to meet even the most basic criteria for a chiasm,  such as clear verbal parallelism and balance. This exemplifies Wright’s  “Frequency Fallacy” (using a common word like “cannot”) and Boda’s “Arbitrary  Labelling.” 

Excerpt 3 (January 24, 1814 – Text 1) 

• Proposed Keywords: law, unregenerate, violate, condemn, condemn, law, just, great & powerful, own law, perfections, unchangeable, deny himself, nullify his  own law.

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• Analysis: This excerpt demonstrates a series of statements about God’s law, but no  coherent chiastic structure emerges. The keywords are not arranged in an inverted  order. The repetition of “law” and “condemn” is linear and thematic. The proposed  structure appears to be a series of parallel thoughts without the necessary inversion  (e.g., A-B-C / C’-B’-A’). The central portion (“It is God’s own law”) is not  presented as a pivotal, inverted crossing point but as a continuation of the  argument. This is more indicative of rhetorical repetition for emphasis than of  deliberate chiastic design. 

• Conclusion: The excerpt lacks the defining characteristic of a chiasm: inversion.  The parallels are thematic and sequential, not structural. This aligns with Patrick’s  criterion of Weight, as the parallels are between common, insubstantial words. 

Excerpt 4 (January 24, 1814 – Text 2) 

• Proposed Keywords: improper, father, enemies, dear children, disturb &  offend, filthy conversation, tempt, rebellion, hatred &  

opposition, parent, adulterate, portion, distinguishing reward, fidelity & love. • Analysis: This excerpt is an extended rhetorical question that uses parallelism to  contrast a father’s proper care with an improper action. However, it is not a chiasm.  The keywords are presented in a roughly linear sequence, building a scenario and  then concluding with a rhetorical question that revisits the parent motif. There is no  clear inversion of the sequence. The presence of a father/parent inclusion and  thematic contrasts does not constitute a chiastic structure. As Dewey notes, such  thematic parallels are often too abstract to prove a structural pattern. 

• Conclusion: The pattern is one of conceptual parallelism and inclusio, not chiastic  inversion. This fails Welch’s criterion of Competition with Other Forms, as a  simpler rhetorical structure (rhetorical question with framing) more readily  accounts for the text. 

Excerpt 5 (March 16, 1815 – Text 1) 

• Proposed Keywords: church, individual Christian, training it up, small  beginnings, glorious body, established, simple principles, little, required, small  degree of light, instruction, coming of Christ, increased, higher degree of  purity, eternal excellency, consummation, perfection, heaven. 

• Analysis: This is a long, narrative description of the church’s development. The  proposed “keywords” are a mix of metaphors and concepts that follow a  chronological and qualitative progression, not an inverted order. The text moves  from the church’s establishment to its future perfection. There is no discernible  point where the sequence is reversed and recapitulated. To claim this is a chiasm  would require abstracting the text into arbitrary “headings” (e.g., “small  beginnings” / “eternal excellency”), which is the very “Chiasmus by headings” fallacy that Thomson warns against. The sheer number of non-parallel, narrative  elements violates Welch’s Density and Dominance criteria. 

• Conclusion: The proposed structure is a classic example of eisegesis. It imposes a  chiastic grid onto a straightforward linear narrative. This violates Blomberg’s first 

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criterion (there is no problem with the conventional outline) and represents  Wright’s “Arbitrary Division” and “Arbitrary Labeling” fallacies. 

Excerpt 6 (March 16, 1815 – Text 2) 

• Proposed Keywords: privileges, promises, temporal  

prosperity, health, abundance, temporal, enjoyed without inward  

sanctification, external or ceremonial holiness, Christian church, peculiar  privileges, earthly, spiritual nature. 

• Analysis: Like the previous excerpt, this text compares the old and new  dispensations in a linear fashion. The keywords establish a contrast between  the temporal blessings of the Old Covenant and the spiritual blessings of the New.  While this is a clear antithetical parallelism, it is not a chiastic structure. The  elements are presented as a simple contrast (A versus B), not as a complex inverted  pattern (A-B-C-C’-B’-A’). There is no inversion; it is a comparative exposition. 

• Conclusion: The excerpt exhibits semantic or conceptual antithetical parallelism,  but not structural chiastic inversion. This represents a failure to distinguish between  a common literary device (parallelism) and the specific form of a chiasm, as  discussed by scholars like Breck and Welch. 

Overall Conclusion 

In none of the six excerpts does the analyst’s proposed chiastic pattern hold up under  rigorous scrutiny. The primary failures are: 

1. Lack of Inversion: The core requirement of chiasmus—the A-B-C...C’-B’-A’ reversal—is absent. Most excerpts show simple repetition or linear progression. 2. Abstract and Thematic Parallels: The proposed parallels are largely conceptual  or thematic, not based on the repetition of specific, rare, or dominant keywords, as  required by scholars like Welch, Clark, and Thomson. 

3. Violation of Natural Boundaries: The proposed structures do not align with the  natural grammatical and rhetorical units of the text. The analyst appears to have  cherry-picked keywords from a continuous narrative flow, ignoring the  “mavericks” (non-conforming elements), a key error identified by Welch and  Wright. 

4. Arbitrary Labeling: The analyst is using broad, subjective labels (e.g., “eternity,” “spirituality”) to create an illusion of balance, a classic sign of eisegesis criticized  by Boda, Wright, and Thomson. 

The cumulative impact of the evidence, following the scholarly consensus in the provided  document, is that these excerpts are not chiastic. The patterns identified by the modern  analyst are the product of selective reading and thematic grouping, not of deliberate,  structurally inverted composition by the Reverend Shurtleff.

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Here is the response from Gemini (https://gemini.google.com/share/474f791ad0fb); I set it  forth below in bright pink font for ease of differentiating from other responses; the  uploaded 64-page Chiasmus Criteria document is linked to after each paragraph of the  response online at that URL and can be downloaded for the reader to see): 

Based on the criteria and characteristics of chiasmus provided in the scholarly document,  an evaluation of the six excerpts from the sermons of Reverend Roswell Shurtleff indicates  that they do not manifest rigorous chiastic patterns. The analysis below applies the  “descriptive” and “prescriptive” laws of chiasmus to each text. 

General Observations and Criteria 

To be identified as a valid chiasm, a text must generally meet several requirements: 

• Precisely Inverted Order: The symmetrical elements must appear in a mirrored  sequence (e.g., A-B-C-C’-B’-A’). 

• Turning Point at the Center: The center must serve as a “turning point” where a  shift in thought often occurs before the original trend is resumed. 

• Cumulative Impact: The validity of a chiasm depends on the cumulative impact of  parallels in content, form, and language. 

• Significant Catchwords: Scholars caution against the selective use of commonly  occurring words (e.g., “law” or “God”) to force a pattern, as rarer words are more  significant indicators. 

Evaluation of the Excerpts 

March 14, 1812 -- Text 1 

• Proposed Structure: Existence (A), eternity (B), spirituality, independence, and  immutability (C) ... spirituality, independence, and immutability (C’), omnipresence  and infinity (D), eternity (B’). 

• Analysis: This excerpt exhibits some verbal repetition, specifically with “eternity” and the list of divine attributes. However, it fails the requirement of precisely  inverted order because the initial “existence” (A) has no corresponding terminal  parallel, and “omnipresence and infinity” (D) appears as an outlier. Furthermore,  the use of an ellipsis suggests that the “whole stretch of text” is not involved, which  is a criterion for establishing chiasmus. 

March 14, 1812 -- Text 2 

• Proposed Structure: Connected to our wills (A), will their existence (B) ...  cannot/not within our control (C), God (D), connection (A’), infinite power (E). • Analysis: While the text parallels human limitations with divine power, it lacks a  chiastic arc. There is no shift and reversion at a central point. The repetition of the  concept of “connection” (A and A’) is linear rather than inverted, failing the  requirement for an inverse sequence of three or more members.

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January 24, 1814 -- Text 1 

• Analysis: This passage relies heavily on the repetition of the word “law.” Scholars  such as Ian Thomson and David Clark warn that the selective use of commonly  occurring words to produce a chiasmus is a “questionable procedure”. The text  appears to be a repetitive rhetorical emphasis on the authority of the law rather than  a structured literary chiasm. It lacks the “symmetry of pericopes” or “similarity of  content” required for a closed chiastic form. 

January 24, 1814 -- Text 2 

• Analysis: This excerpt uses an analogy comparing a “father” to a “parent,” but the  structure is a straight progression from a negative hypothetical to a positive  rhetorical question. There are no multiple sets of correspondences paired in  inverse sequence. The themes of “hatred & opposition” and “fidelity & love” are  antithetical but do not form a central hinge or “turning point” around which other  elements are mirrored. 

March 16, 1815 -- Text 1 

• Analysis: This text describes a chronological and spiritual progression (“small  beginnings” to “perfection”). It is a linear narrative of growth rather than a  concentric structure. It fails the “threefold test” of gathering all data with  

simplicity, as the “analyst” has selectively bolded terms that follow a temporal  sequence rather than a chiastic pattern. 

March 16, 1815 -- Text 2 

• Analysis: This passage contrasts the “old dispensation” with the “new” and  “temporal” blessings with “spiritual nature.” Although the word “privileges” is  repeated at the beginning and end, there is no precisely inverted order of the  intervening elements. It is a standard comparative structure that does not meet the  “rigid set of criteria” required to be viewed as a conscious chiastic design. 

Conclusion: The modern analyst’s bolded terms identify thematic parallels, but they do  not constitute a “quantifiable” or “credible” extended chiasmus under the standards of  scholars like Blomberg or Thomson. These patterns likely exist “in the eye of the  beholder” rather than as a deliberate compositional tool used by Reverend Shurtleff. 

I conclude that the results of AI analysis of sermons delivered by the Reverend Shurtleff does not  particularly help Bell’s argument. If Hyrum Smith indeed did listen to over a thousand of  Reverend Shurtleff’s sermons and discerned the presence of chiasmus therein—not to mention  that he did understand therefrom the nature of “laying down heads” as a process by which  chiasmus can be created in dictated text and thereafter conveyed that information to his brother  Joseph, the burden of proof and the burden of persuasion rests with the proponent of such an 

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idea. If I were the client’s interviewer I would press some questions and hope for more  convincing answers. 

Do Dartmouth’s Rhetoric Students Help in the Cause? 

Thinking Bell might get some help from a student of rhetoric at Dartmouth, I sent the following  self-explanatory inquiry to ChatGPT and received its response (all in red font below): 

I will quote below a composition written in ca. 1824–1828 by Edward Mitchell, while a  student studying at Dartmouth College. In it, he defines the aims of Christian Eloquence:  to “elevate a world of intelligent beings from a state of vice and degradation, to virtue and  happiness.” He closes by reviewing the role of Christian eloquence in missionary work,  globally. 

In light of the “Chiasmus Criteria and Characteristics” document I uploaded previously,  please perform the same sort of analysis of the following text by Mitchell . . . . .  

From: https://collections.dartmouth.edu/archive/text/mitchell/diplomatic/mitchell P044_A-3_5-diplomatic.html 

At the commencement of the Christian Era, Eloquence had long existed in Greece and  Rome, but the introduction of Christianity ushered into the world a new species, [of  eloquence]; inferior in no respect, [in its operation], to them, and in its origin, its aim, and  its successes as far transcending them, as the heavens do the earth. This is that, which may  be denominated Christian, or pulpit eloquence. When we speak of Christian eloquence we  do not mean, that at a particular time, and at a general conclave, a method was adopted,  rules were furnished, and direction given for a species of eloquence, which should bear  this name; but that at a certain period an interesting event took place, and a commission  was given, which furnished occasion for eloquence to be enlisted into a service, in which it  had not previously been employed. The introduction of the system of “life and  immortality,” the inspiration of men unaccustomed, before, to the harangues of a public  assemblies, to proclaim this scheme of saving truth to a ruined world, and to urge the  acceptance offered grace, were the circumstances, which gave rise to Christian eloquence. 

The aim of Christian eloquence is as noble, as its origin was benevolent. Its great object is  to elevate a world of intelligent beings from a state of vice and degradation, to virtue and  happiness. The eloquence of Demosthenes, especially that of the Philippics, has long been  admired; not simply for those wonderful oratorical powers possessed by the orator, but for  his noble aim in his orations to his countrymen. Philip of Macedon at war with some of the  neighboring states, and threatening A the rest of Greece, had struck terror and dismay  among the Athenians. While their spirits were drooping [into cowardly apathy, and their  arms palsied g; the aim of the orator was to arouse them from their stupidity, to reinspire  them with their former love of liberty, to unite their divided council, and to produce  energetic and harmonious efforts to repel invasion and support their independence.

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Such was the noble aim of the orator; and he must have commanded the admiration of the  world, even though, though his eloquence had been less powerful and fascinating. But how  much more worthy of admiration, for its grandeur and benevolence, is the aim of Christian  eloquence? Not a small extent of territory, merely, is threatened with invasion, but a world.  

Not exposure to the chains of political slavery; but the actual bondage of the “strong man  armed.” Not exposure to the unjust domination of an earthly tyrant; but to the just  displeasure of the King of Heaven. To meliorate the condition of such a world; to deliver  from such bondage, to reconciled to such a King, is the aim of Christian eloquence. The  Christian Orator would indeed inspire with the love of liberty; but it is the liber ty of the  sons of God! He would urge to break off the shackles of slavery; but it is the slavery of sin!  He would press to actions; but they are the actions of Christian virtue! He would beget a  love of country; but it is of a “better country”! In a word, to set forth the excellencies of an  illustrious Savior, and to direct men to Heaven [and felicity] through Him, is the noble aim  of Christian eloquence. It is to eloquence having such aim, that Angels, methinks, would  listen with delight. 

The successes, which have attended Christian eloquence, show its excellency and its  power. A few men of obscure extraction, mostly unaccustomed to the addresses of public  assemblies, with no pretense to the excellency of speech, and those attracting manners  calculated to influence an astonished people, contemned by their own countrymen, present  themselves with a most commanding eloquence. Travelling through Palestine, Asia minor,  Greece, and Rome, associating others with themselves, they opened the way for a series of  successors, who have appeared for the space of eighteen hundred years. Favored with a  holy unction, which does not necessarily accompany the political and judicial orator,  Christian eloquence has wrought a wonderful change, and has met with glorious success  among the nations. From among the Jews, its first and most virulent opposers, Christian  eloquence made numerous converts to Christianity. 

Advancing to other parts of Asia, to the Northern parts of Africa, to Southern parts of  Europe, it found nations bound in the chains of their superstition, greatly attatched to their  ancient religion, and united to their Gods and their Priests by all the ties, by which every  recollection can be endeared. Yet such was the energy, with which Christian eloquence was  clothed, that it affected a complete revolution in the popular belief of many nations, and  inspired many hearts with better hopes of immortality. To combat the errors of corrupted  Christianity, at the reformation, Christian eloquence was the most successful engine. But  its greatest success is seen in the happy melioration of the condition of man, which is every  year progressing advancing. 

The response received from ChatGPT was as follows: 

I will apply the same formal chiastic-test method used previously, now to Mitchell’s  composition. Because this is a continuous discourse, I will first identify the strongest 

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plausible macro-structure (what an advocate would claim), and then test it rigorously  against the governing criteria. 

I. Global Structural Hypothesis (Best-Case Reconstruction) 

A modern analyst attempting to find chiasmus here would likely propose a large-scale  thematic ring: 

A — Origin of Christian eloquence (introduction of Christianity; commission; new  species) 

B — Aim defined (elevate world from vice → virtue) 

C — Classical comparison (Demosthenes; political liberation) 

D — Superiority of Christian aim (spiritual liberation; salvation) [center candidate] C′ — Successes in apostolic age (missionary expansion across classical world) B′ — Continuing effects (conversion of nations; reform; moral elevation) A′ — Ongoing global mission and progressive improvement of mankind 

This is the strongest possible charitable reconstruction. The question is whether it  withstands disciplined testing. 

II. Pair-by-Pair Evaluation 

1. A / A′ — Origin vs Ongoing Expansion 

A (opening): 

Christian eloquence arises from a historical event (introduction of Christianity, apostolic  commission). 

A′ (ending): 

Christian eloquence continues globally, progressively improving mankind. Test: 

• Lexical recurrence: none (no repeated terminology like “origin,” “commission,” etc.)  

• Conceptual equivalence: weak (origin ≠ expansion)  

• Structural function: not parallel (historical explanation vs forward-looking  conclusion)  

Result: 

Fails closure requirement (Welch; Freedman). A true chiasm returns to its starting  conceptual ground; here it moves forward instead.

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2. B / B′ — Aim vs Effects 

B: Aim = elevate mankind from vice → virtue 

B′: Effects = conversion, reform, improved condition 

Test: 

• Relationship: cause → effect (linear), not mirrored equivalence  • Lexical repetition: none  

• Grammatical parity: absent  

Result: 

This is teleological progression, not chiastic pairing. Dewey explicitly warns that logical  sequence (aim → result) should not be mistaken for inversion. 

3. C / C′ — Classical World vs Apostolic Mission 

C: Demosthenes and Greek political rhetoric 

C′: Apostles preaching across Greece, Rome, etc. 

Test: 

• Surface similarity: both reference Greco-Roman world  

• Function: not equivalent  

o C = illustrative comparison 

o C′ = historical narrative of success 

• Lexical hooks: none (no repeated names, terms, or phrases)  

Result: 

This is topical reuse of geographic setting, not structural mirroring. Under Watson’s  criteria, this is insufficient. 

4. D (Center) — Superiority of Christian Eloquence 

This section contains: 

• Expanded contrast (political vs spiritual slavery)  

• Elevated rhetoric (chains of sin vs liberty of sons of God)  

• Climactic restatement of aim  

Test: 

• Is it central? Yes, rhetorically  

• Is it structurally framed by inversion? No 

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• Is there symmetrical descent after ascent? No  

Result: 

This is a rhetorical climax, not a chiastic pivot. Freedman requires a center to be  structurally produced, not merely rhetorically emphatic. 

III. Local (Micro-Level) Testing 

We must also check whether smaller embedded chiasms exist. Example candidate passage: 

“Not a small extent of territory… but a world. 

Not… political slavery… but… bondage of sin. 

Not… earthly tyrant… but… King of Heaven.” 

Analysis: 

This is: 

• Parallel antithesis (A / not A / but B) 

• Triplet contrast structure 

Crucial point: 

This is NOT chiastic, because: 

• Order is not reversed (A → B, not A–B–B′–A′)  

• It is synonymous/antithetical parallelism, not inversion  

Another candidate: 

“He would inspire… liberty… 

break… slavery… 

press… actions… 

beget… love of country…” 

This is: 

• Incremental parallelism  

• Rhetorical accumulation  

Again: 

• No reversal 

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• No mirrored descent  

IV. Criteria-Based Diagnostic Summary 

Applying the core criteria from your uploaded document: 1. Objective Inversion (Welch, Freedman) 

• Not present  

• No clear A–B–C–C′–B′–A′ sequence  

2. Significant Lexical Recurrence (Clark, Dewey) 

• Minimal  

• No strategic repetition anchoring structure  

3. Balanced Correspondence 

• Units are unequal and functionally different  

• Pairings rely on thematic similarity, not structural equivalence  4. Marked Center 

• Rhetorical climax exists  

• But not structurally generated by inversion  

5. Whole-Text Integrity (Watson) 

• Entire text is linear discourse  

• No enveloping frame  

6. Avoidance of Artificial Imposition 

• Any proposed chiasm requires heavy abstraction  • Violates “no Procrustean forcing” principle  

V. Final Verdict 

This composition is not chiastic at either the macro or micro level. More precisely: 

• It is a classical rhetorical essay structured as:  

1. Definition of origin  

2. Statement of aim  

3. Classical comparison 

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4. Amplified superiority  

5. Historical demonstration  

6. Global application  

• Its dominant organizing principles are:  

o progression (origin → aim → expansion → results) 

o contrast (classical vs Christian) 

o amplification (increasing scope and grandeur) 

These are hallmarks of 19th-century rhetorical prose, not of chiastic composition. VI. Comparative Insight (Important) 

This text is particularly instructive because: 

• It does contain many features often mistaken for chiasmus:  

o repetition  

o contrast  

o elevated center  

o thematic return  

• Yet it fails every structural test.  

This sharply reinforces a key principle from your criteria document: 

Rhetorical sophistication ≠ chiastic structure 

VII. Concise Classification 

Feature Present Chiastic Value 

Repetition Yes Weak 

Antithesis Strong Non-chiastic 

Climax Strong Non-structural 

Inversion No Disqualifying 

Balanced pairs No Disqualifying 

Center Rhetorical only Insufficient 

Final Conclusion 

Mitchell’s composition is highly structured rhetoric, but not chiastic composition. Any  attempt to classify it as such would depend on imposed thematic symmetry rather than  demonstrable structural inversion, and therefore would fail under the convergent scholarly  criteria you have assembled.  

As I said concerning Bell’s use of AI for chiastic analysis of what presumably are the strongest  examples of chiasmus gleaned from over thirty of Rev. Shurtleff’s sermons, so can be said of the 

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rhetorical offering of a student of rhetoric who composed a rhetorical text at Dartmouth: I  conclude that the results of AI analysis of the composition prepared by Edward Mitchell at  Dartmouth—where, according to Bell “the explanation that resonates most directly, most  logically, the most rational explanation is laying down heads was in the Dartmouth curriculum; the rhetorical skills were in the Dartmouth curriculum; Hyrum Smith was at Dartmouth; chiasmus is in the Dartmouth sermons” (108:10–14)— does not appear to materially strengthen  Bell’s position.  

J. David Hoeveler Does Not Help Bell and Volluz 

At page 70, lines 20–21 of the transcription of the podcast, Bell has Volluz read from a slide  concerning “Chiasmus in New England Colonies.” Perhaps the one quotation that seems most  helpful to Bell’s thesis is from J. David Hoeveler, Creating the American Mind: Intellect and  Politics in the Colonial Colleges (Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc., 2002). That  book is widely recognized as a comprehen-sive, synthetic history of the nine colleges founded in  colonial America. Volluz reads Bell’s slide which cites Hoeveler in support of the statement that  “Colonial education emphasized Greek and Latin rhetoric, where chiasmus was standard.” That  is indeed a powerful statement in favor of Bell’s thesis. 

However, when Hoeveler mentions curriculum (as he does numerous times in his text), 44 he uses  it as a backdrop to discuss who was in charge or what philosophical shifts (like the move from  Calvinism to the Enlightenment) were occurring. He is not interested in the “mechanics” of the  classroom or the structural tropes of the period. The book does not appear to provide adequate  support for the statement quoted by Volluz and offered by Bell. Here is a breakdown of why this  Bell’s citation to Hoeveler is problematic: (1) the index to the book contains no entry for  “rhetoric,” and a thorough search of the text reveals no mention of chiasmus or inverted  parallelism. Hoeveler’s work is an intellectual history, focusing on the “intellectual architecture” and the political/religious consequences of the “American Mind.” He is interested in what the  students thought (Enlightenment, Moral Philosophy, Whig ideology) rather than the stylistic  tropes or technical rhetorical structures they may have been taught to use. Again, Hoeveler does  discuss curriculum (specifically on pages 32–39, 43–46, 85, and 122–26), but he treats rhetoric  as a pedagogical tool—a means of “active learning” through declamations and disputations. 

The statement Bell has provided contains two distinct claims: Claim A: “Colonial education  emphasized Greek and Latin rhetoric.” Hoeveler’s support for that notion is fairly strong. He  repeatedly emphasizes the “tongues” (Greek, Latin, Hebrew) as the foundation of the 17th and  18th-century curriculum (though learning to speak and write in those tongues may or may not be  accompanied by learning the rhetoric of those languages, about which Hoeveler seems silent. 

44 J. David Hoeveler, Creating the American Mind: Intellect and Politics in the Colonial Colleges (Lanham: Rowman &  Litlefield Publishers, Inc., 2002)—Hoeveler refers to curriculum on pages 32–39, 43–46, 54, 57, 60–62, 64, 75–76, 85, 122–126, 136, 143–144, 1501–151, 160, 173, 176–177, 214, 223, 242, 292, 325, 326, and 347.

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Claim B: “...where chiasmus was standard.” Hoeveler offers no evidence bearing on that  specialized rhetorical claim. This is a singular claim in the field of classical rhetoric or literary  structuralism. Citation to Hoeveler for the statement quoted by Bell and Volluz appears to extend  Hoeveler’s thesis beyond its demonstrated scope. He provides the institutional context (that the  classics were studied), but he does not provide data regarding the rhetorical features of language. 

Indeed, Hoeveler explains that his study “is not a history of the college curriculum in the colonial  era, although that subject enters at critical junctures” (p. x). He states: “this book brings all the  colonial colleges under study but it nonetheless takes an institutional approach, mostly chrono logical” (p. xi). For example, he treats curriculum in the colonial colleges by noting how Locke  and Newton were becoming “integrated with the older Puritan curriculum” at Yale (p. 57) and  how concerns arose there with introducing “William Ames in the required curriculum” (p. 62). 

Inspired by Bell’s use of AI for his podcast presentation, I put the three paragraphs immediately  above into three AI tools, to get a feel for the accuracy of what I state in those three paragraphs.  See: https://grok.com/share/bGVnYWN5_affdb89c-015c-43d6-a2cf-da929b613b64 See: https://chat.deepseek.com/share/n5e184aynqp0c72ujy 

See: https://chatgpt.com/share/69c4a105-e1c4-83e8-b3af-344a8530c59c 

Note: At first, referring to Claim B (that “chiasmus was standard” in Greek and Latin rhetoric taught  in colonial schools), I stated to AI that “Hoeveler’s support for that is non-existent.” In the third of the  above three paragraphs I changed that to say “Hoeveler offers no evidence bearing on that specialized  rhetorical claim,” which focuses on evidentiary scope rather than intent. And at first, I stated to AI  that the statement by Bell and quoted by Volluz “grossly over-extends Hoeveler’s thesis,” and instead  of “grossly” I have above used “appears to extend Hoeveler’s thesis beyond its demonstrated scope,”  removing my harsh language (which AI did not suggest I change but which I nonetheless changed  after the AI review).

Sacvan Bercovitch, Miller, and Cotton Do Not Help Bell and Volluz 

At 1:36:46 in the video of the podcast (page 70 of my transcription), reference is made to Sacvan  Bercovitch’s book, The Puritan Origins of the American Self, to Perry Miller’s The New England  Mind, and to “John Cotton (1630).” These sources are advanced by Bell to support the obvious  fact that the concept of chiasmus was known in the New England Colonies. Whether Bell should  have felt a need to cite to those three sources to make his point, and whether those sources  actually support his point, is addressed for a moment here. 

The Bercovitch book does not contain the word “chiasmus” or the word “chiasm.” Bercovitch  uses the word “rhetoric” a total of 39 times in his 245-page book and never once does he speak  of classical rhetoric of the Greeks or any other ancient society. Rather, Bercovitch uses the word  “rhetoric” to refer to the distinctive, imaginative language and symbolic mode through which  the New England Puritans constructed and asserted their collective identity, mission, and  meaning of America—a mode that blended figuralism, biblical hermeneutics, and cultural myth making to transform secular experience into sacred, national self-definition. Bell and Volluz, in  their paraphrase from Bercovitch, as it appears on the image at 1:36:46 in their YouTube  

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presentation, in fact -- consistent with the title of Bercovitch’s book -- refer to “Puritan rhetoric,” not classical or Greek or Hebrew rhetoric. Similarly, Bercovitch uses the word “inversion” ten  times in his book. He does not use the word “inversion” in his book to refer to the rhetorical  structure otherwise known as chiasmus but instead uses the word “inversion” to refer to the  Puritans’ hermeneutic strategy of turning traditional exegesis “inside out” by transferring the  source of meaning from scripture to secular history and transforming secular into sacred  identity—a rhetorical mode that collapses distinctions between allegory and history, private and  corporate experience, personal conversion and national destiny, whereby the colony is invented  “in the image of a saint” and the individual American self becomes the embodiment of prophetic,  national meaning. 

Similarly, Bercovitch uses the word “balance” five times and the word “structure” five times but  never uses the term “structures” or the term “balance structure” or the term “balance structures” and does not ever refer to the concept of chiasmus in connection with his use of the word  “balance” or the word “structure” but instead uses those words to convey the various ideas of  the Puritan effort to hold together and reconcile seemingly opposed realms—sacred and secular,  private and corporate, spiritual and political, individual conversion and national destiny—within  a single coherent interpretive framework, as well as the formal architectural arrangement (the  “structure”) of literary and historical works that embody this synthesis, whether through the  precarious equilibrium of competing claims (as in Foxe’s conjunction of ecclesiastical and  national history) or through the typological scaffolding (as in Mather’s Magnalia) that aligns  American figures and events with biblical and classical prototypes to demonstrate a unified  providential design.45 

Bell and Volluz append to the citiation to Bercovitch also a citation to Perry Miller. In Perry  Miller’s The New England Mind, Miller never uses the word “chiasmus” or “chiasm” and does  not speak of classical rhetoric or Hebrew rhetoric. He uses the word “rhetoric” 136 times in his  book but in none of those instances does Miller refer expressly or impliedly to the rhetorical  device of chiasmus. Miller does not use the word “rhetoric” to refer to classical rhetorical theory  or to chiasmus or any other rhetorical literary device, but instead uses the word “rhetoric” to  refer to a formal academic discipline within the Ramist framework of the trivium—one of the  three foundational arts (along with grammar and logic) that the Puritans understood as a divinely  authorized system of elocution and pronunciation, whose function was to ornament logically  derived content, to move the affections of auditors, and to serve as a legitimate “means of grace” in preaching, while remaining strictly subordinate to logic and theology. In his 523-page book  Miller never once uses the word “inversion” and never once uses the term “balance structure” or  the term “balance structures.” (Read and search the text at  

https://archive.org/details/in.ernet.dli.2015.228756/page/522/mode/2up) 

45 Read and search the text at htps://archive.org/details/puritanoriginsof0000berc/page/n3/mode/2up.

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The reference to “John Cotton (1630)” at the end of the slide at 1:37:34 (transcript page 70)  apparently is intended to be a reference to the famous farewell sermon of John Cotton (1585– 1652) delivered in 1630. Cotton was a prominent Puritan minister whose famous farewell  sermon, “God’s Promise to His Plantation,” in Southampton, England, to John Winthrop and the  Winthrop Fleet before they sailed for New England. He blessed their voyage, urging them to  establish a new society based on his strict Puritan principles.46 John Cotton’s 1630 sermon,  “God’s Promise to His Plantation,” delivered to Winthrop’s departing colonists, centers on 2  Samuel 7:10, a text often structured in Puritan homiletics through balanced, chiastic-like  antitheses or parallelisms between God’s actions and the duties of the colonists. While not  exclusively described as a classical chiasm, the sermon structure echoes a “threefold blessing” of  covenantal promises—secure placement, growth, and protection—that are mirrored by the  colonists’ duties to “root” themselves in God’s ordinances. The key chiastic/parallelistic  structures in the sermon are: (1) The Threefold Promise: Cotton breaks down 2 Samuel 7:10  (1630) into a structured promise: (a) Free-holder status, (b) Permanent possession (“move no  more”), and (c) Peaceable safety from the “sons of wickedness”; (2) the “Rooting” chiasm  (Inward-Outward): Cotton argues that God plants the people (outward action), so the people  must plant themselves in Christ (inward action)--If God plants the people (outward), then they  grow to bring forth fruit (inward) and if the people plant ordinances (inward), God will plant  them in safety (outward); (3) Backsliding Warning (Inverse Structure): Cotton warns that if the  people “rebel against God,” the “same God that planted you will also root you out”--This inverts  the promise of growth into a threat of destruction (planting/uprooting); and (4) Cause/Effect  Parallelism: The sermon highlights that God’s special providence (appointing a place) must be  met with the settlers’ dedication to maintaining a “pure” plantation. The contextual application  of chiasmus is this: The sermon functioned as a “three-point” argument aimed at justifying the  migration by connecting it to Davidic, Biblical promises. Cotton argued that just as God planted  David in a land of his own, He would do the same for the Puritans in New England, provided  they maintained their spiritual focus. Of course, the sermon was delivered not in seventeenth century America but in 1630 in Southampton, England. The point made on the slide at 1:37:34  that “By the seventeenth century, chiasmus was already in use in colonial America through  Puritan sermons, biblical interpretation, and classical education inherited from Greek and Latin  rhetorical traditions” is a point made by Bell and Volluz but it is not directly supported by the  citation to John Cotton’s sermon. 

Is Bell’s “Laying Down the Heads” Theory Consistent with Chiastic Characteristics? 

Is chiasmus as devoid of sophisticated characteristics as Bell asserts? He founds his “laying  down the heads” method on the notion that chiasmus features only a reversal in the sequence of  repeated words, phrases, and ideas, be they synonyms, antonyms, contrasting ideas, similar  ideas, identical phrases, opposite phrases and the like. 

46 See htps://bostonstory.co.uk/chapters/11-20/14-the-revd-john-coton/reverend-john-coton.html.

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Chiasmus in ancient texts consists not merely in a reversal in the sequence of repeated words,  phrases, and ideas. Other features of chiasmus entail a discernible center or pivot; balancing by  syntax, grammar, or number; the pairing of synonyms, antonyms, or conventional word-pairs;  framing devices such as inclusio or envelope structure; nested and compound patterns; long range or “distant” correspondences; dislocations in normal chronology or geography caused by  literary design; and, at times, subtle inversions that are clearer in the source language than in  translation. Some of the characteristics—such as “ballast variant” or “distant chiasmus”—are  recognized in the scholarly literature, while others are used less uniformly; but the underlying  point is sound: ancient chiasmus is often architectural, not merely verbal.47 

In the Old Testament, one sees immediately that chiasmus regularly works with more than  lexical reversal. It often marks a hinge of meaning. Leviticus, for example, has long been read  concentrically, with the Day of Atonement in Leviticus 16 functioning as the theological center  of the book; that is not simply a matter of repeated words, but of a whole legal corpus arranged  so that the center interprets the whole. At the smaller scale, Isaiah 6, Psalm 3, Psalm 8, and many  prophetic and poetic units exhibit what Watson and others describe as grammatical chiasmus,  alternating structures related to chiasmus, inclusio, and chiastic inclusio.48 In such texts,  adjective-noun inversions, verb-subject reversals, and antithetical pairings often help create the  crossed pattern. The Old Testament also supplies examples of what may be called  “dischronologies occasioned by chiasmus”: material can be narrated or grouped by rhetorical  symmetry rather than by strict temporal sequence, because the writer’s concern is to drive the  hearer toward the central theological claim. When this happens, the literary structure is not  ornamental; it is hermeneutical.49 

In the New Testament, scholars from Nils Wilhelm Lund onward have argued that chiasmus  appears not only in brief sayings but in paragraphs, discourses, and even larger compositional  units. Matthew 13:15 is a classic compact example: heart, ears, eyes are then reversed as eyes,  ears, heart. Yet the New Testament’s richer instances show additional features. In 1 Corinthians  14:1b–5a and Colossians 3:16, Lund identified central triplets that function as emphatic pivots,  while Ephesians 6:5–9 displays distant correspondences, inversion of associated ideas, and a  marked shift at the center from positive exhortation to prohibition and then back again. That kind  of patterning belongs with categories of distant chiasmus, antithesis, compound chiasmus, and  

47 John W. Welch, “Criteria for Iden�fying and Evalua�ng the Presence of Chiasmus,” Journal of Book of Mormon  Studies 4, no. 2 (1995): 1–14; John Breck, The Shape of Biblical Language: Chiasmus in the Scriptures and Beyond  (Crestwood, NY: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1994); Wilfred G. E. Watson, Classical Hebrew Poetry: A Guide to Its  Techniques (Sheffield: JSOT Press, 1984), esp. discussions of inclusio, chias�c inclusio, and related paterns; Nils  Wilhelm Lund, Chiasmus in the New Testament: A Study in the Form and Function of Chiastic Structures (Chapel Hill:  University of North Carolina Press, 1942). 

48 Watson, Classical Hebrew Poetry, 201–8, 343–48; Nils Wilhelm Lund, “The Presence of Chiasmus in the Old  Testament,” American Journal of Semitic Languages and Literatures 46, no. 2 (1930): 104–26. 49 James Burnside, “Does Chias�c Analysis Help Us to Understand Levi�cus 20?” BYU Studies Quarterly 59, no. 4  (2020): 143–72; Watson, Classical Hebrew Poetry, 201–8; Angelico Di Marco and related discussions summarized in  Bernard Witek, Bibliography of Semitic Rhetoric.

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grammatical chiasmus. The point is that the center often bears the argumentative burden: not  everything is equally weighted in a chiasm. The best New Testament examples do not merely  “mirror” earlier lines; they stage a movement toward a rhetorical apex and then return from it.50 

The Apocrypha likewise preserves more sophisticated chiastic phenomena. In Ben Sira, Patrick  Skehan’s work on “Structures in Poems on Wisdom: Proverbs 8 and Sirach 24” helped establish  that Sirach’s wisdom poetry can be organized by larger structural symmetries, not just by  isolated bicola.51 In Sirach 24, Wisdom descends, seeks a resting place, dwells in Jacob, and then  becomes identified with Torah; the movement is not random but architectonic, and the center of  the poem governs its theological claim about the localization of heavenly Wisdom in Israel.52 In  Greek Esther, especially Addition C, recent study has argued for an “hourglass chiasmus” in  which Esther’s prayer is placed at the constricted center of the narrative design; there the effect is  dramatic as well as formal, because the prayer interrupts narrative momentum and makes  supplication the hinge on which reversal turns.53 Wisdom of Solomon also shows broader poetic  structuring, as scholars of its poetic form have noted, and these cases illustrate envelope  structure, compound chiasmus, and centralization of theological emphasis rather than mere  word-order reversal.54 

The Pseudepigrapha furnish comparable examples, especially at macro-level. Studies of 1 Enoch  have pointed to lexical, syntactical, and rhetorical symmetries in 1 Enoch 1–5, where judgment  and blessing themes are arranged in a crossed pattern that heightens the contrast between the  righteous and the wicked. 55 More broadly, scholarship on the historical apocalypse as a genre  has observed that works such as the Apocalypse of Abraham and portions of 1 Enoch employ  multiple or large-scale chiastic designs. In those texts, chiasmus can order visionary material that is not strictly chronological in presentation, which corresponds closely to “dischronologies  occasioned by chiasmus.” 56 The effect is often to place revelation, judgment, or the elect  community at the center, while framing the whole apocalypse with matched openings and  endings. In such literature, chiasmus functions as a way of imposing sacred order on visionary  complexity.57 

50 Welch, “Criteria for Iden�fying and Evalua�ng the Presence of Chiasmus,” 1–14; Victor A. Pizzuto, “The Structural  Elegance of Mathew 1–2: A Chias�c Proposal,” Biblica 93, no. 2 (2012): 211–27. 51 Patrick W. Skehan, “Structures in Poems on Wisdom: Proverbs 8 and Sirach 24,” Catholic Biblical Quarterly 41, no.  3 (1979): 365–79. 52 Richard Kozman, Adam’s Wisdom and Israel’s Law: Natural and Scriptural Wisdom in Sirach 24 (PhD diss.,  University of Toronto, 2020); Michael S. Kinzler, Temple Christology in the Gospel of John (PhD diss., Marquete  University, 2013), on Sirach 24’s theological architecture and later recep�on. 53 Sanrie M. de Beer, “The Power of Chiasmus: Exploring the Prayer of Esther in LXX Esther,” HTS Teologiese Studies  / Theological Studies 79, no. 1 (2023): ar�cle 8135. 54 Eric D. Reymond, “The Poetry of the Wisdom of Solomon Reconsidered,” Journal of Biblical Literature 121, no. 3  (2002): 387–400. 55 Carlos A. Segovia, “Thema�c and Structural Affini�es” [study discussing rhetorical symmetries in 1 Enoch 1–5]** 56 Andrew Erwin Steinmann, The Shape of Things to Come: The Genre of the Historical Apocalypse in Ancient Jewish  and Christian Literature (Anarbor: University Microfilms, 1994) **. 57 John Breck, Shape of Biblical Language, part 3, on postbiblical Jewish and Chris�an con�nui�es of chiasmus.

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The Book of Mormon deserves special attention because its examples are often both extensive  and internally subtle. Alma 36 remains the classic case. Welch and later scholars have argued  that its center is the cry “O Jesus, thou Son of God,” and that the entire conversion account is  arranged so that descent into anguish and ascent into joy meet at that point. 58 This is not merely  lexical mirroring. Alma 36 exhibits distant correspondences, antithesis, doctrinal centrality, and  what may fairly be called word-count or segmental balance, even if exact numerical equivalence  is not the only measure of artistry.59 Helaman 6:7–13 provides a different kind of sophistication:  at the apex stand “Zedekiah” and “Lord,” a pairing that becomes more impressive when one  recalls that the theophoric suffix in Zedekiah corresponds to the divine name; here the chiastic  force is stronger in the underlying Hebrew than in English translation, which is precisely the sort  of source-language subtlety the phrase “Hebrew and Egyptian word pairs in chiasms” is trying to  capture.60 More broadly, Book of Mormon chiasmus often works with conventional Semitic  word-pairs, as Duke has argued, and those pairings reinforce rather than merely decorate the  structural pattern. 61 

Jarom is especially relevant to “numerical chiasmus.” Older discussions sometimes treated Jarom  as containing little or no significant chiasmus, but recent work has argued the opposite: that the  brief book is carefully structured and that its numerical and thematic proportions are part of its  literary design. 62 On that reading, the book’s brevity is not evidence of structural poverty but of  compression. Numerical chiasmus in such a context does not mean numerology in a loose sense;  it means that counted units, balanced sections, or deliberately proportioned segment-lengths may  help signal the crossing pattern. That kind of analysis fits well with the idea of word-count  balance and compound chiasmus, because the pattern may be carried by segment size and  thematic clustering as much as by repeated vocabulary.63 And once one notices that phenomenon  in Jarom, one becomes more alert to similar compression elsewhere in the small plates, where  envelope structure and distant chiasmus can be easy to miss precisely because the texts are  short.64 

58 John W. Welch, “Chiasmus in the Book of Mormon,” BYU Studies 10, no. 1 (1969): 69–84; idem, “A Masterpiece:  Alma 36,” in Rediscovering the Book of Mormon, ed. John L. Sorenson and Melvin J. Thorne (Salt Lake City: Deseret  Book; Provo, UT: FARMS, 1991), 114–31. 59 Boyd F. Edwards and W. Farrell Edwards, “Does Chiasmus Appear in the Book of Mormon by Chance?” BYU  Studies 43, no. 2 (2004): 103–30; Neal Rappleye, “Chiasmus Criteria in Review,” in Chiasmus: The State of the Art,  ed. Donald W. Parry and John W. Welch (Provo, UT: BYU Studies; Springville, UT: Book of Mormon Central, 2020),  289–309. 60 John W. Welch, “Chiasmus in Helaman 6:7–13,” in Reexploring the Book of Mormon, ed. John W. Welch (Salt Lake  City: Deseret Book; Provo, UT: FARMS, 1992), 230–32. 61 David E. Duke, “Poe�c Dic�on and Parallel Word Pairs in the Book of Mormon,” in Poetic Parallelisms in the Book  of Mormon: The Complete Text Reformatted, ed. Donald W. Parry (Provo, UT: Neal A. Maxwell Ins�tute, 2007),  discussion of Semi�c word-pairs in Book of Mormon parallel structures. [fix foonote] 62 Stephen Kent Ehat, “Chiasmus in the Book of Jarom,” Interpreter: A Journal of Latter-day Saint Faith and  Scholarship 64 (2025) ***. 63 Ehat, “Chiasmus in the Book of Jarom”; Rappleye, “Chiasmus Criteria in Review.” 64 Welch, “Chiasmus in the Book of Mormon,” 69–84; Donald W. Parry, Poetic Parallelisms in the Book of Mormon:  The Complete Text Reformatted (Provo, UT: Neal A. Maxwell Ins�tute, 2007).

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So, stated more fully, chiasmus in ancient texts consists not merely in reversed order, but in a  disciplined literary architecture by which ancient authors could foreground a center, balance  clauses and episodes, frame discourse, join distant passages, intensify antithesis, exploit source language word-pairs, and even rearrange chronology or geography for rhetorical effect. In the  Old Testament and New Testament this architecture often clarifies the theological or  argumentative hinge; in the Apocrypha and Pseudepigrapha it can order wisdom poems, prayers,  and apocalyptic visions; and in the Book of Mormon it frequently appears in highly self conscious ways, from major masterpieces such as Alma 36 to more compressed and possibly  numerical designs such as Jarom. The strongest approach, therefore, is not to ask only whether  words reverse, but whether the passage exhibits a persuasive convergence of center, balance,  boundedness, density, meaningful correspondences, and rhetorical payoff.65 

John Albert Bengel, Chiasmus, and Laying Down Heads 

Beyond the podcast, the one place I know where the concepts of laying down heads and of  chiasmus are mentioned together is in John Albert Bengel, Gnomon of the New Testament, vol.  IV (Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1858) p. 410 (bolding mine in the quotation below). There Bengel  gives the following analysis of Hebrews 7:27 (and I place in bold font the relevant parts of his  discussion): 

27. οὐ, not) The Negation has a double force, and is thus to be explained : He has  no necessity to offer, 1. daily : 2. for His own sins also. Not daily, for He has done  that once for all. Not for His own sins, for He offered Himself, a holy sacrifice. There is besides in it an inverted Chiasmus. The first follows from the second,  the second is confirmed by the 28th verse. Often in Scripture two positions  (theses) are laid down, and are proved by the γὰρ, for, twice following them.— καθ’ ἡμέραν, daily) κατ’ ἐνιαυτόν, year by year, properly, ch. x. 3. The Hebrews speak of the day, instead of the day of expiation; whence some translate καθ’ ἡμέραν, on every day of expiation : but it retains here its usual meaning, so that  there is as it were a kind of indignant hyperbole (such as at ch. x. 1, εἰς τὸ  διηνεκὲς, for ever), intimating that the high priest was of no more avail by  offering yearly on a stated day, than if he had offered daily with the common  priests, ch. ix. 6, 7 .--τοῦτο) this is simply to be referred to His offering, not to His  offering also for Himself.--ἐφάπαξ, once) Rom. vi. 10, note; so below ch. ix. 12,  x. 10. 

Although Bengel does not use the word “heads” he means the same thing when he uses the  synonymous terms “positions” and “theses.” To “lay down heads” means to him to state two  positions or theses and then provide evidence afterward. Bengel’s analysis of Hebrews 7:27 is a  masterclass in structural exegesis. Bengel is known for his incredibly precise (and sometimes  

65 Welch, “Criteria for Iden�fying and Evalua�ng the Presence of Chiasmus,” 1–14; Rappleye, “Chiasmus Criteria in  Review,” 289–309.

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dense) structural analysis of the Greek text. When he looks at Hebrews 7:27, he is not just  reading the words; he is looking at the architectural logic of the argument. To understand what he  is doing, we have to look at how he unties the logic of the verse to show that the author of  Hebrews is not just making a list, but building a symmetrical argument. To understand his  analysis, we have to break down the verse: “Who does not need (A) daily, as those high priests,  to offer up sacrifices, first (B) for His own sins and then for the people’s, for (A’) this He did  once for all when (B’) He offered up Himself.” Diagrammatically, the breakdown of the  “inverted chiasmus”66 and the “laying down of positions” is as follows: 

Hebrews 7:27 states that Jesus does not need: 

• (A) Daily (to offer sacrifice) 

• (B) For his own sins (unlike other high priests) 

Bengel notes that the text then explains these in reverse (or “inverted”) order to prove  them: 

• (Bˊ) For his own sins: He doesn’t need to do this because He offered Himself (a  holy, sinless sacrifice). 

• (Aˊ) Daily: He does not need to do this because He did it once for all. 

The logical flow of Bengel’s argument is that Bˊ (His holiness) actually proves Aˊ (the  sufficiency of a single sacrifice). Because He was sinless, His sacrifice was of such high quality  that it never needed to be repeated. Bengel notes the “first follows from the second.” In his view,  Christ can offer once for all (Aˊ) because He is a perfect sacrifice who did not need to offer for  His own sins (Bˊ). The logic flows backward to support the finality of the act. 

When Bengel speaks of “laying down” positions (theses), he is referring to the formal rhetorical  style used by the author of Hebrews. In 18th-century academic terms, a thesis is a proposition or  a claim. Bengel observes that the New Testament writers often state two claims upfront and then  provide the evidence afterward, usually signaled by the Greek word γὰρ (gar), meaning “for” or  “because.” In this specific verse, the “laying down” looks like this: 

The “Positions” (The claims) The “Proof” (The reason why) Position 1: He does not need to offer daily. Proof: For (γὰρ—gar) He did this once for all. 

Position 2: He does not need to offer for His  own sins. 

Proof: For (γὰρ—gar) the law appoints men  with weakness, but the oath appoints the Son (v.  28). 

In Bengel’s technical view, the “laying down” is the proposition phase, and the rest of the verse  is the demonstration phase. He is essentially saying: “The author gives you two reasons why the  

66 Bengel is being somewhat redundant here when he uses the term “inverted chiasmus,” for chiasmus already is,  by defini�on, an inversion in the sequence of repeated words, phrases, or ideas.

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old system was weak, then immediately gives you two reasons why Christ is the superior  answer.” That is, the author of Hebrews defines the old system’s weakness by its daily repetition  and need for self-expiation, then proves Christ’s superiority through His once-for-all sacrifice  and offering of Himself. Bengel also is essentially saying that the author of Hebrews is an  excellent debater. He does not just make assertions; he “lays down” his conclusions first and then  systematically backs them up with “for” (“because”) clauses. 

One might compare this to Bell’s theory that all one need do to create a chiasmus from a hat is to  put into the hat a piece of paper with a list of conclusions written down, read it aloud, and then  immediately invent reasons to support those conclusions. If that is the case, it sounds almost  prophetic. 

The use of for (γὰρ) in this Greek text reminds me of the Hebrew use of For (י־ ִכּ, kî-), employed  for the very same purpose. The author of Psalm 23 places “for” at the exact middle of its text.  Measured against most all other characteristics, Psalms 23 does indeed manifest a wonderful  overall chiasm (notwithstanding the sparsity of internal parallelism)—an overall chiasm, as  Marlow notes, formed by the repetition of parallel ideas stated in reversed order,1 enhanced by a  most important inclusio (opening and concluding references to “the Lord” in vv. 1 and 6), 2 complemented by the central “thou” (referring to the LORD) in v. 4, 3 supported by an impressive  overall metrical balance (with 20 metrical beats in each half of the psalm, all arranged  concentrically), 4 reinforced with a meaningful shift at the center (the “for you” [kî] in v. 4, with  17 words on either side),5 and shored up by perfect word-count balance overall. 6 

1 W. Creighton Marlowe, “No Fear!: Psalm 23 as a Careful Conceptual Chiasm,” The Asbury Theological Journal 57/2-58/1 (2002-03) 65-80. 2 Id., at p. 70. 3 The concept of complementarity between the central element and the opening and concluding elements of the  inclusio of a concentric structure is described as a “criterion” or “rule” by Steven R. Scot in chapter two of his  Religious Studies Ph.D. thesis, “Raising the Dead: Finding History in the Gospel Accounts of Jesus’s Resurrec�on  Miracles” (Otawa, Canada: Department of Classics and Religious Studies, 2010), at p. 3 (“the wings should provide  a clear inclusio, and there should also be a clear connec�on with the hinge, which in turn o�en supplies the central  theme”; emphasis here supplied). 

4 Loren F. Bliese, “Structurally Marked Peak in Psalms 1-24,” Occasional Papers in Translation and Textlinguistics 4:4  (1990): 265-321; see also Marlow, “No Fear!” 70. 5 Duane L. Christensen, “Psalm 23:1-6 Transla�on, Logoprosodic Analysis, and Observa�ons,” The Berkeley Institute  of Biblical Archaeology & Literature (Web Ar�cle: 2005) at pp. 3-4 (“the arithmological center falls on the word  in the middle of verse 4, with 28 words on either side” and “the meaningful center” of Psalm 23 is ki “for you”). 6 Id., at pp. 3-4 (28 words on either side if “ki” and a “concentric composi�onal formula” of 17 + 23 + 17, with the  

“meaningful center” consis�ng of 23 words). This present paper is submited in connec�on with an interna�onal  conference �tled Chiasmus: An Open Conference on the State of the Art, held on the campus of Brigham Young  University in Provo, Utah, USA on August 15-16, 2017. In my oral presenta�on at that conference I chose to  elaborate on the concentric structure of Psalm 23 and on the concentric structure of the ten central chapters of the  Gospel of Luke to reflect on some of the characteris�cs of chiasmus (chiasms within chiasms; word-count balance;  metrical balance; correspondence between elements of the inclusio and the central shi� of the concentric  structure; and the like); here I men�on Psalm 23 only briefly. The video of that oral presenta�on is here:  htps://youtu.be/2ADwGbwcso4?t=1086 (I mistakenly refer to “ki” as “for thou” when it is the combina�on of “ki”  (“for”) and ‘at-tāh (“thou”) that produce “for thou”).

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Marlow’s proposal follows: 

A Complete provision: Yahweh is my shepherd; [therefore] I shall not want. He  makes me lie down in green pastures; he leads me beside still waters. (vv. 1-2) B Purposeful restoration: He restores me: He leads me in right  

paths for his name’s sake. (v. 3) 

a Our need for rescue: Even though I walk  

through the darkest valley, 

C No need for fear: b How to wait for rescue: I fear no danger, for you are with me; 

a´ His ability to rescue: your rod and your  

staff- they comfort me. (v. 4) 

B´ Purposeful renewal: You prepare a table before me in the  

presence of my enemies; you anoint my head with oil; my cup  

overflows. (v. 5) 

A´ Continual provision: Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of  my life, and I shall dwell in the house of Yahweh my whole life long. (v. 6) 1 

Interestingly, in the Hebrew text there is almost no repetition of exactly identical words. Indeed,  only four words are repeated identically in the entire psalm (all other words appear only once  each). Two of those four repeated words, however, are of utmost significance: Yahweh appears  in verses 1 and 6 and those two appearances in the extremes are complemented by term kî ’at-tāh in the middle — kî ’at-tāh meaning “for thou” or “because you” (referring to Yahweh)—part of  the central phrase “for thou art with me.” Indeed, the “for”—kî—in this “for thou” is the very  middle word of the entire psalm. “For thou” appears only one other place, also in verse 4 (part of  the smaller concentric structure within the central element of the overall chiastic structure). The  only other two words that repeat are lo (meaning “not”) in verses 1 and 4 and the word yom (meaning “days”) in verse 6. The chiasm is structured on ideas instead of on words. 

And yet, Psalm 23—chiastic because of the repetition of ideas in inverted order— manifests  little or no parallelism and virtually no repeated words, except, of course, for the very most  important word in the Hebrew language, Yahweh, stated expressly in the extremes and  unmistakably referred to in the middle, where the shift occurs, before which middle we as  readers today—like the psalm’s singers of old—refer to the Lord in the third person (“He maketh  me to lie down,” “he leadeth me . . .,” “He restoreth . . . .”) and after which shift at the center we  refer intimately to the Lord in the second person, praising him directly (“I will fear no evil, for  thou art with me; thy rod and thy staff . . . thou preparest . . . thou anointest . . .”). And the chiasm  of that poem is enhanced even by the balance in the number of words on either side of the central  

1 Marlow, “No Fear!” 70-71 (here adapted to include Marlow’s idea labels).

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phrase “for thou art with me” (with twenty-six words before that phrase and twenty-six words  after it), and by an equal number of metrical beats reflected in the Hebrew words in the two  halves of the psalm (with 20 beats before the center and 20 beats after the center), arranged  concentrically (4655 6 5564) as follows: 

A 4 beats (v. 1) 

B 6 beats (v. 2) 

C 5 beats (v. 3) 

D 5 beats (v. 4a) 

E 6 beats (v. 4b) 

D´ 5 beats (v. 5a) 

C´ 5 beats (v. 5b) 

B´ 6 beats (v. 6a) 

A´ 4 beats (v. 6b) 2 

Is the Prophet Joseph also dictating such chiastic features from Bell’s “parchment”? We do not  have the plates with their original Egyptian language and Hebrew rhetoric. So we cannot conduct  such analysis. But we can discern many characteristics of the chiasms with which the Book of  Mormon is conceded to be “riddled.” And those characteristics extend far beyond the reversed  repetition of words, phrases, or ideas that Bell looks for with his AI software. 

But I digress. Back to Bengel. A side note here parenthetically about the “indignant hyperbole” of the passage as he analyzed the author’s use of “daily.” Since the High Priest technically only  entered the Holy of Holies once a year (Yom Kippur), some scholars tried to translate “daily” as  “on every day of expiation.” Bengel rejects this. He argues the author uses “daily” as an  indignant hyperbole. He’s saying that the old sacrifices were so ineffective that the High Priest  might as well have been doing them every single day like a common priest; they never actually  “finished” the job until Christ arrived. Bengel suggests that by saying the high priests offered  “daily” (when the Day of Atonement was actually once a year), the author’s hyperbole has him basically saying: “The old system was so ineffective, the high priest might as well have been  doing it every single day; it still would not have reached the perfection of Christ’s ‘Once for All’ sacrifice.” 

2 Marlow, “No Fear!,” 70. Consistent with what one would expect for psalms—which were to be accompanied by  music and be sung—the psalms of course manifest metrical paterns; but that they also manifest chias�cally or  concentrically arranged metrical paterns should not go unno�ced. Other examples abound. For example, see  David Noel Freedman, Pottery Poetry, and Prophecy: Studies in Early Hebrew Poetry (Winona Lake, Indiana:  Eisenbrauns, 1980), pp. 9 & 246-259 (Psalm 113 and the Song of Hannah, 1 Sam. 2); see also Loren F. Bliese, “A  Cryp�c Chias�c Acros�c: Finding Meaning From Structure in the Poetry of Nahum,” Journal of Translation and  Textlinguistics 7/3 (1995) 48-81, at p. 48 (“metrical chiasmus . . . in the prophe�c books and Psalms [is] the  dominant patern of Hebrew poetry”). Says Bliese, “Metrical chiasmus is likely to be the most difficult to translate  in its func�on of marking peak. No transla�on will show whether the original poem was chias�c or homogeneous.”  Loren F. Bliese, “Symmetry and Prominence in Hebrew Poetry: With Examples from Hosea,” in Ernst Richard  Wendland, Continuity and Discontinuity in Hebrew Poetic Design: Patterns and Points of Significance in the  Structure and Setting of Psalm 30 (New York: United Bible Socie�es, 1994) 67-94, 92.

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Bengel’s use of “heads” in his discussion of a beautiful chiasmus is not at all similar to Bell’s. Bell treats chiasmus as a simple thing (93:5–7) and decries observations of others who characterize it as complex (8:15–9:9). But when one compares what Bengel has to say about a  simple chiasmus in one verse in the book of Hebrews to what Bell says about chiasmus in the  Book of Mormon (as solely the result of repeating words, phrases, or ideas in reverse order) one  sees reason to appreciate chiasmus as something beautiful and profound, not so simple as Bell  describes. The inverted chiasmus Bengel identifies is a rhetorical and logical structure in the  double negation of Hebrews 7:27 (“οὐ … ἀνάγκην ἔχει” – “needeth not … to offer up sacrifice”).  Chiasmus (from the Greek letter χ, “chi”) is a common biblical literary device in which two ideas  or clauses are arranged in a crossed or inverted pattern (often described as A-B-B-A) rather than  in simple parallel order (A-B-A-B). The “inverted” aspect highlights that the logical relationship  between the parts reverses or crosses the surface order in which they appear. 

Bengel breaks the single negation into two distinct points (which he numbers 1 and 2): 

(1) Not daily (οὐ καθ’ ἡμέραν) – Christ has no need to repeat the offering day after day (in  contrast to the high priests’ repeated sacrifices). 

(2) Not for His own sins also (implied in the negation of “first for his own sins”) – Christ has  no personal sins requiring atonement. 

On the surface the verse presents them in the order of the high-priestly practice: “daily … first  for his own sins, and then for the people’s.” One might therefore expect a straightforward  parallel treatment: “not daily” and “not for his own sins” as two independent negations side by  side. Instead, Bengel points out an inversion: 

• Logically, point 2 (“not for His own sins”) is the foundation. 

• Point 1 (“not daily”) actually follows from point 2. 

Because Christ is sinless (He “offered Himself, a holy sacrifice”), He has no need to offer  anything for His own sins; therefore He also has no need for the daily round of offerings that the  law required precisely because of the priests’ own infirmity/sin. The dependency runs 2 → 1,  crossing the order in which the two negations are stated. That crossing is the “inverted  Chiasmus.” 

In schematic form it looks like this: 

• Stated order (surface structure of the verse): A (not daily) … B (not for His own sins  also) 

• Logical order (what actually drives the argument): B (no own sins) ⇒ A (therefore not  daily) 

The second point (B) is further confirmed by the next verse (Hebrews 7:28), which contrasts the  law’s appointment of weak, sinful high priests with the divine oath that appoints the sinless Son 

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“consecrated for evermore.” Thus the reasoning folds back on itself in classic chiastic fashion:  the later confirmation in v. 28 loops back to support the second (foundational) element of the  negation. 

What Bengel means by the “laying down” of theses or positions is a standard rhetorical/logical  move he sees frequently in Scripture. “Laying down” (Latin ponere, Greek τίθημι in the sense of  positing) simply means to state or assert two clear propositions (theses) as the main claims of the  sentence. These theses are not yet proved; they are simply put forward as the key points the  author wants the reader to accept. 

In this verse the two theses are precisely the two parts of the negation that Bengel numbered  above: 

(1) Christ has no necessity to offer daily. 

(2) Christ has no necessity to offer for His own sins also. 

Once these two positions have been “laid down” in the main clause, Scripture (according to  Bengel’s observation) typically proves each of them with a following explanatory clause  introduced by γάρ (“for”). He notes that this pattern—“two positions … proved by the γάρ …  twice following them”—occurs often elsewhere in the Bible. In Hebrews 7:27 the single explicit  γάρ (“for this he did once for all when he offered up himself”) directly proves the first thesis (not  daily). The second thesis (not for His own sins) is proved by the holiness of the self-offering  itself and is then explicitly confirmed by the contrast in v. 28. The “twice” therefore refers to the  two supporting explanations that follow the double thesis. 

In short, Bengel is analyzing the verse as a compact logical unit: Thesis 1 + Thesis 2 (laid down  with the negation) → proved by For … (v. 27) + confirmation in v. 28. That is not the type of  “heads” that Bell perceives Joseph placing on a “parchment” into a hat but it does reflect the  beauty of chiasmus as it appears in the Bible and the Book of Mormon. 

So, Joseph “Flubbed Up” When He Supposedly Invented Jacob’s Reference to “Heads”? 

It must be acknowledged by everyone that Jacob is reported to have written the phrase “I should  engraven the heads of them[ 67] upon plates” (Jacob 1:4). If Jacob’s statement (quoted by Volluz  at 106:11–15) had the additional language that I will here gratuitously tack on, then perhaps we  

could accept the assertion (107:3) that Joseph Smith knew not only of the concept of laying  down heads but also of the concept of then reading those heads aloud (in dictation) by repeating  the heads in reverse sequence and thus creating a chiasm. And yet it should also be  acknowledged that preachers in Joseph and Hyrum’s day—and non-preachers, too—used the  phrase “lay down heads” in various contexts without at all doing so for the purpose of creating a  chiasm. 

67 the sacred preaching, the great revelation, or the prophesying (Jacob 1:4).

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For example, in his “Liberty of Conscience” sermon of 30 November 1775, 68 Eleazar Wheelock  uses the phrases “took that opportunity to discourse them on the head” and “what has been better  written upon the head.” In 18th-century English (especially in sermons, treatises, and formal  discourse), the phrases “on the head” or “upon the head” (often “on this head,” “on that head,” or  “upon the head”) are idiomatic expressions meaning “on this subject,” “setting out the main  points,” “concerning this particular division of the argument,” “outlining the points,” “regarding  this topic/point/matter,” “summarizing the main ideas,” or “listing the main points.” This usage  is well-documented in sources contemporaneous with that period, including theological writing,  political sermons, and general prose. It derives directly from the common rhetorical structure of  sermons and discourses at the time: preachers and writers routinely divided their material into  numbered “heads” (main points, divisions, or topics). A typical outline might begin “I shall  discourse under these three heads…” or “The first head of my discourse is…” “Head” here  functions like “heading,” “topic,” or “point of argument,” not literally a physical head or  anything metaphorical like “hitting the nail on the head.” Examples from 18th-century texts  include phrases such as “on this head amply,” “I have nothing more to say on that head,” or  references to “heads of discourse” in sermons by figures like those in the American founding era. 

In Eleazar Wheelock’s 1775 sermon “Liberty of Conscience; or, No King but Christ, in His  Church” (preached at Dartmouth College on a day of thanksgiving; the Evans collection copy  linked to above is the standard edition), the phrases appear in exactly this sense. Wheelock uses  “took that opportunity to discourse them on the head” when he turns aside from his main  exposition to address or instruct a specific group (likely his audience or a subset, such as students  or the congregation) directly on one key topic or “head” of his argument—most plausibly the  nature of Christ’s sole kingship in the church or the implications of liberty of conscience amid  Revolutionary tensions. He then refers to “what has been better written upon the head” (or a  close variant such as an opportunity “to read what has been better written upon the head”) to  defer further elaboration, directing readers/listeners instead to superior existing treatments of that  same subject or point. This was a common rhetorical move in the era: the preacher acknowledges  the limits of his own discourse and points to better authorities on that particular “head.” 

The idiom is not unique to Wheelock; it appears across 18th-century religious and political  literature precisely to signal a shift to or summary of a specific topic within a larger argument.  Modern equivalents would be “on this point,” “on this matter,” or “regarding this subject.” There  is no literal or other non-rhetorical meaning here—the context is purely homiletical and  theological, tied to the sermon’s theme of ecclesiastical liberty under Christ alone. 

It also is a term that appears in English-language texts around the world in later times. See: 

• https://www.oireachtas.ie/en/debates/debate/dail/1929-02-27/49/ (1929 debate in Ireland  where, in the context of Irish parliamentary (Oireachtas) procedure, the phrase “laying  down the heads of the Bill” refers to an early preparatory step in drafting legislation, the  

68 htps://quod.lib.umich.edu/cgi/t/text/text-idx?c=evans;cc=evans;rgn=main;view=text;idno=N12062.0001.001

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“heads of the Bill” (also called the “general scheme” or “draft heads”) are a high-level  outline or summary of the proposed law, setting out the key objectives, main provisions,  chapter headings, and core policy intentions — but without the full, detailed legal  wording); 

• https://lawlens.in/doc/1a05195b-2afc-4f36-9b89-bb094aa12d9c (In summary, across the  document, the term consistently refers to the different categories or components of  compensation (or categories of claim/damage) in a personal injury or motor accident case — the standard breakdown used by Indian courts to calculate and award amounts under  the various recognized types. This usage is distinct from the Irish “heads of the Bill” (policy outline of legislation) discussed previously); 

• https://hcs.gov.in/hcs/hg_orders/201300000062023_8.pdf (Judgment of The High Court  of Sikkim, a city in India, stating on page 9, paragraph 10 that “There are a catena of  Judgments of the Supreme Court which lay down the heads under which compensation is  to be calculated”);  

• https://www.google.com/books/edition/The_London_Saturday_Journal/ekEwAQAAMA AJ?hl=en&gbpv=1&dq=%22lay+down+the+heads%22&pg=PA369&printsec=frontcove r (where the phrase, typical of the 1839 era, is “...not yet reached the stage of laying down  the heads of the Bill which they will finally introduce,” which in modern plain-English  rephrasing would be “they have not yet reached the stage of preparing (or settling) the  main outline (or general scheme) of the Bill that they will ultimately introduce”; see also  https://www.google.com/books/edition/Athenaeum_and_Literary_Chronicle/ImcvAQAA MAAJ?hl=en&gbpv=1&dq=%22lay+down+the+heads%22&pg=PA255&printsec=frontc over (same); and see  

https://www.google.com/books/edition/Selections_from_Cobbett_s_Political_Work/7lIJ AAAAQAAJ?hl=en&gbpv=1&dq=%22lay+down+the+heads%22&pg=PA225&printsec =frontcover (same) 

Isaiah and the Book of Mormon Only “Half as Long”? 

Volluz discusses how the book of Isaiah is “only half as long” as people think—because Isaiah is  “saying the same thing twice” (84:7–21). Volluz says that in response to Bell’s assertion that  “You only had to really write half a sermon and then repeat it back in reverse order and you  doubled the length of your sermon. It was very efficient” (84:4–5). This lays the groundwork for  Bell’s asserting that the entire 530 pages of the Book of Mormon could be created if Joseph  Smith (or someone) would simply “come up with a hundred pages of bullet points and then  reverse go back up to double it” (109:26–27). That is “the chiasmus effect” (109:26). 

The quantitative reduction argument advanced by Bell—that one may “write half a sermon” and  then reverse it to double its length—rests on a conceptual simplification of chiasmus that does  not comport with the phenomenon as described in the scholarly literature or as observed in  extended texts. The model assumes that the second half of a chiastic structure is mechanically  generated by retracing previously established elements in reverse sequence, thereby requiring 

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minimal additional compositional effort. Yet this assumption conflates formal reversibility with  compositional sufficiency. In actual chiastic compositions, especially those identified in ancient  texts, the inverted elements are rarely mere repetitions; they frequently involve semantic  development, syntactic variation, thematic intensification, or rhetorical transformation. As your  own compiled criteria document demonstrates, scholars consistently require not only inversion  but also meaningful correspondence, density of linkage, and a central pivot of substantive  significance.69 The result is that the second half of a chiasm typically demands as much  compositional intentionality as the first. Bell’s model therefore risks treating chiasmus as a labor saving device when, in practice, it functions as a structuring constraint that often increases  compositional complexity rather than reducing it. 

The Nuances of Chiasmus and the “Laying Down Heads” Theory Do Not Mix 

The “heads” theory of chiasmus creation ignores some of the nuances of chiasmus that the  podcast does not discuss. Chiasmus in ancient texts consists not merely in a reversal in the  sequence of repeated words, phrases, and ideas. Other features of chiasmus—evident in the Book  of Mormon, which Bell himself admits is riddled with chiasmus—entail “distant chiasmus,”  “adjective-noun inversions,” “alternating chiasmus,” “antithesis,” “ballast variant,” “word-count  balance,” “geographic chiasmus,” “dischronologies occasioned by chiasmus,” “compound  chiasmus,” “envelope structure,” “grammatical chiasmus,” “numerical chiasmus” (as in Jarom in  the Book of Mormon), “Hebrew and Egyptian word pairs in chiasms.” These are all discussed by  various scholars who over the years have examined chiasmus in the Book of Mormon. 

One example comes to mind in light of what is shown in the visual at 1:32:07 (67:15–17). That is  on a page that presents an opportunity to note that Mosiah 5:10–12 presents the first chiasmus  discovered in our day in the Book of Mormon, and Bell and Voluz commendably do take note of  that (67:23–27, the year being 1967). But otherwise, they do not discuss anything about the  chiasm depicted there. One of the nuances of chiasmus is evident in that undiscussed image, that  of the use in that passage of a unique phrase, “left hand of God.” (See Mosiah 5:10 & 12.) The  Bell theory asserts that employing a “heads” method of composition ended up a chiasmus in  those three verses. But he does not take advantage of the opportunity to discuss how that chiastic  passage is embellished not simply with a repetition of the term “left hand of God” (which his  theory would otherwise account for), with the term appearing twice in the two corresponding  places in the Mosiah 5:10–12 chiasmus (verse 10 and verse 12). But the theory does not account  for the fact that the phrase “left hand of God” is not only unique to all of the remaining text of  the Book of Mormon, it is nowhere to be found in either the Old Testament or the New  Testament of the bible. Such use of unique or rare phrases in corresponding chiastic units is a  characteristic of chiasmus that is not accounted for simply by noting the reversal in the sequence  

69 See, e.g., Nils Wilhelm Lund, Chiasmus in the New Testament (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press,  1942); John W. Welch, “Criteria for Iden�fying and Evalua�ng the Presence of Chiasmus,” Journal of Book of  Mormon Studies 4, no. 2 (1995): 1–14; Craig L. Blomberg, “The Structure of 2 Corinthians 1–7,” Criswell Theological  Review 4 (1989): 1–26; Ian H. Thomson, “Chiasmus in the Pauline Leters,” Journal for the Study of the New  Testament 61 (1996): 37–53.

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of repeated words, phrases, and ideas; it is a characteristic manifest by the nature of the word or  phrase itself. Other examples of this feature of rare words and phrases in corresponding elements  of a chiasmus are found not only in the Book of Mormon but also in the bible. For example, the  words and phrases in the following chiasm in the book of Genesis are either unique or nearly  unique as follows: 

1 “his daughter-in-law” [Tamar] (11:31) 

2 “the land could not support both of them dwelling together” (13:6) 

3 “the Canaanite and the Pherizite” (13:7) 

4 “which cannot be numbered for multitude” (16:10) 

5 “the firstborn daughter” (19:31 + once in Samuel) 

6 “last night” (19:34; + once each in Kings and Job) 

7 “seize by force” (21:25) 

8 “be a witness” (21:30) 

9 “the Lord … grant me success” (24:12) 

9ˊ “the Lord … grant me success” (27:20) 

5ˊ “the firstborn daughter” (29:26; + once in Samuel) 

6ˊ “last night” (31:29; + once each in Kings and Job) 

7ˊ “seize by force” (31:31) 

8ˊ “be a witness” (31:52) 

4ˊ “which cannot be numbered for multitude” (32:12) 

3ˊ “the Canaanite and the Pherizite” (34:30) 

2ˊ “the land could not support both of them dwelling together” (36:7) 

1ˊ “his daughter-in-law” [Sarah] (38:24) 

The two chiastically related occurrences of the phrase “his daughter-in-law” (11:31 and 38:24)  appear nowhere else in the Bible. So also with the phrase “the land could not support both of  them dwelling together” (13:6 and 36:7). So also with “the Canaanite and the Pherizite” (13:7  and 34:30). And also with “which cannot be numbered for multitude” (16:10 and 32:12).  “Firstborn daughter” (19:31 and 29:26) is rare rather than unique in all the Bible, appearing only  in these two elements of the chiasm of Genesis and once in the book of Samuel. So also with  “last night” (19:34 and 31:29), appearing elsewhere only once each in Kings and Job). The  appearances of “seize by force” (21:25 and 31:31) are unique in all the Bible, appearing only in  these two elements of the chiasm of Genesis. So also with “be a witness” (21:30 and 31:52). And  so also with “the Lord … grant me success” (24:12 and 27:20). Similarly, Enos uses the rare  term “true faith” in two corresponding elements of the chiasm of the book of Enos (vv. 14 and  20). In all scripture that phrase appears only in these two places in the seven-part chiasm of the  book of Enos and in only two other texts, both found later on in the text of the Book of  Mormon—in Alma and 3 Nephi—both of which also are concerned with the relationships among  the Nephites, the Lamanites, and “true faith,” just as in the book of Enos.

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Ehat material: