Biblical Chiasm

I should start off by noting the long break between my last post and this one. Things are busy and hectic and stressful and all the things that attend trying to do a PhD program here in the Bronx, and so I am not going to be so nearly a regular writer on here, mainly because of time restraints and responsibilities ... not to mention that until book 7 comes out we get further afield with some writing ... although I am sure there is still plenty of good stuff in the 6 books so far to be discussed - it is mainly that I must spend most of my time reading from right to left rather than vice-versa ... Ie studying Hebrew. But I did have an idea today for something on here, but it is not directly on the HP works, but rather just a little fun giving an example from the Old Testament of the literary device I have talked about on here of the chiasm (see link on left side bar), sort of just to kind of fill in more of a picture for those who find such things interesting. Actually I also sort of got a view on this one, today in Hebrew prose class, of another facet that you sometimes find in chiastic structurings. To recap what I have discussed before on it, a chiasm is a literary structure that can be found in prose, narrative, poetry etc. It takes its name from the Greek letter chi, which is roughly equivalent to the English x, the left half of which functions as a sort of visual representation of the movement in a chiasm, with the movement going down the top leg, into the cruxt, and back out along the lower leg. The two legs are composed of matching elements (A-A1, B-B1, C-C1 etc)and there may be any number of them (for one course in Genesis 1 through 11 the professor had us look at a HUGE, many paired chiasm that Gordham Wenham suggested as the structure of the whole flood narrative) and the cruxt can be one of two things. In a chiasm with an odd number of elements it will be the center element, and in a chiasm of even number elements it will be the common connection/commonality between the two inner most elements. Not only are all of the corresponding elements paired but there is a development between the first and second elements of a particular pair (ie there is correspondence, for example, between A and A1, but A1 is a development of the element in A), and the development is by way of the cruxt or center of the chiasm. So, a five part chiasm (as I will describe "Judah's Song" below, looks something like this: A ...B ......C ...B1 A1 Harry Potter As I have talked about, I believe the Harry Potter series to be a 7 part chiasm with book # 4, so I'll just recap there as an example. Book 4 is the center, so one of the keys to getting the meaning in Rowling's work is finding the element in the corresponding pairs, for example the introduction of the dementors in book 3 and Umbridge sending one after Harry in book 5, should can be understood by finding the same element in book 4 and testing out how X1 is a development of X by way of what is found in the cruxt. So (and here is a little defense of the PoMo position), to use our example of the dementors in books 3 and 5 ... where do we see the dementor in book 4? Actually in book 4 we get the fullest objective experience of a dementor, we have a dementor actually perform the kiss. On who? On the son of a ministry official who advocates the wizarding world's use of dementors as guardians. But the dementor's kiss is just the culmination ... Barty senior set that path in motion by paying more attention to his ministry career than to his son, long before Barty Jr ever became a death eater. Barty Jr. may be culpable for his choices to join Voldy, but Barty Sr. is no innocent man either. but for the point of chiasm, look at the common element in all 3 books: not just the dementors but the issue of the dementors in relationship to guilt. In book 3 we have the dementors introduced at the school because of an innocent man who is assumed guilty of being a Death Eater and killing. I personally have my doubts about Barty Jr's full culpability (due to factors of childhood psychology of how Barty Sr. raised him) but for here the important fact is that in book 4, Barty Jr. actually was a Death Eater and not simply presumed to be one, and he actually did kill his father, not just get framed by Peter Pettigrew like Sirius did. Finally in book 5 we have an innocent who committed no crime excpet being inconvenient to the ministry ... for which toad-woman sets not just one but two dementors on him. The progression is from an innocent presumed guilty in book 3 to a person who is not even presumed guilty of a serious crime in book 5 (simply "politically" inconvenient). This is the progression, but how is it arrived at by way of book 4 ... ask Dumbledore, he has known all along that it is a crock to be allying yourself with dementors, even against the guilty such as the death eaters, or allowing the kiss even for death eaters and murderers. That is how it all began and that is what yields the progression from employing dementors against the guilty (whether or not they should have been fooled by a ruse by the likes of Wormtail concerning Sirius is another story ... but we can give them the benefit of the doubt for our purposes here) to using them as weapons against the innocent. In short, in this particular chiastic pairing we learn that Barty Sr really was the one who begot Dolores Umbridge. Judah's Song and another element in chiasm "We said to my lord, 'We have an old father and a little child of his old age. Now his brother is dead, so he alone is left of his mother, and his father loves him." -Genesis 44:20 ("Judah's Song") Anyway, today I saw a chiasm in Genesis 44:20 ("Judah's Song"), and asked the professor if she thought it might be chiastic. She said she hadn't looked at it that way but, yes, seeing the chiasm in . What I noticed was that in the Hebrew there are also pairings within the separate legs that kind of differentiate the legs (the top leg and bottom leg) from each other. So, in this particular chiasm you have Judah beginning his answer with the father (Jacob - [A]) moving to the remaining son (Benjamin - [B]). The cruxt (C) is the non-remaining son (the "cover story" that Joseph was eaten by a wild animal) which begins the explanation of the unique situation described in the return leg of the chiasm, that Benjamin is the only son remaining to Rachel (B1) and the strong attachment that Jacob has for Benjamin (A1). What I noticed is that there is a commonality among the markers within each leg that differentiate the legs. So, the first leg (A and B) are marked by age description, "old man" and "young" brother. the second leg (B1 and A1) are marked by an almost sing-songy use of the 3rd masculine singular pronomial suffix, which sounds like a long "0" and means "his" (so adding it turns the word "horse" into "his horse" ... there are pronomial suffixes for 2 and 3rd person masculine singular, 1 person common [same form for both suffixes] and different ways they attach to singular nouns vs plural nouns ... and then they also get used as direct object suffixes when attached to verbs and different connecting letters pop up ... actually when you get into it Hebrew is a really cool language, but I know I may be marking myself as a nerd). Anyway, it was just sort of a new discovery for me to find a chiasm in which there were also distinctive markers or characteristics in the legs as wholes (not just the individual elements). Meaning The reason I asked the professor if she thought it to be chiastic is because chiasm is very structured thing ... but she had been talking about how rushed and hurried and nervous and "not put together" Judah's song seems, which is how the author is painting him now that he is in this situation where they need food, Joseph, who Judah (who maybe tried but was impotent in helping Joseph earlier when he was sold into slavery in Egypt in the first place) thinks to be just a harsh Egyptian ruler, has their backs up against the wall: they need bread and this guys is pushing them with questions about their father and brother and demanding that the younger brother be brought down if they are to be able to buy any food, and Judah finally convinces Jacob to let Benjamin go down to Egypt with him and then Joseph pulls the thing of putting the cup in the grain sack and has them arrested and is going to keep Benjamin as a slave for it and Judah is really up against it and so he basically does what he should have done all the way back in chapter and offers to stand himself in place of the younger son, in this case by suffering what happened to Joseph originally, being taken into slavery in Egypt. So he is finally really doing the right thing (rather than trying to settle for pulling a fast one on the other brothers, like in 37) ... but the guy is understandably very harried (How is that for an HP pun?) I think the narrator is doing "both ... and." There is this really hectic, worried, "come-undone" quality to Judah's speech, and at the same time there is the structure of the chiasm, that is ordered. I think it is delivered in a highly ordered chiasm because that is the message: the order implies meaning and getting to the real cruxt of the issue ... and Judah has to be pushed to this place where his back is totally slammed to the wall, and he is frantic and desperate (as evidenced in the rapid and sometimes overly repetitive quality in his speech), and he has to choose between being a life-long slave himself in Egypt or "sending his father's hoary head down to sheol in misery" by allowing Benjamin, and this time round he does the right thing by being willing to sacrifice himself in the stead of a the younger brother (Benjamin - but in a nice little twist, he also would be willing submitting himself to the same fate as the first younger brother, Joseph, by abandoned to slavery in Egypt) ... and this is what finally completely undoes Joseph and brings him to tears. Post-Script Anyway, like I said, I personally will only be able to write on here very limitedly for the indefinite future, but I just thought I would share that one since it was from my studies and we have talked a decent bit on here about chiastic structure.