There isn’t one. Goodness is a thing, not an abstraction. You have to experience it from the inside to know it. So much flows from this truth.
One of the original appeals of looking for chiasmus is that it is a form of poetry that would survive translation, even arguably if the translator didn’t know there was a poetic structure there.
And obviously that is true or we wouldn’t know about it.
That said, we sh0uldn’t overrate our ability to always discern a chiasmus. A lot of the poetic art is going to lie in taking an established form where people *expect* what’s going to be coming next, but then replacing it with something unexpected. In other words, the chiastic form allows for metaphors (equating two dissimilar things) without explicitly saying so.
There would likely also be a repertoire of established metaphors, things we don’t consider to be in the same category but that the ancient writer would have, which we know nothing about.
Some of this we might be able to figure out, using judgment and intuition (both alas fallible). Some not.
Anciently, letters were numbers and it was a bit of sacred numeralogy to see what the numbers add up to. And numbers had certain meanings.
That said, it is interesting that
1776 (Declaration of Independence) = 777
1788 (Constitution radified) = 888
In Congress, July 4, 1776
The unanimous Declaration of the thirteen united States of America, When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.–That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, –That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.–Such has been the patient sufferance of these Colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former Systems of Government. The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States. To prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid world.
There is a very interesting shift from the kings to the judges that involves a shift in religious authority and an outbreak of religious entrepreneurialism. Grant hardy’s ethnic breakdown thesis may be correct but I think it obscures more than it reveals.
Nephite modernity; Lessons from Nephite history ; Nephite civilization cycles
Let’s take a look at some more of the interesting questions and insights from this period.
There’s a saying among us that you can’t beat a positive with a negative. In other words, you can’t beat a vision just by telling people no, you have to supply them with some actual replacement for it.
While I generally agree, I’m not so sure that’s true for the sabbath. I have found that if I supply the negatives–if I refrain from doing stuff–God supplies the positives.
From somewhere out there, I think probably SF author Devon Eriksen
I run into these all the time, sometimes in the same discussion from the same person. And, ahem, may have been guilty of perpetrating them a time or two.
We presume you are all reading the duckstack for the humor, like this week’s heister ratings. It is after all funnier than the JG.
(Ed.–that’s damning with faint praise, like saying its funnier than a toothache.
Us, primly: Many toothaches are quite droll.)
But once you’ve laughed that over, stick around for the meditation on why God answers small prayers more than big ones.
P.S. Or maybe its just because there are so many more of them?
HT Sutton
I think that understanding chiasmus is important, because it is part of how related concepts are explained. For instance here, the point about contention is deliberately contrasted with the Holy Ghost. You don’t fully understand it, if you don’t see that.
Curse words get all their power from us. Any one who uses them is derivative of us. And to think they make fun of us for it? Its like making fun of the farmer for selling some of his food instead of eating it all himself. It’s like making fun of the generator for transmitting all its electricity.
There are two ways the sacrament is present in Lehi’s Dream. The first is the fruit (which is Christ) which is both fleshy and juicy. Blood and flesh of the tree.
What is the significance of the Nephite monetary system in Alma 11?
We cannot say for sure. Perhaps Mormon was just male-brained and liked esoteric trivia for its own sake (the system he describes does not seem to have been his own). However, we should probably assume that it has symbolic significance.
Why should we assume that?
The Book of Mormon is an extract from a copious collection of sacred and historical records. Our default assumption should be that everything was selected with a purpose by the editor. In fact, the section on the monetary system has every appearance of Mormon adding it in personally.
Recall that ancient societies were almost all massively more inclined to symbolism than ours is.
The Western way is to define a term. The definition should be as exact as possible. There is another way, though, which I got from the ancient Greeks. You define something by looking at the ideal or the paradigm of that thing. Then whether you call something similar but not quite ideal by the same term depends on whether making the connection in context is useful or not.
So lets talk about what a covenant is. We usually casually define it as a contract, but it would be better to think of it as a contract with enhanced features. As opposed to the ideal contract, a covenant is a mutual agreement that
