Chiasmus in the New Testament

A Study in Formgeschichte

Nils Wilhelm Lund

• Publisher: The University of North Carolina Press
• Year: 2017
• ISBN:
  9781469640235
• Topic: Literatura
• Subtopic: Crítica literaria judía

This study is devoted to the tracing of the Hebrew literary influence of the Greek text of the New Testament. It discusses specifically one form, the extensive use of the inverted order called chiasmus, a form that seems to be a part of Hebrew thought itself, whether in poetry or in prose. Originally published in 1942. A UNC Press Enduring Edition -- UNC Press Enduring Editions use the latest in digital technology to make available again books from our distinguished backlist that were previously out of print. These editions are published unaltered from the original, and are presented in affordable paperback formats, bringing readers both historical and cultural value.

THE EPISTLES OF PAUL

CHAPTER VI

THE STYLE OF PAUL

The earliest literary deposit of the Christian tradition consists of the epistles of Paul. Even if it is conceivable, or even probable, that some of the sources from which the evangelists drew their material for their gospels existed in written form before the year 50 A.D., the gospels themselves had not as yet been written. Paul of Tarsus was born in a centre of Greek culture. We recall how a new Greek style was developed by the Asianic rhetoricians at the period of decline in the classical Attic style after 300 B.C., and how this new development assumed two definite forms, namely, the diatribe and the Asianic rhythm. Paul, however, was much more than a Greek; he was also a Hebrew of the Hebrews, who in Jerusalem acquired the training given to scholars of his own race. If, therefore, we should discover in his writings a residue which may not under any circumstances be made to conform to the patterns prevalent in the Greek rhetorical schools, this is merely what we should expect from a writer of his training and circumstances. Unless we feel free to assume that Paul took his Jewish training less seriously than his Greek education, we should naturally expect to find some traces of this training in his writings. Strange to say, these traces have been sought in his Rabbinical method of argument, of Scripture quotation, of allegorization, and the like, but rarely in his literary style. Whenever Paul does not measure up to Greek rhetorical standards, it has been assumed either that he is not interested in or that he is unable to write a literary style. Few students of his style have made the most of the observation, that his writings represent a “middle-type.”

Now, the epistles of Paul have always presented a great many-problems to the interpreter. Not only are they full of allusions to situations with which we are little acquainted, and they present modes of thought which seem strange to us, but they suffer also from a diffuse and repetitious style, which, at times, makes it difficult to construe his sentences. Even when there is no difficulty in following his thought, his literary style appears heavy and cumbersome. From the earliest times to our own days, we meet with writers who find Paul difficult to follow. In the early church we find one who discovers in the epistles of Paul “some things hard to be understood” (2 Pet. 3:16). Erasmus observes how Paul often “making a digression far away, doubles back on himself.” Norden, in spite of his warm admiration for Paul as a man, admits that only with great difficulty does he understand his writings, for the Apostle’s method of argumentation is strange, and his style is not Greek. Therefore, as the first step in our study of the Pauline epistles we shall give a few appraisals of Paul as a writer by men who have devoted themselves to such studies. These criticisms will give us a view of the real problem before us. We shall then through observation of the structure of a great number of passages in the Pauline epistles attempt to show how a comparatively simple solution is found in the application of the chiastic principle to these passages.

Archdeacon Paley long ago made some remarks concerning the style of Paul. They refer to “a species of digression, which may be properly denominated going off at a word. It is turning aside from the subject upon the occurrence of some particular word, forsaking the trend of thought then in hand, and entering upon a parenthetic sentence in which that word is the prevailing term.” Among such cases Paley quotes Eph. 4:8-11, of which passage we shall hear more presently.¹ In a sermon entitled “Transformation by Beholding,” on 2 Cor. 3:18, Alexander Maclaren, while quoting these words of Paley makes the following remarks of his own on Paul’s style:

This whole section of the epistle in which our text occurs is a remarkable instance of the fervid richness of the apostle’s mind, which acquires force by motion, and like a chariot wheel catches fire as it revolves. One of the most obvious peculiarities of his style is his habit of “going off at a word.” Each thought of his is, as it were, barbed all around, and catches and draws into sight a multitude of others, but slightly related to the furfoee in hand. And this gives at first sight the appearance of confusion to his writings. But this is not confusion, it is richness. The luxuriant underwood which this fertile soil bears, as some tropical forest, does not choke the great trees, though it drapes them.

Though the famous English preacher is inclined to hide the apparent confusion of Paul’s style by calling it richness, other writers have been less lenient in their criticism. Referring to the first two chapters of Colossians, Samuel Davidson² does not hesitate to call their style “loose and tautological,” and Julicher³ can allude to the “unwonted stiffness” of the same two chapters as being in Ephesians “substantially exaggerated and multiplied.” Cumbrous sentences, full of participles and relative pronouns, are the rule. Many other scholars concur in this rather unfavorable estimate of the style in the epistles of Paul. No less an authority than Friedrich Blass, while discussing the accumulation of participles in some of the sentences of Luke, whom he pronounces “never devoid of a certain amount of stylistic refinement,” takes a side-glance at Paul, and observes that this refinement differs “from the instances of accumulation in the epistolary style of Paul, which consists rather of a mere stringing together of words.” Blass, in comparing the periodic sentence of artistic style with the loose sentence of the oldest, less sophisticated writings, finds that the latter is, on the whole, the style of the New Testament, agreeing with the manner of Semitic models on which the narrative is based. This method of stringing together many sentences with a

is found in the gospels and appears tetious:

Another class of continuous style is that where the opening sentence is developed by appending to it a participle, or a clause introduced by

, or a relative sentence or in some similar way, since in this case also there is no end or termination in view; this manner of writing, which is freely employed by Paul in large portions of the Epistles to the Ephesians and Colossians, is indeed still more tedious and presents still greater obscurity than the simple linking together of the sentences by means of «ai.⁴

There seems to be unanimous agreement among scholars that the style of Paul is exceedingly verbose and repetitious, and that his sentences are loosely put together and hence difficult to understand. Blass, however, emphasizes the central point of the whole matter by directing our attention to the Semitic models of Paul. But neither Blass nor any other scholar has questioned whether it is fair to judge the style of writings, which for their models have Semitic patterns, by the canons of classical Greek writers. Much of the Pentateuch is likewise verbose and repetitious, but, as we have already seen in the leprosy laws, the repetitiousness may easily be reduced to a system, to a literary style, which is just as fixed and determinable as any style of the Greeks or the Romans, and which has just as much claim to our appreciation as any other forms that may come before us in the literatures of the human race. The literary patterns which were followed by the writers of the New Testament have not been known, and modern writers on the style of the New Testament have measured it altogether by Greek standards. Though all these writers have more or less correctly described the facts to be found in the epistles of Paul, they have all gone astray when called upon to explain these facts. To some “a digression far away,” to speak with Erasmus, has offered clear evidence of interpolations. The difference between passages in the same epistle which remind us of “the clear spring” and “the torrent” would be used as evidence of Paul’s nervous disposition or of his irascible temper. Other writers seem inclined to apologize for Paul, and they remind us of the difficulty of maintaining a good style while dictating, or while leaving a large share of the details to an amanuensis. The sincerity and ardent nature of the apostle together with the rush of his thought, as in the quotation from Maclaren, have been made to condone for his style. The picture of a man so occupied with his ideas that he had neither time nor inclination to consider the form of his message has been presented to explain why his epistles are what they are. With reference to The Second Epistle of Paul to the Corinthians, A. Robertson has observed that “the order is emotional rather than logical; a subject is not taken up, dealt with, and disposed of, but, like some strain in a piece of impassioned music, occurs, is lost in a maze of crowding harmonies, and recurs again and again.”⁵

These quotations from various writers might be multiplied. They all emphasize the same points, namely, digression, recurrence, and the indefinite termination of the sentence. The criticism is just, provided we agree that Paul’s style is to be judged solely by our own Greek and Roman principles of rhetoric. As soon as we approach his epistles with the standards provided for us by the Mastic and alternating order of ideas, so conspicuous a feature of Hebrew style, we have a new instrument for the investigation and appraisal of Paul’s style.

The late Johannes Weiss, though he is comparing Paul with the Greek rhetoricians, has, nevertheless, given some attention to two features which prove helpful in the understanding of Paul’s style: (i) that the epistles are written for the ear and are not to be interpreted by logic only, and (2) that we have in them frequent examples of the Hebrew parallelism™ membrorum.

What Paul is lacking (!) in prose style he makes up for in his carefully written letters by a sure rhetorical movement which, decisive, stirring, and frequent as it is through symmetry, rhythm, buoyancy, and fulness of sound, does appear artful.⁶

Speaking of parallelisms he says, “In no way are these parallelisms a sign of an elevated speech by the apostle, for they occur also in the more sober and business-like parts of the epistles. But besides he has in some parts of his epistles made use of it with greater art, buoyancy, and grace. Often one would not think of the Hebrew parallelism at all, for the Greek rhetorical model seems to lie nearer. But even in this territory the parallelism in several varieties is a well-liked form of expression.⁷

Johannes Weiss has observed that parallelism is found not only in passages containing lofty thought, but also in passages dealing with routine matters of church administration. This does not surprise us, for parallelism of some kind is found also in the most prosaic of all prose, the Levitical laws of the Old Testament. Less acceptable is the observation of Weiss that Paul should have approached the Greek rhetorical models in the more artful of his passages. There is no more artful passage in the epistles of Paul than the thirteenth chapter of First Corinthians and this chapter is one of the finest specimens of chiasmus in the New Testament.

The most surprising factor in this long and interesting treatise by Weiss is that he nowhere betrays any knowledge of the extensive use of chiasmus in the New Testament. To be sure, he will occasionally call attention to an ordinary chiasmus of four or six lines,⁸ but he is not aware of the longer structures in the epistles of Paul. It is merely symptomatic of modern tendencies that such an eminent writer who is interested in matters of style has not made use of the chiastic principle to any gre...