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Insights: The Newsletter of the Neal A. Maxwell Institute for Religious Scholarship

Authors

Keywords

John W. Welch, chiasmus, ancient literature, Book of Mormon studies, Chiasmus Bibliography

Abstract

As a missionary in Germany in 1967, John W. Welch, along with his companion, attended a theological lecture in which the professor explained chiasmus, a kind of literary parallelism prevalent in the Bible. Soon thereafter Welch was the first person to discover superb examples of chiasmus in the Book of Mormon, a strong indication of that record's ancient and artistic composition. Bringing this to the professor's attention, Welch was unceremoniously dismissed. But the response a few months later from a Jesuit priest who was an authority on the subject was encouraging, even prophetic: "You are very fortunate. I think you have found your life's work."

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