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Journal of Book of Mormon Studies

Keywords

inclusious, Book of Mormon, poetry, Richard G. Moulton

Abstract

An earlier version of this paper was presented at the 2015 annual Society of Biblical Literature meeting, November 23, 2015, in Atlanta, Georgia.

1. See Noel B. Reynolds, "The Gospel of Jesus Christ as Taught by the Nephite Prophets;' BYU Studies 31/3 (1991): 31-50; and Noel B. Reynolds, "The Gospel according to Mormon;' Scottish Journal of Theology 68/2 (2015): 218-34 doi:10.1017/ S003693061500006X.

2. Inclusio is a common technique used by biblical writers to mark off a text unit by repeating at the end of the unit a word or phrase or sentence used at the beginning. These three Book of Mormon passages are marked off with obvious inclusios featuring "the doctrine of Christ;' "this is my doctrine;' and "this is my gospel" respectively. While Nephi constructed the first, the second two are embedded in the material quoted from Jesus Christ. In "Chiastic Structuring of Large Texts: Second Nephi as a Case Study;' publication pending, I demonstrate that 2 Nephi can be read as a series of thirteen inclusios arranged to provide a chiastic structure to the book that also communicates his principal thesis.

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