Poetic Diction and Parallel Word Pairs in the Book of Mormon

Authors

Kevin L. Barney, Katten Muchin and Zavis in Chicago

Keywords

Ancient Near East, Language, Bible, Book of Mormon, Book of Mormon as Literature

Abstract

Hebrew poetry is based on various patterns of parallelism. Parallel lines are in turn created by the use of parallel words, that is, pairs of words bearing generally synonymous or antithetic meanings. Since the 1930s, scholars have come to realize that many of these “word pairs” were used repeatedly in a formulaic fashion as the basic building blocks of different parallel lines. The Book of Mormon reflects numerous parallel structures, including synonymous parallelism, antithetic parallelism, and chiasmus. As word pairs are a function of parallelism, the presence of such parallel structures in the Book of Mormon suggests the possible presence of word pairs within those structures. This article catalogs the use of forty word pairs that occur in parallel collocations both in the Book of Mormon and in Hebrew poetry.

BYU ScholarsArchive Citation

Barney, Kevin L. (1995) "Poetic Diction and Parallel Word Pairs in the Book of Mormon," Journal of Book of Mormon Studies: Vol. 4: No. 2, Article 2.
Available at: https://scholarsarchive.byu.edu/jbms/vol4/iss2/2