Donald W Parry

Poetic Parallelisms in the Book of Mormon Donald W Parry

The Book of Mormon is filled with parallelisms, a form of ancient poetry. The poetic patterns serve, as they do in the Bible, to structure and emphasize messages, define and expand them, and make them more memorable. One form of parallelism, chiasmus, has been extensively studied; the Book of Mormon has an abundance of chiasmus, as well as other forms of parallelism.

The prophets of the Book of Mormon were inspired in their stylistic choices, employing word combinations that greatly expand our understanding of what they had to say. In the process, they used more than 25 different types of parallelism--and those forms were transmitted to us through the translation of the Book of Mormon from its ancient language into English (and subsequently into other languages).

Poetic Parallelisms in the Book of Mormon: The Complete Text Reformatted gives us the entire Book of Mormon in a new format. Parts of the book are presented in narrative form (which typically doesn't use parallelisms), but this volume also arranges in their poetic form 325 instances of chiasmus and hundreds of additional parallel structures.

Reading the Book of Mormon in this format will heighten our understanding and deepen our appreciation of this marvelous book of scripture.