Structure and Meaning

When a student writes an essay, they write the introduction, then the body, and then the conclusion. That is the basic structure of an essay. So when we pick up an essay to read- if we want to understand what the student is trying to say- we can read the introduction and then the conclusion to understand the point of the essay. The body can be read to then get more detail as it expands on the points raised in the introduction.

Similarly, a Maths text book is organised into chapters on increasingly different topics. Each chapter with a summary at the end and a set of questions. And conveniently, at the very end of the book is the complete set of answers. So by knowing how the author put the book together, we know that we can start at any chapter- depending on how much maths we know, and we can check if we're correct in what we know by referring to the back of the book. Or a complete overview of the book can be gained by reading each of the summary sections.

In these two simple examples, we can see that by knowing the structure of a piece of literature, we can know better what the focus of the writer is and are able to use and appreciate the work more fully. Certainly we can use a maths textbook not knowing that there are answers available in the back (untli we finally read the last chapter), but by looking at the entire structure of the book, we gain more from it.

What about the bible then? How is it structured? And if it is strucutured, what are the messages highlighted?

One of the very common literary devices is a structural form know as a "chiasmus". A chiastic structure is one that is balanced around a central point, with the themes leading up to the central point, balanced by themes following that central point. In poetic terms, they are structured:

A
    B
      C
        X
      C'
    B'
A'

Each of the sections has a matching section to it- and when the matching pairs are viewed together, the meaning of the entire passage is emphasised. the meaning of the entire passage is then again emphasised by the central point-or "X"- right in the middle of the passage.

Last modified on Wednesday, July 01, 1998