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The Bible is musical

(Image credit: https://blog.obitel-minsk.com/2019/02/the-list-of-musical-instruments-mentioned-in-the-bible.html)

I've been having a bit of a conversation about how chiasms are not that easy to grasp, which got me thinking along the following lines

Jonathan Pageau makes the point that we generally do not read icons and other religious art correctly, because we regard such things as different sizes of person as unrealistic, the hand positions as unnatural, the various beasts as fictional/fantastic and so on. We moderns are thus at a disadvantage

I contend that we have a similar problem with texts, including the text of most importance to Christians, the Bible. We generally read a text like it's a string of dominos, one thing leading to another. When coupled with literalism, this leads to a rather bland reading experience. Such an approach can lead us to see books like Proverbs as a collection of aphorisms thrown together hapazardly, with no guiding principle. We can see books like Esther or Ruth as having only limited relationship to the 'main point' of the Bible. If the Bible is a symphony, we are focusing on one melody line played by one type of instrument, ignoring all the other stuff that is going on.

Which is not a good place to be.

Contra: The text of the Bible is musical, with overlapping harmonies and melodies. The notes are like images or symbols, which is an aspect of critical importance emphasized by Jonathan Pageau, and they are played according to particular literary patterns, a sort of literary mathematics. I do not aim to be comprehensive here, but would like to draw attention to three such patterns: parallelism, diptychs/panels, and chiasmus. 

Parallelism/Diptychs

The first is the easiest, and most people are already aware of it. It is simply two lines that repeat the same general idea, but in a different way. There may be a contrast present, a reinforcing of the point, or an elaboration/drawing out of the subject matter. A very simple example is in Psalm 49:4

I will incline mine ear to a parable:
I will open my dark saying upon the harp.

A more complex example is days 3 and 6 of creation: 
Day 3: Land filled with plants
Day 6: Land filled with animals

Further details here: 
https://theopolisinstitute.com/fertile-meaning/ (general point easy, details hard)

Even more complex, not for beginners: 
https://theopolisinstitute.com/leithart_post/parallels-in-luke-acts-2/

Notice that this pattern is fractal: that is, you can see it in as little as two halves of a sentence, or in two portions of a chapter, or in two halves of a book. Notice also that this helps you to 1) draw out the meaning of a passage by looking at how the two halves talk to each other and 2) helps to connect different passages that may seem to be unrelated. In addition, this pattern can 'jump' over a domino one-thing-leads-to-another style of reading. 

Panels

The second example is panels, which are like parallels, but there are more of them and they are nested. A simple example is the days of creation:

Light and dark
    Heaven and water
        Land and sea + plants
Sun, moon and stars
    Birds and fish
        Beasts of the earth + Man

In this example, the second panel of days (4-6) progressively fill up each of the domains created in the first panel. This structure is akin to stages of work: first you do the rough work, getting the general idea, then you go over it again, refining it. (The previous clause I wrote is a panel.) The pattern can of course go the other way: a progressive emptying could occur. 

A more complex example is here: 

Again, notice that this type of pattern could easily be expanded from a few lines to encompass entire books: it also is fractal.

Chiasmus

Thirdly, we have the most complex structure, which is chiasmus. A good introduction to chiasms is here:

Most simply, it is this structure:

A And God said, Let there be a firmament in the midst of the waters, and let it divide the waters from the waters.
         B    And God made the firmament, and divided the waters which were under the
               firmament from the waters which were above the firmament: and it was so.
A' And God called the firmament Heaven. 

The two A's bracket the B in the middle. The two A's correspond to each other: God said, God called. Chiasms emphasis symmetry, and give the feeling of completeness. God plans, then he does, then he finishes by naming: everything is finished off nicely. 

This is the basic structure of any story:
Beginning
    Middle
End

Or the structure of a conventional paragraph: 
Introductory sentence
    Body sentences
Concluding sentence

Or the structure of a science paper:
Introduction
    Methods
    Results
Discussion

You can thus see that it is a structure we encounter every day, but we are often blind to it.

For a more complex example in the Bible, see here: 

Or for a whole heap of examples: 
https://www.etsjets.org/files/JETS-PDFs/17/17-1/17-1-pp011-028_JETS.pdf

And because the pattern is, again, fractal, entire books can encompass a chiastic structure:

Getting meta: nesting and combining structures

To reiterate: Each of these patterns can be nested inside larger patterns. You can have one parallels formed by a sentence, which is then combined with other sentences to form two sets of ideas, and finally have two halves of a book which mirror each other. The same note can play in different levels of meaning.

And these patterns can be combined with each other, to create patterns of startling complexity, where the structure of the text actually begins to look like a music sheet:

Finally, a word on seeing these patterns. The examples given above will take time to work through, and should give you a general idea. Once you get that part, you can practice (it's fun to do). 

The Psalms are a good place to start, because they are poetry (thus the patterns are more prominent) and short. To identify chiasms, I generally look at the start and beginning of a passage to see if they correspond. I then set apart the sections that do, then move in looking to see if the next verses correspond. 

I can promise you that seeing these patterns will start to become easier with time: you will see them as you read and not need to map them out on paper. Which is the goal, at the end of the day.


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