Biblical Hebrew Forum

[dwashbur AT nyx.net]

On 22 Sep 2009 at 15:59, Oun Kwon wrote:

> On Tue, Sep 22, 2009 at 3:47 PM,  <dwashbur AT nyx.net> wrote:
> > I'm a little surprised that nobody has mentioned the obvious
> chiasmus in this verse.  It's
> > basically a textbook example.  F. I. Andersen suggested long ago
> that the chiastic device is
> > used to show two sides of the same coin, so to speak: he called
> the light "day;" on the flip
> > side, he called the darkness "night."  I suspect the difference
> between him and Sailhamer is
> > that Andersen posits this force for all types of chiasmus, not
> just wayyiqtol/qatal.
> >
> >
> > Dave Washburn
> >
>
> To me, it's parallelism. For a chiasmus don't we expect
>
>    A
>       B
>    A'
>
> something like that?

No, chiasmus is

A
B
B'
A'

It's called chiasmus because the pattern, when mapped on paper, looks like 
the Greek letter
chi, i.e. an X shape.

Dave Washburn

http://www.nyx.net/~dwashbur