Chiasmus in the Full Text of Alma 36

In Alma 36 and 38, Alma tells his conversion story twice. Once to Helaman, which is an outstanding example of Hebrew poetic form. For present purposes, as I go through Alma 36, the lines have been numbered in order to coordinate with the similar elements included in Alma’s second telling, to Shiblon in Alma 38, discussed much further below.

Because the web allows for unlimited space, here you have the complete text of Alma 36, so you can see the development of this structure in its full context. As seen here, it is obvious that not everything is identically reversed, and some sections are longer or shorter than are their matches. There are reasons for these differences, which you can ponder quite productively. For example, this is because certain things—such as the pain and wickedness in the first half, and the joy, successful preaching, and mighty deliverance in the second half—call for great attention in those places respectively. Also, as the articles by Ehat and Reynolds have shown, these longer subsections often have their own internal well-ordered structures. And overall, accommodating these apparent infelicities, the first half of Alma 36 and the second half of Alma 36 are very closely balanced in total words, in individual word pairs, and in several other minute respects, as is tabulated in Appendices 1 and 2 in my 1989 Report.

Alma said to Helaman and wrote in his record:

[Up to this point, Alma has gone through the basic elements leading up to the moment of his conversion to Jesus Christ. That was the moment when Alma remembered and called on Jesus Christ to have mercy upon him. That was the turning point of his life. He makes it the turning point of this elegant chapter, the most extensive of his several retellings of his conversion story.

From this central turning point, Alma works his way back out, through the same previous content but now in the reverse order. In the second half, his words and phrases will be largely the same as in the first half, but in the opposite order. Each step of that way, Alma’s attitudes and behaviors have now completely changed and are opposite to what he had previously experienced.]

[In the first half of this text, Alma had feared to even be brought into the presence of God. Now he longs to be there in God’s presence. As in each step along this way, his attitudes have completely switched.]

We can see here how everything builds up to and then away from the central turning point when Alma remembered that his father had prophesied about the coming of Jesus Christ, and when he cried out, “O Jesus Christ, thou Son of God, have mercy on me.” This is the submissive plea that sends Alma’s life and his story going in the opposite direction.

Note also that Alma gave his oldest son, Helaman, a “doubled story” of his conversion, while Shiblon’s blessing in Alma 38 will repeat only (but almost exactly) the first half of this account. Perhaps this was done meaningfully by Alma for a subtly symbolic purpose. Under Biblical and Jewish law the oldest son, the firstborn son, was entitled to get what was called the “double blessing”—a double portion of his father’s estate (Deuteronomy 21:17). When the father died and his estate was divided, the oldest son would receive twice as much as what the other sons each would receive. In Alma’s case, assuming he just had three sons, his estate would have been divided into four parts—Helaman would get two of those portions of the estate, while Shiblon and Corianton would each get one. Because the eldest son had the responsibility to take care of his mother, his unmarried sisters, and the other women in the family whose circumstances required his care, the double portion was given to him to allow him to fulfill those responsibilities.

We do not know whether Alma owned much by way of land, goods, or money. I would not expect that he did. He had spent his entire life preaching. He had been the high priest, so his job had been working in the temple and taking care of sacred things—not working in a profession that would have profited him materially. Alma knew that worldly things did not matter as much as the spiritual testimony he could share, and so he gave Helaman a double portion of what he had—a doubled text of his testimony and conversion story. And was that related to Alma then requiring and enabling Helaman, the oldest son, to perform special responsibilities? Yes. As would have been expected, in chapter 37, Alma gave Helaman major responsibilities, particularly a charge to keep the records and sacred artifacts as the leader of the Church.

In sum, this stunning composition is truly amazing. It meets all of the “Chiasmus Criteria” generally accepted for determining whether or not a text should be identified as chiastic, as Neal Rappleye has most carefully defined. Moreover, Alma uses chiasmus in Alma 36 for many reasons, all of which are discussed in my chapter asking the question, “What Does the Presence of Chiasmus Prove?” These articles are conveniently listed here below. Moreover, assuming that Joseph dictated his translation of this intricate text to Oliver Cowdery at their normal average rate of about 15 words per minute, Joseph would have only had about one hour and twenty minutes to bring this text forth, going through it one time only, with no opportunity ever for revisions or adjustments. As I’ve said many times before, this is phenomenal.

Further Reading

Neal Rappleye, “Chiasmus Criteria in Review,” in Chiasmus: The State of the Art (Provo: BYU Studies and Book of Mormon Central, 2020), 289–310.

Book of Mormon Central, “What Can We Learn from 10 of the Best Chiasms in the Book of Mormon: Part 3?” KnoWhy 355 (August 20, 2017).

John W. Welch, “A Masterpiece: Alma 36,” in Rediscovering the Book of Mormon: Insights You May Have Missed Before, ed. John L. Sorenson and Melvin J. Thorne (Salt Lake City and Provo, UT: Deseret Book and FARMS, 1991), 114–131.

John W. Welch, “What Does the Presence of Chiasmus Prove?” in Book of Mormon Authorship Revisited: The Evidence for Ancient Origins, ed. Noel B. Reynolds (Provo, UT: FARMS, 1997), 199–224.