Computational Discovery of Chiasmus in Ancient Religious Text (2025)

Abstract: Chiasmus, a debated literary device in Biblical texts, has captivated mystics while sparking ongoing scholarly discussion. In this paper, we introduce the first computational approach to systematically detect chiasmus within Biblical passages. Our method leverages neural embeddings to capture lexical and semantic patterns associated with chiasmus, applied at multiple levels of textual granularity (half-verses, verses). We also involve expert annotators to review a subset of the detected patterns. Despite its computational efficiency, our method achieves robust results, with high inter-annotator agreement and system accuracy of 0.80 at the verse level and 0.60 at the half-verse level. We further provide a qualitative analysis of the distribution of detected chiasmi, along with selected examples that highlight the effectiveness of our approach.

## introduction chiasmus is a topic which fascinates bible scholars. most simply and broadly understood, chiasmus, or chiasm, denotes a sequence of textual units that intentionally exhibit a semantic or poetic symmetry. a clear chiastic example in english is jfk's adage (with corresponding textual units in the same color): ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country. the name derives from the greek letter χ, 'chi', which looks like an english 'x' and is used to illustrate the structure of a chiasmus: e.g. abb'a', as shown in while chiasmus in english is associated with high oratory skill @xcite , it is exceedingly rare as a rhetorical device in modern language: english experts trawling through a corpus of winston churchill's works found only seven chiasmi out of a total of ∼200 speeches @xcite . however, chiasmus is extremely common in ancient literature and oratory @xcite . it has been known to be a common rhetorical feature of ancient hebrew poetry since the 1740s @xcite . a [...] let them be turned back and disappointed who devise evil against me! b let them be like chaff before the wind, with the angel of the lord driving them away! b' let their way be dark and slippery, with the angel of the lord pursuing them! a' for without cause they hid their net for me; without cause they dug a pit for my life. while most scholars agree that chiasmus is a facet of ancient near eastern writings, there is much debate about its prevalence, purpose, and location. biblical scholars have proposed its use to underscore characterization in narrative passages @xcite , as a poetic device in the psalms @xcite , and to capture ritualistic language in legal documents @xcite . however, a lack of quantitative methods for biblical chiasmus renders the task of detection a laborious and subjective one. we provide a straightforward method to computationally formalize and detect chiasmi. unlike previous work which utilized handcrafted features and a log-linear model to detect finegrained instances of chiasmus in english prose @xcite , we use a statistical method based on cosine distance from linelevel embedded representations of text. the use of embeddings instead of only lemmata allows us to include semantic information between lines that form a chiastic structure, enabling a more nuanced definition of chiasmus in line with rhetorical intention. this approach is supported by recent work in rhetorical device detection @xcite , and includes the repetition of words, phrases, grammatical structures, or (identical or antithetical) concepts as part of the chiastic parallels. in contrast with @xcite , our method is extensible to various sizes of chiasmus; that is, those of just four lines long or of 100 lines long, and is language-agnostic, whereas previous work has focused only on fine-grained, intra-line chiasmus in english or german. in this study, we analyze both half-verses and verses as units so that a chiasmus within the same verse can also be captured (i.e. "the sabbath was made for man, not man for the sabbath"). we formalize the notion of biblical chiasmus thoroughly in § 2.2. our main contributions are as follows: ## experiments as shown in figure 1 , the number of detected chiastic structures varies across books of the bible, with more instances found at the half-verse level than at the verse level for all books. notably, certain books exhibit disproportionately higher numbers of half-verse chiasmi, particularly genesis, 1 samuel, judges, 1 chronicles, psalms, jeremiah, and ezekiel. this trend is consistent with the literary nature of these texts: psalms, jeremiah, and ezekiel include significant poetic sections, where half-verse chiastic structures are more prominent, gen exo lev num deu jos jdg rut 1sa 2sa 1ki 2ki 1ch 2ch ezr neh est job psa pro ecc sng isa jer lam ezk dan hos jol amo oba jon mic nam hab zep hag zec mal book 0 50 100 150 200 250 number of chiasmi grouping half-verse verse while genesis features dense narrative and highly literary passages as well as many formulaic genealogies. the high counts in 1 samuel, judges, and 1 chronicles, which are historical books, likely reflect the system's identification of formulaic narrative patterns, such as the recurring descriptions of the kingly line of israel (e.g., "x became king, reigned for y years, and did evil in the sight of the lord"). ## discussion several qualitatively interesting examples of chiasmus were identified by our method, highlighting the richness of the biblical texts and the alignment with existing literary scholarship. one notable example is genesis 1:19-23, as shown in other significant examples include the story of jacob stealing esau's birthright, where the chiastic structure reflects the tension and reversal of fortune between the brothers. similarly, the account of isaac and abraham and the sacrificial lamb contains a chiasmus that heightens the dramatic and theological impact of the narrative, as god intervenes at the critical moment. the method also uncovered a clear chiasmus in god's covenant with noah after the flood, where the repetitive structure emphasizes god's promise of restoration and the symbolic importance of the a and there was evening and there was morning, the fourth day. ## conclusion our approach demonstrates the ability to uncover intricate literary patterns that might otherwise be overlooked, providing valuable insights for scholars of biblical texts, political oratory, and literary studies. this example, along with our overall findings, underscores the importance of advanced computational techniques in literary analysis and supports the broader application of our method for discovering chiasmi across various texts and translations. one future step is using a chiasmus detection method to create a labeled corpus of chiasmi within the bible, particularly the psalms, for scholarly exploration.