The Great Poetry

The ancient prophets were poets. The Book of Mormon is full of poetry. It is found on every page. It took immense time and effort to obtain the materials to write, safeguard, and preserve their writings over time. Because writing was costly, writers were judicious about what they wrote. They took time with their words. It wasn’t easy to correct a mistake or erase a word. The amount of thinking and effort that they spent to record each word probably lent itself to both condensing texts as well as writing in poetic forms to beautify and more easily recall the text.

I live in the information age. I take for granted that I live in a time where paper and ink are cheap. Electrons are even cheaper! Today, a portable electronic device has the capacity to store all of the writings from all the major libraries in the ancient world. Because changing a written text is so much easier today than in ancient times, I suspect that the method of writing is different today than it was anciently. I can throw a bunch of words on a screen and then erase them or move them around with little effort. Anciently, a lot more forethought was often applied due to the effort and expense in writing. In the ancient written gospel there is symbolism, simile, metaphor, parallels, crescendos, and all sorts of poetic devices. The prophet Moroni was worried about the placement of his words. He may have been worried that his poetic devices and poetic structures might not do justice to the truths he was attempting to convey (see Ether 12:23-26).

Poetry is a creative act and Jesus is known as both the ‘Great Creator’ and as ‘The Word’. He is the Poet of Poets. Jesus taught the people using poetic stories, patterns, symbolisms, visuals, and metaphors. His gospel is poetic. Sacred ordinances, rituals, sacraments, and hymns are a type of performance art and living poetry. Baptism is symbolic of rebirth into a new covenant life with Jesus. It is symbolic of our future resurrection.

As the Great Poet, parallels appear to be one of his poetry trademarks. Symmetry is pervasive throughout all of creation and simultaneously witnesses that there is a Great Creator. Repeating fractal patterns are found in both crystals and biological programming. Whether it is the the branching of trees, blood vessels, or lungs, we can observe repeating patterns. Body shapes of animal life often exhibit a good amount of symmetry with appendages, ears, and eyes. Symmetry, patterns, and fractals seem to be woven into the fabric of life. They are found in DNA, cellular programming, and cellular replication. The very laws of nature seem to often demand a type of harmonious and self consistent symmetry where every action has an equal and opposite reaction and every positive number has an associated negative number.

As the Great Creator, he also makes use of contrasts and imperfect asymmetries to create diversity. None of us are an exact copy of our parents. My left side is not exactly the same as my right side. Crabs have one claw that is bigger than the other. Small asymmetries and inexact replications when overlaid on a structure of symmetry is part of the beauty that we observe in the natural world. In the hands of the Great Creator, properly managed asymmetries can lead to new beautiful combinations, great diversity, and new harmonies. This principle allows for genetic variations.

As the creator, he divided the light from the day. He divided the clouds from the oceans. He divided the land from the waters. He also divided and recombined these with gradations to form sunsets, rainbows, and morning mists. He also created humanity with great diversity of bodies, attributes, and races. Even though we are all different we all are built with the same underlying structure and identity as children of God. The prophet Lehi taught his family that there is a law of opposites connected with creation and that righteousness is in opposition to wickedness.

The very nature of life seems to be cyclical with repeating themes and parallels. Each day the sun comes up and then sets, and yet each day is entirely unique. Each year, the sun and stars move with the seasons, but each year is also utterly unique. At night we sleep and in the morning we rise and with each cycle we change a little. We are born, live our lives, and then return to dust to rejoin Mother Earth. Nature’s rhythmic cycles continuously repeat with the forward march of time, but each cycle is a little different than the one before.

There are even parallels within the cycles of human history. Jesus was born to live in what is called the meridian of time or in the middle of time. Events before Jesus lived on earth seem to be roughly paralleled with events that occur after Jesus lived on earth. The nature of the events rather than the exact parallel timing of them seem to be important. As time moves forward, the pace of some events seems to quicken.

0) Creation and Garden Paradise with God
1) Adam & Eve leave paradise, earth flooded with water, the City of Enoch taken to Heaven
2) Tower of Babel and confounding of languages
3) Establishment of Israel, Stone Tablets, Exodus for 40 years, Israel in the promised land
4) Jesus’ life on earth (meridian of time)
5) Restoration of Israel, Gold Plates, Exodus to Salt Lake & 40 years to build the temple, Latter Day church
6) Technological wonders and the information age that allows us to communicate across languages
7) Earth bathed in fire and light, the City of Enoch returns to Earth at Christ’s second coming
8) Resurrection and Christ’s Millennial Reign

There are many more parallels such as the stone tablets written with Jesus’ spirit finger and given to Moses to be placed in a golden box called the arc of the covenant. This is paralleled with the golden plates safeguarded in a stone box and illuminated with the power and light of Christ to be translated by Joseph Smith Jr. In ancient times, Israel wandered the wilderness for 40 years until they reached the promised land. In modern times, the pioneer saints traveled to the Great Salt Lake where it took them 40 years to build the Salt Lake Temple and become established as a people in a new spiritual promised land of temple covenants. In ancient times, Israel was scattered. In modern times, Israel is being gathered. When Jesus declared his gospel, it first went to the Jews and then to the Gentiles. In modern times, the restored gospel first went to the Gentiles and then is going to the Jews.

In ancient times, there was a tower of Babel where the people were united, but not united in love. They were united in the works of their hands. They were united in their desire to build a tower to reach heaven, escape a future great flood, and trust in their own works rather than trust in Jesus. They had one language. The Lord confounded their languages, scattered the people across the earth, and many languages and nations emerged. Now in a type of mirror parallel, the world is coming again to a modern tower of Babel. There are gradually fewer spoken languages as old languages die out. More importantly, the ability to communicate between languages with technology is increasing. Translation programs on my cell phone can translate words and text in another language into English at the speed of the internet. In the future, these will likely continue to improve until nearly all people are again able to speak to one another as if there were only one language. Computer translation programs will even be able to read dead languages from past civilizations. Instead of the people being united in their effort to build a tower to reach heaven, we live in an era when the world is becoming united through other construction efforts. There are worldwide commerce, monetary, and banking systems. There are transportation networks to transfer goods and people. The world is covered in a web of concrete, asphalt, copper, fiber optic cables, and wireless transmissions. Instead of a tower that reaches into the clouds, we have satellites looking down that enable communication to nearly every corner of the planet. We are becoming a people of one language who glory in technology and the works of our hands. As saints, we must continually focus our eyes on Jesus so that we remember our connections to him, ourselves, each other, the stillness of the spirit, and to our mother earth.

The Book of Mormon is full of poetic structures. Some of these include parallel poetry and chiasmus poetry. Parallel poetry consists of repeating patterns. Analogies, metaphors, and parables can be thought of as a type of parallel poetry. I can place myself in the position of a character in a story and see how my life mirrors the story.

Idea #1
…Idea #2
Idea #1
…Idea #2

Chiasmus poetry is structured so that the end mirrors the beginning. Sometimes it is used to highlight a central message. The word chiasmus means crossing or “X” which suggests a mirroring.

Idea #1
…Idea #2
……Idea #3 (central point)
….Idea #2
Idea #1

Jesus used both parallel poetry and chiasmus poetry to teach his disciples. His prophets and disciples in turn use poetry to point the people to Jesus and accentuate his gospel. There has been lots of research conducted over the years to discover poetry within the Book of Mormon. A few examples include:

My own contributions to the study of Book of Mormon poetry are listed below

  • Alma 36. While John W. Welch and many others who have followed him have analyzed Alma Chapter 36, I have also performed my own analysis on it. I also created a visual that at least for me, helps me to better see the chiasmus patterns and uncover a double chiasmus poetic structure.
  • Jesus’ Sermon at the Temple which mirrors his Sermon on the Mount. The Book of Mormon version provides new insights and a chiasmus pattern that I believe is fuller and more complete than the version in the New Testament. The chiasmus pattern helps us to summarize his message that Jesus makes All Things Become New and also highlights his role as the Heavenly Law and the Heavenly Light.

Additional placeholder poetry topics coming soon include:

  • Jacob Chapter 4. This chapter consists of many poems that together form a large chiasmus with Jesus at the center.
  • 2 Nephi 2:25. Challenges with multiple possible poetic form interpretations.
  • The Book of 1st Nephi