Chiasmus for Corianton Too

There is an interesting detail in these verses. I hope you will look carefully at the word orders used by Alma in presenting this principle of restoration. In Alma 41:13, he pointed out that restoration will mean “evil for evil, carnal for carnal, devilish for devilish.” Then he added the good side (the side that he wanted Corianton to take note of), this means:

Then Alma applied this to Corianton’s behavior, but in the reverse order: “Therefore, my son, see that ye:

He went through these four terms exactly again. Remember, a good chiasm needs to be well balanced. In the first sequence, we have two goods; and in this first reversed list, we only have one good, so far. But keep reading! What does Alma go on to say? “Therefore, if ye do these things, you will get your reward,” and what will you get? You will have:

Very clever! First Alma went through a list of pairs, “good for good.” The first good is the reward, and the second good is the quality a person must have to get that reward. Thus, good is the reward that we will get if we have the quality of being good. Then, after he had gone through this first “list of pairs,” Alma went on to give two lists, “a pair of lists,” in the opposite order. He listed the qualities he desired of Corianton in the reverse order, and then he listed the commensurate rewards that he would receive in that same reverse order. Thus, he balanced the chiasm. It is very interesting and creative how he has done this. As we have seen, Alma’s blessings and commandments to Helaman in Alma 36 is a great chiasm, but here Alma constructed an equally brilliant chiasm of a much different sort for Corianton. Remember that in Alma 36 Alma used chiasmus to help convey the sense of conversion, the turning point in Alma’s life. He was one thing, but now he is something else, so it all revolved around that turning point. Here in Alma 41, this very cleverly balanced chiasm reinforces that same sense of restoration, hoping that Corianton will change to be one set of things so that he can be restored in the end to those characteristics and qualities.

By the way, when I read the German translation of this passage in 1967, I was disappointed that Alma had come close but was not precisely chiastically here, because the German rendered the first half of this text as follows:

But then in the second half, the order was:

Seeing it that way, I went on. It wasn’t until several months later that I read this passage in English and there it was in perfect chiastic order! The German defect easily had occurred because the words in German for “justice” and “righteousness” are more interchangeable than they are in English. Seeing this was an added confirmation for me that Joseph Smith’s translation is indeed miraculously accurate, even better than very diligent translators had done in the early twentieth century!

And now I’m happy to report that the 2003 German translation has fixed this dislocation and, indeed, that the Church handbook of instructions to translators in all languages now alerts all translators to be mindful of such literary patterns as chiasmus and to preserve them in the target language whenever possible.

Further Reading

Book of Mormon Central, “Why and How Did Alma Explain the Meaning of the Word ‘Restoration’? (Alma 41:1),” KnoWhy 149 (July 22, 2016).