A matter of weak to strong, not right or wrong

A bit of “Cosmic Chiasmus” follow-up

A good friend this week showed me a passage from 1 Maccabees that he had encountered, and, based on my article “The Cosmic Chiasmus,” he asked me if I thought he was getting the pattern right.

That’s a shot from the Orthodox Study Bible, highlighting 1 Maccabees 3:45, a prayer said by the assembly led by Judas Maccabeus. The text goes like this, as parsed by my friend:

This is a coherent application of the fivefold pattern as I’ve described it. At middle (χ/ξ.), the sanctuary being trampled down typologically relates to the crucifixion of Christ. Jerusalem being uninhabited like a desert in the beginning (α.) is a bit of anti-creation, alpha-typology in negative mode, appropriate to the very gloomy scene being recounted. That all trade has stopped (β.) signifies an isolation from others and a kind of death, a fall from life, beta-typology again in negative mode. Jerusalem’s citadel being garrisoned with Greek soldiers (ο.) shows us an illicit union of Jew and Gentile proper to omicron-typology. The lack of joy and removal of the instruments by which renewal could be achieved (ω.) comprise a poetic image of an eschatological judgment.

But none of that is to say that my friend is “right.”

I touched upon this aspect of chiastic contemplation in my article, but not too directly, and it would be worthwhile to focus on it here. As I said in a footnote regarding my dissent from Fordham professor Peter F. Ellis’s arrangement of the Gospel of John,¹ “The differences should be judged, like the results of inductive reasoning, along a spectrum of weak to strong — not, like the results of deductive reasoning, according to a binary of valid or invalid, right or wrong.” I don’t think Ellis is wrong. I don’t refute the existence of the patterns he sees. Looking at the same text, I perceive an alternate way to arrange it that I believe is stronger. I present my outline, cite his, and leave it for others to judge.

Due to our passions, we — especially men — habitually jockey for dominance over others. To serve such behavior, we have a preference for deductive reasoning, rules that determine who wins and loses the game. There is a temptation (I’ve seen it especially in my life) to impose the shape of deductive reasoning even where it doesn’t belong for the purpose of competition. So, say, if modeling Scriptural form has to be a matter of weak to strong, then I’ll think my model is stronger and you’ll think your model is stronger: One of us has to be right, and one of us wrong — let’s fight!

None of this struggle for dominance — which in an academic setting regretfully can determine whether one feeds one’s children or not — has anything to do with the original purpose of contemplating Scripture. The purpose of contemplating Scripture is to ignite in one’s heart the love for God and neighbor, to educate the conscience on how to obey and not transgress that love, and ultimately to grow in knowledge of Truth, about God primarily and also ourselves.

So though we should, when contemplating Scriptural form, put aside the power games based on right or wrong, that does not mean we should be indifferent to the gradations of weak and strong. The competitive spirit we habitually direct towards our neighbors should be unleashed on our own ignorance instead. Ever striving to strengthen our bond with God’s word is the proper orientation to have. To that end let’s return to the topic of 1 Maccabees 3:45.

When my friend shared his arrangement of the passage, another friend (this was on Discord) jumped in with an alternate arrangement. This second friend had been well acquainted with chiastic study before he met me, and so possesses an approach unspoiled by the specific fivefold sequence I’ve laid out in my article. See his arrangement below. He detects a parallel between the lack of products and the lack of gladness flanking a central pairing of a trampled sanctuary and occupied citadel. This leaves the lack of music at the end to reflect the depopulated desert at the beginning. This too is a coherent arrangement, and it’s faithful to how chiasmus is taught in the various books that cover the topic.

So which arrangement is stronger? To help arbitrate, the first place to go is context. Context, context, context. When you’re dealing with such a brief passage like this, you have to look beyond it. What are the surrounding patterns in the text, and which model do they support? Most of all, what is the meaning of the story? I will not be able to answer these questions here (I’ve never done a full study of the Books of Maccabees, and they’re not high on my to-do list), but these are the questions to be asking. In my article I only cited passages from books for which I have full structural outlines so that I can have a reasonable degree of confidence in my reading of the text.

For example, it’s not hard to turn the page in 1 Maccabees and see another prayer of similar size just a few verses down. Does it have a chiastic shape?

The first thing to learn about Hebrew poetry is its preference for couplets, and any chiastic understanding of a Hebrew text (1 Maccabees was originally written in Hebrew, though only a Greek translation survives) has to contend with potential readings according to a dualistic pattern. We have in the prayer at 1 Maccabees 3:51 a repetition of the image we identified as chiastically central at verse 45, but here it seems not likely to be so. Rather, the text neatly splits into four couplets, or better (if you will), a three-layered couplet fractal:

[ I will admit to my future readers, familiar with my as yet unwritten articles on the octave form, that potentially one could see these eight lines as comprising an octave — which would retain the chiastic centrality of the trampled sanctuary in the third line — but I could hardly argue for the strength of that arrangement against something so clearly based on the conventional couplet form. ]

So how does this context reflect on verse 45? Were we wrong to see a chiasmus? Should we have stuck with the conventional couplets?

It’s not the three-layered couplet fractal at 3:50–53, but I’d call that a fairly coherent arrangement, granting the extra layer of couplet at 2b. There’s no shortage of triadic structures in the Bible, most notably the floor plan of the tabernacle and the pattern of threefold ascent signaled thereby. This passage could be tracing the pattern of that ascent along negative lines.

Or it could be chiastic, regardless of 3:50–53. This wouldn’t be the first time something circular was paired with something rectilinear in the Bible.

Or it could be both triadic and chiastic! There’s nothing wrong with ambiguity. And then one form might be deemed stronger than the other, or it could be impossible to decide between them.

It all requires more contextual investigation, but in lieu of that, if I had to choose, I would say for now I prefer my first friend’s original arrangement. That shouldn’t be a surprise, since he was reflecting my own ideas back at me. What can I say? I acknowledge my bias, but also the reason for my bias. I like the typological depth, and the facility with which it points to Christ. Plus, the built-in capacity for either chiastic or ksiastic readings has an element of ambiguity already baked into it. This aspect of the text is not carried by the other arrangements considered:

The omicron-line about Gentiles lodging in the citadel could pair ksiastically with Jerusalem being uninhabited, or chiastically with products not being brought in or out (evoking perhaps Jane Jacobs’s contrast of Guardians and Traders). The omega-line about gladness and music ending for Jacob could chiastically pair with Jerusalem being uninhabited like a desert, or ksiastically with the cessation of trade.

Now, does the fact that I have a preference mean I view that preference as authoritative? No, I don’t so highly value my perspective. I mean, let’s step back a bit. The Church hasn’t said with authority even whether Maccabees is part of the Biblical canon or not! Some churches have it and some don’t, and neither is right or wrong. So it’s perfectly possible to have a preference and not be a jerk about it.

When you’re contemplating Scripture, it’s like you’re singing church music. One church might sing according to the 12-tone chromatic scale of Western music; another might retain the quarter-tones of the Arab style. A monastery might prefer monophonic chant; a church might prefer Georgian polyphony. It’s even conceivable that a more cosmopolitan member of one of these churches might acknowledge the comparative strength of another’s music over his own, and yet still prefer the humbler music of his people as being proper to his cultural identity. I say things are a matter of weak to strong, but in some contexts stronger isn’t even to be considered better than weak — where pride rears its head, these values can shift around. Humility’s more important than formal expression. Ultimately, the pattern has to point to Christ. And to that end, form must never become an idol.

I leave off with a relevant quotation I discovered this week in the introduction to Iain McGilchrist’s The Matter with Things.² It functions as a description of confirmation bias, but comes at it from a different angle. He writes,

Being aware of how one’s attention shapes the world is not easy. And that’s because there is a kind of vicious circle at work: the more one pays, for example, dehumanising, mechanising attention to the world, the more only those aspects of the world that can be construed in terms of mechanisms stand forth. The rest recedes. And, as they say, to a man with a hammer everything begins to look like a nail. The way we start out looking at the world soon hardens up; and after a while, any model comes to look like a surprisingly good fit, largely because everything that doesn’t fit that model becomes helpfully invisible.

I have to be mindful of this constantly. Replace McGilchrist’s example of mechanistic thinking with symbolistic thinking or chiastic thinking or ogdoadic thinking (we’ll get there), and it all holds just as true. The phenomenon of “Once you see something, it becomes so clear” or being unable “to unsee something” can often be a matter not of our seeing more, but of our seeing less. That can be useful if we’re sorting the signal from the noise… but amongst what gets tuned out as noise can also be a host of contradictory contextual clues that might have expanded our minds had we been open to it. In a Pageauvian sense, I always have to maintain a fringe to my perspective. When my system of thought is revealed to be incomplete, as inevitably happens with us fragmented humans, it’s from the margins of what I know that I will find renewal.

1. See Peter F. Ellis, The Genius of John: A Composition-Critical Commentary on the Fourth Gospel (Collegeville, Minn.: The Liturgical Press, 1984).

2. No, I can’t afford the hardcover (and I don’t buy e-books). But the introduction’s available for free on Amazon. That’s Iain McGilchrist, The Matter with Things: Our Brains, Our Delusions, and the Unmaking of the World (‎Perspectiva Press, 2021).