uences of the Gospel is constructedaccording to the principles of chiastic parallelism.The following study will demonstrate that John creates his parallelism mostoften by repeating either the same words or the same content. Occasionally hecreates parallelisms by means of antithetic parallelism, i.e., by contrasting a negativewith a positive or a positive with a negative situation or concept. On rare occasionshe not only parallels words and content, but even the literary form of a sequence..Page 24 IntroductionChiastic Structure of the GospelIn the following outline of the Gospel, the reader will notice that the Gospel isdivided into twenty-one sequences, with the first mirrored back by the twenty-first,the second mirrored back by the twentieth, the third by the nineteenth, and so throughthe entire Gospel, with the eleventh sequence (6:16-21) standing starkly alone in thecenter. This has been done because each sequence constitutes a well-defined uniteither because of unity of place or time or theme or situation. Ideally these sequencesshould take the place of the old chapter arrangement of the Gospel that comes fromStephen Langton, who in 1226 divided the Gospel into its present very poorarrangement of chapters and verses.The original Gospel, like almost all ancient books, contained neither chaptersnor verses nor even paragraphs. Scholars are agreed that Langton's division is almostentirely arbitrary, and they have attempted to rectify the situation by retainingLangton's chapters and verses but adding titles or headings to indicate where theybelieve John would have begun new chapters and paragraphs if he were writing hisGospel today.In the following outline, because of limitation of space, only the most obviousparallels of persons, places, and situation can be indicated in bold type. Followingthe commentary on each sequence, beginning with the fourth, the reader will find alisting of the full range of parallels John has created in order ...
