Now there were lots of things that came together to make the discovery of Chiasmus possible,
and one of them was, that I just happened to have Hugh Nibley as my book of Mormon teacher,
as a freshman in 1964.
And I also then had Robert K Thomas as my second semester teacher.
Hugh Nibley taught me to read the Book of Mormon through ancient culture and language.
Bob Thomas taught me to read The Book of Mormon as a work of literature relevant to modern day.
And putting these things together, I was serving in Germany in Regensburg,
which is right on the Danube River
Regensburg is the place where Orson Hyde caught a boat
to sail down to the Black Sea and then on to dedicate the Holy Land in 1842.
He stopped and preached on the steps of the Regensburg cathedral
and was not treated very well, in fact he was run out of town on a rail
and as he left he cursed the city, and we as missionaries thought that his curse was fairly effective.
But, Regensburg was a very Catholic place, center of German Catholicism actually.
And as a result there were lots of academic interests going on all the time.
This by the way is the place where our our branch met.
This plaque says that Napoleon slept here, when he was coming through conquering this part of Europe.
But if you look out this window what you see is this, which is the Cathedral of Regensburg right next door.
But down at the end of Dome Platz is this church, the Augustinian Church.
And right here next to the wall is a place where they would post notices of lectures and activities going on.
And I read there, just happen to read that there was going to be a lecture
in the Catholic theological seminary about the New Testament on Friday mornings, during the summer.
Friday was what we called our D-day, our diversion day.
And I thought, well I've got a new companion, who really doesn't speak much German
and I just told him that what we do in the South German mission as we go to lectures
on our diversion day, and he thought that sounded fine so, off we went.
This is the building right here where we had our missionary apartment
And it just happened that right down there at the end of the street, is this building, which is the Priesterseminar,
which is place where they trained Catholic priests.
In those days we did not where missionary badges
and so as missionaries we could walk in incognito,
and they thought we were just good Catholic boys training to be Catholic priests.
But we walked in and it just happened that the day we were there
and the lecture was right down here at the end of the hall.
The professor was very excited about a book that he had just read,
that just happened to have been published only a year before.
It's called the Literary Art in the Gospel of Matthew.
And in this book, Paul Gaechter a Jesuit priest
talks about Chiasmus in the Gospel of Matthew.
That's the first time I had ever heard of the idea
but after the lecture we went to the bookstore
which was just around the corner
and there, was able to buy a copy of this book which I then read
and was really excited over the next few days to learn about Chiasmus in the Bible.
Paul Gaechter had claimed:
that's what he was calling Chiastic structures
That was the claim that he had made.
It's not quite true, but for me as a missionary it was very stimulating to think,
how this helped me to understand the Gospel of Matthew,
because after all Matthew was Jewish, and he uses Jewish thought patterns as he writes the gospel.
I didn't think much more about it.
I was excited to see it in Matthew chapter 13 for example,
until Chiasmus Day hit which was about a week later.
August 16th in the morning,
I was awakened by a very distinct voice, words,
and they were simple.
And they said
"if it is evidence of Hebrew style in the Bible,
it must be evidence of Hebrew style in the Book of Mormon."
The miracle of that morning is that I got out of bed
and I went, picked up my Book of Mormon, and said to myself, "alright if it's here, where?"
And I was prompted simply to start reading where I had left off the night before,
that was in Mosiah chapter 4.
I turned one page, and this is the answer to your question,
and there I on the left hand column of Mosiah chapter 5,
I ran across these two words you Ubertretung, Ubertretung; transgression, transgression.
This is the turning point of the main chiasm in Mosiah chapter 5,
which is the seventh section of King Benjamin's speech.
I never would have found it, I think I would have just kept reading on
if I hadn't seen those two words blotted out, transgression, transgression, blotted out.
and then the others that fill out
this wonderful six part chiasm with six words in one order and six in the opposite order.
Many of you have seen these, that's how that happened.
I just happened to be in the right place at the right time looking at the right page,
and the rest, well here we are 50 years later,
still making use of the blessing that I'm so grateful for.
Many people have never heard of Chiasmus.
Many more people,
have never heard of the Book of Mormon.
Many more that we need to reach.
As I talked to BYU students, I talked to young people all over.
And
most of our generation can remember when they first heard about Chiasmus
even when you read about it in the New Era.
But the younger generation hasn't really
found this yet.
And a lot of other things like it.
Book of Mormon Central is here to try to bring these things to people's awareness.
We have to realize that we can lose,
we can lose the transmission of cultural information by simply having one generation gap.
If it's not handed successfully from one generation to another, culture,
will not survive.
Whether it's beautiful music.
Whether it's scriptures.
Whether it's literature.
Whether it's family values.
We have to pass these things on
or they will be lost.
And that's the lesson that we see over and over again.
Darwin was wrong about some things.
We don't always just naturally get better,
sometimes things get worse.
And Book of Mormon Central and the Gospel of Jesus Christ and the mission of the church
is here to see that things are passed on correctly and properly and effectively.
So let me just say.
Here you see Mittwoch, Wednesday. Notice that it's Mittwoch, midweek,
So it was a midweek. Mittwoch, the 16th of August,
that's the day it happened, 17th was my one year anniversary.
So this is our first anniversary of Moroni Day,
and thank you for being here to help us celebrate this.
Moroni, I wanted to just conclude by saying, is a real, real hero.
How many years did Moroni wander by himself after?
36 years after the final battle in 385.
His father dies,
all of his kinfolk.
Was he married?, perhaps, probably, his wife, his children, everybody's dead.
And for 36 years Moroni wanders
to be sure that he carries out the mission that his father had entrusted him with.
Now I think that Moroni had a lot more to do with the Book of Mormon then we've ever given him credit for.
Moroni, was probably about 20-25 years old
when I think Mormon finally sat down to start working on the abridgment of the Book of Mormon.
I think Moroni was Mormon's research assistant.
He must have been trained by his father, because when his father dies he says Moroni, go finish it,
and as Kirk says, Moroni was able to be the finisher of the book.
He must have known how to make plates, he must have known how to inscribe them,
he must have known where the records were.
He must have known all of this, how did he know that if he hadn't been working with his father
side-by-side all along.
Well I think Moroni in that process may have actually had a lot of influence
in the way the texts have been written. And no one has gone back to compare
Moroni's words in the things that he wrote,
with what we have in the abridgment of the Book of Mormon and identify those as
Moroni words and Moroni interests, I think will find a lot of things there.
So that's another approach,
that maybe we should call it, The Book of Moroni a little more, or at least the Book of Mormon and Moroni.
I think he deserves a lot of credit,
just for his perseverance if nothing else. 36 years at least,
he wandered alone.
So let us no longer allow Moroni to wander in obscurity,
let's bring him out of obscurity and into the world,
where his words will be appreciated, followed, and lead people to come unto Christ.
For that is what we should hope for.
I testify of the truthfulness of these things in the name of Jesus Christ amen.