repoman

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chiasmus
http://maxwellinstitute.byu.edu/publ...11&chapid=1293

This is used quite a bit, just learned about it watching a Richard Carrier lecture. Cool stuff. If the information was presented without Chiasmus and other rhetorical flourishes the bible would be a lot less persuasive.

This example is very seductive:

A Remember
B Jesus Christ
C raised from the dead
D descended from David. This is my gospel
E for which I am suffering
F even to the point of being chained like a criminal
F1 But God's word is not chained
E1 Therefore I endure everything
D1 for the sake of the elect, that they too
C1 may obtain the salvation that is in
B1 Christ Jesus
A1 with eternal glory.
(Bible: 2 Timothy 2:8-10)

this is so transparent, but it does not stop it from being effective.

Toto

Are you trying to say that the Bible is persuasive?

repoman

The Bible only needed to be persuasive when Christianity was getting followers who were reading the books. I think that the content is fairly weak at points and that without chiasmus and the other methods it would be much more weak.

Today you have a Christian reading the bible and the writing style helps override critical thinking about the content.

Bronzeage

There is a great difference between persuasive writing and brain washing.

Of course, brain washing is something which happens to other people. We, of course are persuaded by superior argument.

Toto

-- moved from ABR --

mountainman

The first followers were illiterate people to whom the holy writ was read by the tax-exempt clergy. The fabricators of the bible never envisaged a world in which many people could read. Therefore it follows that the chiasmus writing structure of the bible was designed as such, so that its reading to an audience resulted in brainwashing. Rhetorical inflection could highlight the chiasmus.

"Religion is regarded by the common people as true, by the wise as false, and by rulers as useful"

εὐδαιμονία | eudaimonia

Sheshbazzar

Incantations chanted to mesmerize the audience, and render them pliable to implanted suggestions.

Bronzeage

Does this actually work, and if so, how?

wordy

I know nothing but all the Pyramid games and the
Tupperware and the Oriflame and what have you.

Sale pitch I think it is named. In politics you have Spin Doctors
and the speaker seldom write their own text. the consulted Spin does it.

Swedes went to their politician brothers in England to learn to become
the new Labour and the Conservative Moderate Party asked their friends
in England for help to get the best spin and it played out well.

So sure that can be part of why it works.

Sheshbazzar

In jest, I might say attend an 'old time' Pentecostal Revival meeting, and you will see it in action.
...although the sole suggestion implanted nowdays usually consists of little more than 'Empty your wallet'.

I believe that in the original languages, the word plays, alliterations, and cadences would have exerted a much stronger grip and powerful effect upon the hearers.
Religion is very much a cultural thing, and to get its fullest effect one must be in the cult, and its language to fully 'move' to its rhythms.

The religious incantations of a foreign language may sound like so much senseless gibberish to us, not having a 'ear' for it, but to those that do, and are attuned, it can cause them to foam at the mouth, enter into paroxysms of ecstasy, experience 'visions', or faint dead away.

The human brain operates on synapses, tiny jumping electrical charges, pluck the right stings in the right sequences and pitches, through sounds and sights, and an electrical storm of rapidly firing synapses takes over.