THE LITERARY STRUCTURE
OF THE BOOK OF EXODUS 1-18:
six pericopes and their chiastic lexical relation: the bar graph.

•   red bars concern the past’s words – regarding past events
•   blue bar concerns the future’s words – regarding future events

The table and the bar graph show that:

• external pericopes I and VI have the same percentage of words in the past tenses (62%) and the future tenses (38%)
• pericopes II and V have the same percentage of words in the past tenses (56%) and the future tenses (44%);
• Central pericopes III and IV are characterized by an even more interesting relationship (in a very good mathematical approximation):
  • the percentage of words in the past tenses in the pericope III = the percentage of words in the future tenses in the pericope IV (35% almost equals 34% )
  • the percentage of words in the future tenses in the pericope III = the percentage of words in the past tenses in the pericope IV (65% almost equals 66%)

Thanks to these numerical dependencies, the arrangement of six pericopes is a concentric structure A B C C’ B’ A’; in this case biblical scholars say that it is exactly the chiasmus [1] – a special type of the concentric structure. Such a structure is typical for Hebrews.

Dear Reader!

At the actual stage of this presentation, we know a lot about the literary structure of the Book of Exodus 1-18. In the next stage, it will be shown the identity of this literary structure with the structure of ancient Hittite treaties of the 16th century before Christ.