PROVO, Utah — Gerrit van Dyk, Brigham Young University’s Church history and doctrine librarian, opened his first course on poetry in the scriptures at BYU Education Week by quoting “Feasting on the Word” by Richard Rust, a Latter-day Saint writer:

“Why study poetry? Because the Book of Mormon is printed in prose. ... We see the true power of the Book of Mormon when we read more of its most important passages as poetry, instead of prose.”

Gerrit van Dyk, Brigham Young University Church history and doctrine librarian, speaking on poetry in the scriptures at the BYU Education Week on Aug. 23, 2023.

Ryker Eggenberger, Church News

Van Dyk explored the prophetic — and poetic — teachings and writings of the Savior, Lehi, Isaiah and other gospel figures in his class, “Mighty in Writing: Book of Mormon Poetry,” a four-session course that took place each morning from Tuesday, Aug. 22 through Friday, Aug. 25.

He used Rust’s book — along with books by Latter-day Saint writers Grant Hardy and Don Parry — to gain a deeper understanding and testimony of verses in the Book of Mormon and Bible through poetic reformatting and analysis of the verses, explained van Dyk.

“Understanding the incredible beauty of the language in the Book of Mormon, I think, can build our faith,” he said.

Read more about these courses below.

Lehi

“Lehi Prophesying to the People of Jerusalem (Lehi Preaching in Jerusalem),” by Del Parson

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints

According to Van Dyk, much of the poetry in the Book of Mormon takes the form of ancient Hebrew writing techniques. One of these techniques employed frequently throughout the Book of Mormon is parallelism, which describes a line of verse that completes, amplifies, contrasts or reverses an idea in a subsequent line.

To show parallelism in the Book of Mormon, van Dyk led the class in studying 2 Nephi 2:25, a verse in which the prophet Lehi is teaching his sons about the fall of Adam and Eve. Van Dyk displayed the verse as lines of poetry — as they’re shown in Grant Hardy’s Reader’s Edition of the Book of Mormon, which features poetic verses as poems instead of prose — along with his own format adjustments to show the parallelism more clearly to the class. The reformatted verse looked like this:

Adam fell

that men might be;

and men are,

that they might have joy.

The repeated elements — or parallelisms — in this verse are marked in similar format adjustments, which helped one student in the class to realize in a deeper way that “the fall and joy” were connected, and “without the fall, we can’t have joy,” he said.

Van Dyk went on to explain that “however we render [the verse], however we break it up, it helps us think about it in a different way ... we can recognize this as a poetic moment.”

Nephi and Isaiah

Left: “Nephi’s Vision of the Virgin Mary,” by Judith A. Mehr. Right: “Isaiah Writes of Christ’s Birth (The Prophet Isaiah Foretells Christ’s Birth),” by Harry Anderson

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints

Van Dyk stated several times that one of the goals of the course was to help students understand more fully the words of Isaiah, particularly as quoted by Nephi in the Book of Mormon. To do so, he asked the class to ponder the parallelisms in 2 Nephi 4:16-35.

Speaking of verses 21 and 22, he said, “Awesome parallel here — ‘He’s filled me with His love, even unto the consuming of my flesh’, ‘confounding my enemies, causing them to quake,’ ... they also have a bodily reaction.”

He then asked the class to look for parallelisms in 2 Nephi 12:2-4, where Nephi writes the words of Isaiah 2:2-4. One student highlighted the parallelism “in the tops of the mountains” and “exalted above the hill.”

“Isn’t this awesome?” responded Van Dyk. “Isaiah, he could’ve said, ‘Hey, they’re going to be in the mountains,’ but through the poetic device, he’s reinforcing that same message, and of course making it a simile, that the mountain of the Lord’s house would be established there.”

Jesus Christ

Christ in the Land Bountiful, by Simon Dewey

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints

Finally, van Dyk directed the class to 3 Nephi 12:3-11, when Jesus Christ appears to the Nephites and gives them direction that He also gave to His disciples in the old world (see Matthew 5:3-11).

He displayed an alternate format of these verses that split each verse in two lines — known in poetry as a couplet — with the first line of each couplet containing the direction the Lord gave and the second line being the promised blessing that accompanied that direction.

One attendee pointed out that while the couplets were parallel in structure, several were also parallel in their content, such as the repetition of “mercy” in Verse 7, which states “the merciful ... shall obtain mercy.”

Another attendee said, “The parallelisms make the text beautiful, but the promises are even more beautiful.”

Van Dyk ended his last class by bearing witness that the poetry in the Book of Mormon testifies of Christ.

“Every single one of these poems that we have discussed over this week have gotten to this point,” he said. “The grace of Christ is in our lives.”