Catabasis: Down the Staircase

Donald Parry explains, "Catabasis (Greek ‘going down’) is characterized by a lowering of the sense, from one level to another, with each succeeding line." It is much as if the message were descending a staircase. Thus catabasis is defined as "descending or declining by degrees."

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An extract from Hugh W. Pinnock, Finding Biblical Hebrew and Other Ancient Literary Forms in the Book of Mormon (Provo, UT: Foundation for Ancient Research and Mormon Studies, 1999), 89.

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