Cycloides: Regularly Circulating Repetition

Cycloides, a moderately common form of Hebrew writing, is beautifully and cleverly designed. Its name implies "resembling a circle." Cycloides “is so called because the sentence or phrase is repeated at intervals, as though in regular circles." It is quite easy to identify because the same words at a somewhat noticeable but not always predictable frequency circulate throughout a passage to delineate and connect a specific message. A block of text containing a cycloides almost always has an exact beginning and ending. The word or phrase creating the cycloides is not used in proximity before or after that block of text.

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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), 33.

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