Our most memorable stories, songs, and sacred literature are often written in some form of poetry. The cadences of poetry, its rhythm, rhyme, repetition, symmetry, and parallelism, provide structures that help us remember, feel, and understand the message better.

In his New Testament letters, Paul used structures of symmetrical parallelism to organize each letter as a whole and each subdivision of each letter down to the briefest of phrases. He was familiar with similar structures in the Psalms and other portions of the Hebrew Bible. Authors who followed Paul in the New Testament, especially in the Gospels and the Apocalypse, used similar structures.

These structures are most evident in the original language. Unlike rhythm and rhyme, symmetrical parallelism can survive translation. For each letter an outline is presented, and headings of each section are used to indicate the overall structures. Formatting is used within each section to make the smaller structures visibly evident. This work shows both an English translation and the Greek original with the same formatting so they can be compared easily.

Awareness of what Paul placed parallel with what helps in understanding his message, and often provides emphasis and even irony on important points that might otherwise be missed.

This work is informed by many previous authors who have published work on the structures of Paul’s letters, including William Ramey’s NTGreek In Diagram for Paul’s letters.

Paul’s letters are arranged in the left hand menu in a probable chronological sequence so their inter-relationships can be seen better.

Robert A. Bailey