Being the young and unskilled scholar that I am, I bring forth the question: Being both literary devices(I assume so), what is the crucial difference between a chiasmus and a juxtapostion?

I don't know a literary device called juxtaposition. Chiasmus isn't just placing things next to each other, but doing so swapping the order of parts.

I cannot dig; to beg I am ashamed. (Luke 16:3)

This has the subject+auxiliary at the beginning, then verb at the end, in the first clause. The second clause reverses them: main verb, then subject+auxiliary.

Juxtaposition simply meanings the placing together of two things (in aput's example two sentences). From Latin juxta 'near to, nigh' + pono (ponere, posui, positum) 'to put, set, place'.

Boy, and I thought I understood those 2 words until aput's answer!

I cannot dig; to beg I am ashamed.

I think a slightly better chiasmus would be: I cannot dig; ashamed to beg I am. (Although it sounds slightly Yoda-esque.) It's interesting that in Luke, it is not a chiasmus in the Greek original or the Vulgate.

Greek: skaptein ouk iskhuo, epatein aiskhunomai.

Latin: fodere non valeo, mendicare erubesco.

The King James committee decided to make it a chiasmus.

The literal translation 'Dig I cannot; to beg I am ashamed' sounds passable to me. They must have felt a verb couldn't be focused like that in the first clause, despite the model of the Greek. I wonder if the Linguist's Search Engine includes the AV in its corpus; and how many V-initial sentences other than imperatives there are in it.

I am waaay back at square one, jheem and aput. To me "juxtaposition" means being placed next to each other, whereas "chiasmus" seems much more complex. Even the definition from dictionary.com, "inversion in the second of 2 parallel phrases" just doesn't do it for me. Some of their examples I just don't get, though this one seems to be the best:

"Each throat/Was parched, and glazed each eye”

Now in your example of "beg" and "dig," is there something I am missing about those 2 words? Are they related in some way that I am not aware of?

Here it is schematically:

[Each throat]a [was parched]b,
and [(was) glazed]b [each eye]a.

The parallel phrases, in default order, would be:

Each throat was parched,
and each eye (was) glazed.

In the chiasmus, the subjects ("each throat" and "each eye") occupy different places in the sentence than they would in the default word order.

So, the KJ version of the Luke quotation is more difficult:

[I cannot]a [dig]b;
[to beg]b [I am ashamed]a.

So, yes, "dig" and "to beg" are both verbs. In the Greek and Latin versions that I posted, they are both infinitives. In the English, one has "to" before it, while the other does not, because "can" does not use the "to" infinitive form. In other words, it's ungrammatical to say: "I can to read the book," but OK to say: "I can read the book."

This sort of thing is easier in Latin and Greek (or Russian or Sanskrit) because they are inflected languages where word order is less important than it is in languages like Chinese or English. The endings of words determine the relationships between words, e.g., what is the subject or direct object of some verb.

Does that make sense?

"The heart of a fool is in his mouth, but the mouth of a wise man is in his heart."
Benjamin Franklin, Poor Richard's Almanack, 1773

Yes, thank you, jheem; that makes more sense to me.

Unfortunately, my literal mind is getting in the way here, and I am having a hard time seeing how "dig" and "beg" relate. I can understand chiasmuses (plural?) better with the one I posted or with wordnerd's. I am having a hard time understanding the Luke 16:3 reference (beg vs. dig), though.

Kalleh, "beg" and "dig" are both verbs. That's it.It's just the part of speech and the place in the word order that counts, not really what the word is.

Well, it didn't seem to be the case with the others. For example, in the one there was the play on the words "mouth" and "heart" and "wise" and "fool;" in the other "throat" and "eye" and "parched" and "glazed." Yet, "dig" and "beg" didn't seem related at all.

Guess I am back to square one, then.

I wouldn't worry too much about it Kalleh, but if it's any help, the Greek original (which isn't a chiasmus), there's a bunch of phonetic highjinks going on:

skaptein ouk iskhuo,
epatein aiskhunomai.

Literally,

to dig, delve / not / I am strong, worthy
to beg / I am ashamed, dishonored

I wouldn't worry too much about it Kalleh
Your explanation helped, but what are "highjinks?" I couldn't find them in Onelook.

quote:

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Originally posted by Kalleh:
Your explanation helped, but what are "highjinks?" I couldn't find them in Onelook.

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Highjinks isn't in OneLook, but high jinks is.

Tinman