[Cryptography] Ancient cryptography

[Phillip Hallam-Baker]

I have been reading Richard Carrier's On the Historicity of Jesus.
Leaving aside the main argument he makes, this depends on examination
of various ancient scriptures written by folk who believed they were
receiving divine messages directly or deciphering hidden messages in
existing texts.

Forget the religious meaning. This is an ancient form of digital signatures.

In particular the gospel of Mark (and much else) is written using a
structure called Chiasmus. Which is a structure ABC ... CBA. This
repeats many times with large and fine grained Chiastic structures
throughout the text. And Mark himself is surely giving away the key in
Mark 10:31 "But many who are first will be last, and the last first."

This was a very common literary form at the time and appears in the OT
as well, it is the reason why Genesis has two accounts of creation
back to back which mirror each other. That isn't an editing mistake or
two versions being mashed together. It is very deliberate.

So why would Mark write like this? Well leaving aside the religious
reasons, it makes it much more likely that the original text will
survive redaction by later scribes.

Lets say that there was some ancient controversy (for the sake of
argument use of motor cars) and some activist decided to settle the
matter with recourse to authority. He reads Mark, can't find anything
relevant so he decides to use the then popular technique of making
s**t up and inserting it. So he crafts a verse or two about the Lord
riding into Jerusalem on a Ford Model T (if he is pro cars) or
condemning a motorist (if not) and inserts it into the story where he
hopes nobody will notice.

This is easier than it might seem as all he needs to do is add in a
marginal note or at worst rewrite a whole page. Then he pulls out the
scroll and says 'aha'. But the chiastic structure is a dead give away
because any insertion on one arm of the structure has to be balanced
by an insertion on the other. Making one change fit the text without
sticking out like a sore thumb is actually quite hard. Particularly if
we are looking at a major rewrite such as Mathew's redaction and
expansion of Mark. Fitting the older text into an expanded work is
hard.

The chiastic structure is working like a tamper-evident marking for
the manuscripts. If a library happened to have two copies of a scroll,
one of which had been tampered with, the one with the better chiasmus
would be preferred for accuracy. Unless of course there were criteria
other than accuracy like suiting an agenda.