Chiasmus

I'm no liturgical scholar. But I have been teaching some old books that exhibit both strange parallelisms and numerical mysticism. I warned the students: Just because this idea won't occur to you does not mean that it did not occur, quite naturally, to others.

Other people seem to have noticed this too (before) in connection with the Roman Canon. From the comments:

... the Roman Canon ... has a very ancient two-part structure, in common with only a few other surviving anaphoræ. A quick look at its successive clauses will reveal that the whole exhibits a pleasing chiastic (or "onion-ring") structure, a format beloved of the Greco-Roman world and common in the New Testament.

So this is hardly an original idea. In any event, the real question is: could it be true?