Parallelomania (parallels between OT/NT & other traditions)

Discussion about the New Testament, apocrypha, gnostics, church fathers, Christian origins, historical Jesus or otherwise, etc.
gilius
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Re: Parallelomania (parallels between OT/NT & other traditio

Post by gilius »

Firstly I don't mean to belittle your own research but the question was does Atwill use this method, or a related method.

Secondly your claims if true would be quite controversial. I would be interested in hearing your ideas and asking questions.

For example, is your database of texts in English or in the language of their original authorship? IDK and am not familiar with your site.
Atwill doesn't really use any particular method other than walking the reader through all the parallels and pointing out their sequential relationship to each other, so by the time you get to the end it's clear that both books are so interwoven that they had to have been written by the same authors. It's not my site - it's maintained by Brigham Young University. The language is English as opposed to koine Greek, but don't let that confuse you. Greek to English translations hardly affects the parallel system - only a few of them need the original Greek texts to be understood - mostly for puns. As you are probably aware from sites like Bible Gateway and Bible Hub - multiple translations can be understood all around the world in loosely the same way. Reading the bible is no longer restricted to Greek specialists or elite priest like during the Middle Ages. Everyone has the opportunity to make sense of it - whether you translate the Temple as the Holy House or the Temple makes no difference.

For those who actually take the time to read Caesar's Messiah it's not really necessary to use any method other than common sense, so perhaps that's why Atwill never felt the need to go as far I did. For example, for a similar spot-the-difference colouring book exercise would anyone bother referring to any scientific method to prove that these 2 pictures are related?
http://www.everydayok.com/wp-content/up ... iglets.jpg

However, if we were to explain the common sense behind matching parallels then it would be related to patterns and word frequency, but this goes without saying. Now, I don't believe most people lack such common sense, but rather they refuse to allow themselves to think for whatever reason. How might a school child gain such common sense? Well, you could try comparing any 2 chapters from any books/documents and seeing what kind of words/phrases you are able to match up. It will soon become clear that in this simple experiment low/medium frequency words/phrases are much harder matches to come by, and that high frequency words/phrases are more common. And then through experience (ideally learning probability theory) it should be comprehended as some stage of childhood that having multiple rare events occur is less likely than just one rare event by coincidence. Anyway, all this is rather over-explicit. Reaching a logical conclusion with Caesar's Messiah doesn't require any special skills or methodology. The problem lies more with censorship, conformity, and academics who would rather not put their careers on the line. And most people would rather just memorise and repeat what any authority might say instead of thinking for themselves.
Which century or centuries was this and what source(s) are you using for this statement? Thanks.
I believe it was up till to the late 19th or even 20th century. I can try to find out the exact period Churches stopped teaching Josephus as confirmation of the New Testament prophesies, but I think Jesuits have always been taught in that way right up till the present era.
I object that you need to refer to atheists on the basis that the more appropriate phrase should be ... "Historians" realise a manmade explanation should be explored first before a divine one.

Sorry about the quibble. Welcome to the discussions.
My mistake - right you are!
So the claim is that Matthew was written after 70 CE?
Not just Matthew, but all the canonical gospels were written late 1st century and much information is overlapping between them. Specifically, the finding is that the 3 synoptics were first written under Titus, and John + rest of NT written under Domitian. Wars of the Jews was most likely end of Titus' reign, start of Domitian's reign - Antiquities sometime during Domitian's reign. Final contributions to the New Testament came from Trajan and Pliny (Atwill forthcoming).
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Leucius Charinus
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Re: Parallelomania (parallels between OT/NT & other traditio

Post by Leucius Charinus »

gilius wrote:Atwill doesn't really use any particular method other than walking the reader through all the parallels and pointing out their sequential relationship to each other, so by the time you get to the end it's clear that both books are so interwoven that they had to have been written by the same authors.
What about the possibility that one late author simply copied an earlier author?
Or are you saying that the analysis show that this is impossible, because the one author had to have edited both books?
However, if we were to explain the common sense behind matching parallels then it would be related to patterns and word frequency, but this goes without saying. Now, I don't believe most people lack such common sense, but rather they refuse to allow themselves to think for whatever reason. How might a school child gain such common sense? Well, you could try comparing any 2 chapters from any books/documents and seeing what kind of words/phrases you are able to match up. It will soon become clear that in this simple experiment low/medium frequency words/phrases are much harder matches to come by, and that high frequency words/phrases are more common. And then through experience (ideally learning probability theory) it should be comprehended as some stage of childhood that having multiple rare events occur is less likely than just one rare event by coincidence. Anyway, all this is rather over-explicit.
It seems to be amenable to statistical probability, and if so, would be more explicit, rigorous and testable in such a form. I guess one would need to associate various probabilities to the matching of low/medium/high words/phrases and start crunching. Have you tried that?

Reaching a logical conclusion with Caesar's Messiah doesn't require any special skills or methodology. The problem lies more with censorship, conformity, and academics who would rather not put their careers on the line. And most people would rather just memorise and repeat what any authority might say instead of thinking for themselves.
Have you run the same tests on the "Historia Ecclesiastica" (and "Praeparatio Evangelica"; "Demonstratio Evangelica") of Eusebius?


So the claim is that Matthew was written after 70 CE?
Not just Matthew, but all the canonical gospels were written late 1st century and much information is overlapping between them. Specifically, the finding is that the 3 synoptics were first written under Titus, and John + rest of NT written under Domitian. Wars of the Jews was most likely end of Titus' reign, start of Domitian's reign - Antiquities sometime during Domitian's reign. Final contributions to the New Testament came from Trajan and Pliny (Atwill forthcoming).

Thanks.



LC
A "cobbler of fables" [Augustine]; "Leucius is the disciple of the devil" [Decretum Gelasianum]; and his books "should be utterly swept away and burned" [Pope Leo I]; they are the "source and mother of all heresy" [Photius]
gilius
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Re: Parallelomania (parallels between OT/NT & other traditio

Post by gilius »

What about the possibility that one late author simply copied an earlier author?
Or are you saying that the analysis show that this is impossible, because the one author had to have edited both books?
If you can think along those lines then you are already halfway to solving the conundrum left to us by the Flavians, but unfortunately most people cannot tell "deliberate design" from "coincidence", so they would see no pattern between the gospels and Josephus, attributing the phenomena to parallelomania, thereby failing to understand the significance of sequence.

The initial logical conclusion is that Josephus was somehow inspired by the New Testament to use all their words, phrases, names and locations. However, it soon becomes apparent that both sets of literature were authored by the same team. I can go into detail on this, but then you have to accept a connection between both books based on the parallels being genuine. For those who believe Woe x 8, scourged and crucified characters named Jesus, "Four Winds" and "Bridegroom and the Bride" exists between the aforementioned chapters by coincidence then there is no point in continuing the analysis. And as a very minor point compared to the bulk of the proof: why did Josephus take so little note of Jesus (only the Testimonium) if he had based the 2nd half of his book entirely on the structure/content of the gospels? Answer: it made the forgery less obvious.
It seems to be amenable to statistical probability, and if so, would be more explicit, rigorous and testable in such a form. I guess one would need to associate various probabilities to the matching of low/medium/high words/phrases and start crunching. Have you tried that?
It's really not necessary IMO. The "Flavian Signature" is extremely blatant. It would be more beneficial to test how many people in positions of power are psychopaths and what is stopping good people from detecting them and seeing the obvious. It's already as clear as mud, so applying any methods would create unnecessary and overcomplicated fog to something that doesn't warrant it. It already feels very strange to me that we are even considering it, but then that's in hindsight of me having read the book. Nevertheless, I did do some basic form of number crunching based on the Brigham Young University site, and my results were:
I estimate that the probability a book will contain the words “Jesus”, “four winds”, “false prophets”, “famine/s”, “east”, “west”, and “clouds” is 0.000000000000000000001%.
The number of books that you have to search before you are likely to come across the above combinations by coincidence is 99698432333821600000000 (Jesus’ doomsday prophecies)
Have you run the same tests on the "Historia Ecclesiastica" (and "Praeparatio Evangelica"; "Demonstratio Evangelica") of Eusebius?
No I haven't. I'm only interested in the origin of Christianity and Judaism. Atwill's analysis is sufficient to prove Christianity, and cites Eusebius in some chapters. And Abraham's men were done by Ralph Ellis - they have been proven to be none other than the Hyksos shepherd kings of northern Egypt - Manetho even tells us they were!
Thanks.
NP - you're welcome. Thanks for being open-minded!
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cienfuegos
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Re: Parallelomania (parallels between OT/NT & other traditio

Post by cienfuegos »

LC wrote:It seems to be amenable to statistical probability, and if so, would be more explicit, rigorous and testable in such a form. I guess one would need to associate various probabilities to the matching of low/medium/high words/phrases and start crunching. Have you tried that?
You'd have to find a comparison group. What is the likelihood that these parallels would occur purely by chance?
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Leucius Charinus
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Re: Parallelomania (parallels between OT/NT & other traditio

Post by Leucius Charinus »

cienfuegos wrote:
LC wrote:It seems to be amenable to statistical probability, and if so, would be more explicit, rigorous and testable in such a form. I guess one would need to associate various probabilities to the matching of low/medium/high words/phrases and start crunching. Have you tried that?
You'd have to find a comparison group. What is the likelihood that these parallels would occur purely by chance?
This is true, but I'd assume (without really looking at the task) that some form of objective method could be devised. Perhaps the Bayesian method? IDK.

I am certainly aware that certain "coincidences" evaporate once a full and rigorous study is made. The question is whether these parallels tendered here are in this "apparent coincidence" category or whether they represent the signature of copyists?

Gilius didn't seem too interested in the probability exercise. Unfortunately without this exercise although some people may wonder whether there is underlying copying and/or editing going on between these two texts, they will never be really certain. Attach a verifiable probabilistic assessment to the argument, and at least it will be critically analysed.




LC
A "cobbler of fables" [Augustine]; "Leucius is the disciple of the devil" [Decretum Gelasianum]; and his books "should be utterly swept away and burned" [Pope Leo I]; they are the "source and mother of all heresy" [Photius]
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neilgodfrey
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Re: Parallelomania (parallels between OT/NT & other traditio

Post by neilgodfrey »

I think much if not most of the mimesis in the ancient world of literature took place at ideas and specific words or puns might be carried over only rarely, if at all, if for the purpose of leaving a "flag" or clue to readers to recall the comparison. That must necessarily have happened, I presume, when Virgil based his Latin epic upon Homer's. My reading of the educational preparation of authors is that they were tasked with re-writing scenarios in the classics from quite different perspectives, or through the eyes of different characters, etc. The training would seem to lead them away from textual copying or carry-overs; it was predominantly at the level of the ideas, themes, images, rather than words and phrases.

If so then of course statistical comparisons are not going to be as easy as comparing matching words.
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gilius
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Re: Parallelomania (parallels between OT/NT & other traditio

Post by gilius »

Gilius didn't seem too interested in the probability exercise. Unfortunately without this exercise although some people may wonder whether there is underlying copying and/or editing going on between these two texts, they will never be really certain. Attach a verifiable probabilistic assessment to the argument, and at least it will be critically analysed.
Are you serious? That just shows to me that you either haven't looked at the parallels properly and judged them using your own common sense/initiative or you are somehow trying to downplay something that is too blatant to consider for probabilistic assessment. The parallels are not vague enough to require that. Plus I already gave you some figures, but you haven't acknowledged that or any of the "DNA" evidence I provided to you all on the previous page.
I think much if not most of the mimesis in the ancient world of literature took place at ideas and specific words or puns might be carried over only rarely, if at all, if for the purpose of leaving a "flag" or clue to readers to recall the comparison. That must necessarily have happened, I presume, when Virgil based his Latin epic upon Homer's. My reading of the educational preparation of authors is that they were tasked with re-writing scenarios in the classics from quite different perspectives, or through the eyes of different characters, etc. The training would seem to lead them away from textual copying or carry-overs; it was predominantly at the level of the ideas, themes, images, rather than words and phrases.

If so then of course statistical comparisons are not going to be as easy as comparing matching words.
We aren't talking ideas, themes or puns here that might have found their way into multiple texts by accident. We are talking about a designed system of typological parallels that have been deliberately inserted into the books by the psychopathic ruling elite of the day. Again, you haven't acknowledged any of the "DNA" evidence, either. If you did then you should see the whole thing is a blatant sick joke - but don't be afraid to share your interpretation regardless of how stupid you may be perceived for not seeing those obvious patterns. As I said, no statistical study is really necessary for a kids' spot-the-difference colouring book exercise. The only problem was knowing that a parallel system existed between the Roman history books and religious literature; however, now that I've pointed out a selection of that evidence to you on the previous page what's stopping you from observing it and reaching the obvious conclusions?

Let's start with this:
http://s21.postimg.org/p4rpun6h3/image.jpg

Do you acknowledge that both short chapters (in Matthew and Josephus) contain the words/phrases east .. west .."four winds", "Bridegroom and the bride", Woe x 8, and characters named Jesus in relation to the Temple of Jerusalem? Again, please talk me through this... if we need to call on the scientists and statisticians then so be it, but let's attempt this by ourselves first and see how far we get before we become unsure.
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Leucius Charinus
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Re: Parallelomania (parallels between OT/NT & other traditio

Post by Leucius Charinus »

gilius wrote:
Gilius didn't seem too interested in the probability exercise. Unfortunately without this exercise although some people may wonder whether there is underlying copying and/or editing going on between these two texts, they will never be really certain. Attach a verifiable probabilistic assessment to the argument, and at least it will be critically analysed.
Are you serious? That just shows to me that you either haven't looked at the parallels properly and judged them using your own common sense/initiative or you are somehow trying to downplay something that is too blatant to consider for probabilistic assessment. The parallels are not vague enough to require that. Plus I already gave you some figures, but you haven't acknowledged t.....
You wrote:
  • Nevertheless, I did do some basic form of number crunching based on the Brigham Young University site, and my results were:
    I estimate that the probability a book will contain the words “Jesus”, “four winds”, “false prophets”, “famine/s”, “east”, “west”, and “clouds” is 0.000000000000000000001%.

OK. Can you explain how you got that figure?


We aren't talking ideas, themes or puns here that might have found their way into multiple texts by accident. We are talking about a designed system of typological parallels that have been deliberately inserted into the books by the psychopathic ruling elite of the day.
Hence the important of the stats to demonstrate design over coincidence.

Let's start with this:
http://s21.postimg.org/p4rpun6h3/image.jpg


Do you acknowledge that both short chapters (in Matthew and Josephus) contain the words/phrases east .. west .."four winds", "Bridegroom and the bride", Woe x 8, and characters named Jesus in relation to the Temple of Jerusalem? Again, please talk me through this... if we need to call on the scientists and statisticians then so be it, but let's attempt this by ourselves first and see how far we get before we become unsure.
So we are comparing the text contained in Matt 23:13 to 25:1 to the text contained in Jewish War 6, 5, 271-315 ?

Fair enough. I think the first question should be how did you arrive at the above stats, given these two extracts.




LC
A "cobbler of fables" [Augustine]; "Leucius is the disciple of the devil" [Decretum Gelasianum]; and his books "should be utterly swept away and burned" [Pope Leo I]; they are the "source and mother of all heresy" [Photius]
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