The Plausibility Of Alleged Doublets And Other Parallels In The Bible And Elsewhere

Critics often object that the similarities among two or more events reported in the Bible make it unlikely that all of the reports are historical. Sometimes it's even alleged that the similarities suggest it's unlikely that any of the reports are historically accurate. Supposedly, there must have been some single underlying tradition that was developed in different ways by different sources and eventually took the form of reporting multiple events, even though there actually was only one event or no event at all. Jesus' feeding of the five thousand and his feeding of the four thousand surely didn't both happen, especially the lack of anticipation on the part of his disciples in the context of the second miracle. Similar reasoning is applied to the accounts about Abraham and Isaac and their wives in Genesis 20 and Genesis 26, the multiple accounts of the healing of the blind in Matthew (in contrast to only one similar account in the other Synoptics), etc.

A variation of this kind of objection is to allege that a Biblical source is too similar to an extrabiblical one. Old Testament passages must have been derived from similar ancient accounts in other cultures. Claims made about Jesus in the New Testament are too similar to ancient pagan mythology. And so on.

A lot can be said about such objections. For example, the largeness of life and the largeness of the literature and other sources we can draw from to find parallels make it less significant accordingly when parallels are found. And the alleged parallels often aren't as significant as the critic makes them out to be (e.g., paralleling baptism to some sort of interaction with water that doesn't have much similarity to baptism, comparing a resurrection to something that doesn't have much similarity to a resurrection). Or it can be pointed out that some parallel accounts postdate or have a significant chance of postdating the Biblical sources in question. We can provide potential reasons why history would repeat itself on some occasions. If there's a personal agent involved with the sort of attributes God is believed to have, then it makes sense that there would be patterns in the way he directs history, that he would give people opportunities to learn from their predecessors' mistakes and to handle similar situations differently, etc. We can explain why one author might accurately report two similar events while another author only reports one of them. Even when people experience similar miracles more than once, they can be surprised, unprepared, and such when that sort of miracle occurs a second time or more. It's not as though everything the person reacted to the first time the miracle occurred would necessarily be resolved by the time the second one happened. The experiencer could be more accustomed to the miracle the second time it occurs without being fully accustomed to it. It's still unsettling to some extent. There may be a gradual process of adapting to a miraculous experience, which ranges across a spectrum for different experiencers and different types of experiences. And critics often overlook or underestimate some of the factors involved in determining how people react to parallel events (e.g., how Jesus' negative reaction to the first crowd he miraculously fed may have led his disciples to doubt that he'd do that sort of miracle again [John 6:26-27]; how often Jesus didn't miraculously feed the crowds he addressed, which would affect the disciples' expectations).

But it's good to supplement responses like the ones mentioned above with historical precedents. Give the critic examples of parallels that he already accepts, should accept, or whose rejection would cost him a higher price than he has to pay for rejecting the Biblical incidents. What I want to do in this post is provide such precedents, including ones involving the supernatural, some of which I haven't discussed before. These are just several examples among many more that could be cited.

Andrew Wallace-Hadrill wrote, concerning Suetonius:

Any author who looks back to the past is liable to find reflected in it the present he knows. If he looks for lessons or exempla, they will be ones with relevance for his contemporaries. This indeed was a justification Romans conventionally offered for the writing of history….There might too be quite irrational echoes, when the past proved to anticipate and foreshadow current events or personalities.

Such echoes have been detected in the Caesars [a work written by Suetonius]. In particular it is tempting to catch fleeting glimpses of Hadrian behind Suetonius' descriptions of his predecessors. There are striking similarities….

The links even extend to the coincidental: if Augustus' life was threatened by a demented camp-follower in Illyria, at loose with a hunting knife, Hadrian for his part narrowly escaped an onslaught by a demented slave with a knife in a garden at Tarraco.

From the coincidental to the controversial, any of these points and more may have struck the Hadrianic reader of the Caesars. It is possible too that the author was aware of them, and even intended to make his readers aware. But their interpretation is another matter - whether to see in such parallels signs of loyal support, of malice, or of a gradual movement from one to another. Intriguing though such speculations are, the safest course is to abstain. Some coincidences may be the product of life itself, not of the writer's eye.

(Suetonius [London, England: Bristol Classical Press, 2004], 198, 200)

Here's a short video by Mike Licona that provides some examples from American history.

And here's an article I wrote that addresses other examples from both ancient and modern history.

I want to close this post with a discussion of a paranormal case I've studied in a lot of depth, the Enfield Poltergeist, which involves some events that are highly similar to each other in some relevant ways. Because that case is so recent, involves so much documentation (a triple-digit number of hours of audio recordings, dozens of signed witness statements, etc.), and involves multiple sets of events that are highly similar in relevant ways and seem to be paranormal, it's especially pertinent to objections to alleged doublets, parallels, and such in paranormal contexts. In the process of the discussion below, I'll be citing some of Maurice Grosse and Guy Playfair's tapes. Grosse's will be referenced with "MG", so MG94A is a reference to tape 94A in his collection. Playfair's tapes will be cited with "GP", so that GP3B is a reference to his tape 3B.

Here's a video of John Burcombe talking about a November 13, 1977 throwing of Janet Hodgson (allegedly by a poltergeist) that involved her landing on a radio in the corner of her bedroom. Here's a video of Graham Morris describing another throwing of Janet that took place 13 days later, on November 26. That's one for which we have a large amount of evidence, including some taped testimony from the doctor who examined Janet's medical condition just before the throwing incident and administered the Valium she was given shortly before the event occurred. I discuss the event and the doctor's testimony here. (Do a Ctrl F search for "One doctor's".) And 6 days later, on December 2, Janet was thrown again, first to one of the other beds, then to that same dresser where the radio was (MG31B, 3:07). That December 2 throwing was caught on tape, with corroboration from multiple witnesses who were present.

Notice the similarities among these throwings. Janet is the one thrown in each of the three incidents. She was thrown to the same highly unusual location each time. John Burcombe was the one who found her there on the first two occasions.

And even though he'd experienced such an event about two weeks earlier, he was disturbed by what he experienced the second time, as the photograph of his discovery of Janet on the radio illustrates:

That's relevant to the popular notion that Jesus' disciples and other individuals involved shouldn't have been surprised, disturbed, etc. when they experienced something Jesus or somebody else did for a second time or more. The photograph I've linked above shows Burcombe's reaction the second time he found Janet after she was thrown to the top of the radio.

There are other similarities among these events that could be cited: they occurred late in the fall (mid November to early December), at night, while Janet was in bed, etc. But these were three separate events, each of them fully historical and supernatural.

Similar points could be made about the famous photographs of throwing incidents in the Enfield case, which I've discussed elsewhere. In those photos, you often see Margaret Hodgson, Peggy Hodgson, or somebody else responding with surprise, screaming, or some such thing, even though they'd witnessed throwings and other paranormal events before.

Another example of highly similar events in the Enfield case involves Denise Burcombe's experience seeing a doppelganger of Maurice Grosse on November 7, 1977. Go here and do a Ctrl F search for "November 7" to read about what happened. Grosse and John Burcombe reported that Denise saw a doppelganger of Grosse again, apparently at the same location (through the bay window in the front of the house), in the first half of December of that year (MG44B, 15:39; GP24B, 4:03). So, the two events involved the same witness seeing the same kind of doppelganger in the same location.

I've done a lot of research on the Enfield case and have read and listened to many sources discussing it. It's common for people to only refer to one of the incidents when Janet was thrown on top of the radio in the corner of her bedroom or one of the occasions when Denise saw a doppelganger of Grosse through the bay window. Even people who are highly knowledgeable of the case and do know about or should know about the parallel events involved, such as Grosse and Playfair, have mentioned only one of the events at times. That illustrates the danger of assuming that people will mention every incident they know of every time they discuss a relevant topic. People are often highly selective in what they say, for a variety of reasons. Something like a temple cleansing or healing of a blind man could easily have occurred more than once in Jesus' life without each instance being mentioned every time the sources who knew of the parallel events wrote about a relevant issue.

Like God having patterns of behavior that can be traced in history, a poltergeist could have behavioral tendencies. In the Enfield case, for reasons I've explained elsewhere, I suspect the poltergeist had a malfunctioning mind, often repeated itself, and often gradually learned how to do things over time, which was a process that involved repetition. So, though a poltergeist would have different reasons for repeating himself than God has for repeating himself, both contexts involve a personal agent with reasons for repetition.