Parallel passages between ancient authors

Comparisons II, essay 4. Every set below is drawn from the Day 16 Connections index and linked to its connection page; quotations are from works already on this site. No author is named on this page.

Ancient authors reused each other constantly, and they reused in different ways. Sometimes they quoted and named their source. Sometimes they alluded, expecting the reader to catch the echo. Sometimes two authors tell the same story or ask the same question without any quotation at all, because both are drawing on a shared tradition or a shared text. The Day 16 Connections index sorts its thirty sets into those three kinds — direct quotation, allusion, parallel tradition — and this essay follows that sorting, because the kind of reuse determines what can honestly be claimed about it. A quotation proves contact. A parallel tradition proves only shared material, and the interesting question about it is not “who copied whom” but “what did each writer do with the material once he had it”.

Six sets, chosen for the range of their moves: two direct quotations, three parallel traditions, and one parallel that is really an argument about a shared doctrine. In each case the passages stand side by side first, and the commentary follows: what changed in wording, in audience, and in argument between source and reuse.

What “source” means here. In the quotation sets, the source is named by the reuser himself (Eusebius names Josephus; Augustine names Virgil), so dependence is not in doubt — only its purpose is. In the parallel-tradition sets, no dependence is claimed: Philo and Josephus both retell Genesis, Basil and Josephus both open with it, Justin and Plato both teach judgment after death, and the essay argues about their different handlings, not about who read whom. Where a set’s transmission is itself debated — the Testimonium in section 1 — the debate is stated in the section, not footnoted away.

1. Direct quotation: Eusebius quotes Josephus on Jesus

Connection page · Type: direct quotation.

Eusebius, writing his Church History in the fourth century, wants an outside witness: a Jewish historian, not a Christian, testifying to Jesus. He finds it in Josephus’s Antiquities, Book 18, and reproduces it in his chapter of testimonies concerning John the Baptist and Christ:

“After relating these things concerning John, he makes mention of our Saviour in the same work, in the following words: And there lived at that time Jesus, a wise man, if indeed it be proper to call him a man. For he was a doer of wonderful works, and a teacher of such men as receive the truth in gladness. And he attached to himself many of the Jews, and many also of the Greeks. He was the Christ.” — Eusebius, Church History, Chapter 11

Beside it, Josephus’s own text as the library prints it:

“Now there was about this time Jesus, a wise man, if it be lawful to call him a man; for he was a doer of wonderful works, a teacher of such men as receive the truth with pleasure. He drew over to him both many of the Jews and many of the Gentiles. He was [the] Christ.” — Josephus, Antiquities, Book 18, Chapter 3

The wording is nearly identical, and the small differences are the instructive part. Eusebius’s framing — “he makes mention of our Saviour” — does the theological work before the quotation begins: a neutral historian’s “Jesus” becomes “our Saviour” in the introduction, so that the reader meets the passage already claimed. Inside the quotation, “if it be lawful” becomes “if indeed it be proper”, “with pleasure” becomes “in gladness”, “drew over” becomes “attached to himself”, “Gentiles” becomes “Greeks”. None of these changes alters the sense; together they show a quoter polishing a text into his own style while preserving its substance — exactly what an honest ancient quotation looks like.

The caution that belongs here concerns not Eusebius’s fidelity but the passage’s longer history. The Testimonium as it stands contains phrases — above all “He was the Christ” — that a Jewish writer of Josephus’s position would be unlikely to write unqualified, and scholars have long debated how much of the passage is Josephus and how much is later Christian copyists’ retouching. The debate does not touch Eusebius’s quotation, which is what this set actually shows: by the fourth century the passage already circulated in this form, and Eusebius used it as an external testimony. What changed between Josephus and Eusebius, then, is not primarily wording but function: a paragraph in a Jewish history of the Roman period becomes, inside a church history, evidence in an apologetic case. The same sentences, a different trial.

2. Parallel tradition: Philo’s Word and Justin’s Logos

Connection page · Type: parallel tradition. Justin does not name Philo.

Philo, on the priest’s soul fashioned in the form of God:

“Now the image of God is the Word, by which all the world was made.” — Philo, On the Creation of Magistrates, Book 1, §§76–100

Justin, a century later, on the being begotten before all creatures:

“God begot before all creatures a Beginning, [who was] a certain rational power [proceeding] from Himself, who is called by the Holy Spirit, now the Glory of the Lord, now the Son, again Wisdom, again an Angel, then God, and then Lord and Logos” — Justin Martyr, Dialogue with Trypho, Chapter 61

The shared vocabulary is unmistakable — image, Word, the world made through it — and so is the difference in what the vocabulary is doing. Philo’s Word is a metaphysical principle: the image of God, the model of creation, discussed in a treatise on law and priesthood for readers who know Plato. Justin’s Logos is a person with a history: begotten, named many names, appearing to Joshua in human form, as the chapter goes on to argue. The audience has changed too. Philo writes as a Jew explaining Moses to philosophers; Justin writes as a Christian proving, from the Scriptures his Jewish interlocutor accepts, that the pre-existent one is distinct from the Father yet God. The word survived the journey; the argument it serves did not. That is the pattern of a parallel tradition at its most productive: not copying, but a shared term pressed into a new controversy, where its old prestige becomes evidence for a new claim.

3. Parallel tradition: Plato’s craftsman and Philo’s model

Connection page · Type: parallel tradition. The parallel is in the question, not the wording.

Plato’s Timaeus asks the question that structures ancient cosmology:

“Now to discover the Maker and Father of this Universe were a task indeed; and having discovered Him, to declare Him unto all men were a thing impossible. However, let us return and inquire further concerning the Cosmos,—after which of the Models did its Architect construct it?” — Plato, Timaeus, Section 29

Philo answers the question with Moses’ authority behind him:

“using an incorporeal model formed as far as possible on the image of God, he might then make this corporeal world, a younger likeness of the elder creation” — Philo, On the Creation of the World, §§1–25

What changes here is the status of the model. For Plato, the model is eternal, separate, and contemplated by a craftsman who is himself distinct from it; the dialogue leaves open, famously, how far the craftsman and the model are one story or two. For Philo, the model is God’s own thought — the logos of the companion essay — and the craftsman is God himself, so that model, maker, and the image in Genesis 1:27 collapse into a single doctrine, which Philo insists is “the doctrine of Moses, not mine”. The question is Plato’s; the answer’s authority is Moses’. That reversal — Greek question, scriptural answer — is Philo’s characteristic move, and it is visible here in miniature: he does not reject the Timaeus, he outbids it, by giving its question a revealed answer.

4. Parallel tradition: four tellings of “In the beginning”

Connection page · Type: parallel tradition. No dependence is claimed between the retellings.

The same opening, four genres. The Septuagint translates:

“ΕΝ ΑΡΧΗ ἐποίησεν ὁ θεὸς τὸν οὐρανὸν καὶ τὴν γῆν.” — Septuagint (Swete), Genesis 1:1

Philo philosophises, with the incorporeal model of section 3. Basil, preaching the Hexaemeron, begins where Moses begins and stays there:

“In the Beginning God made the Heaven and the Earth.” — Basil of Caesarea, Hexaemeron, Homily I

Josephus historicises:

“In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.” — Josephus, Antiquities, Book 1, Chapter 1

The words barely change across the four — “made” against “created” is the largest variation — and that stability is the point. What changes is everything around the words: the Septuagint’s verse is a translation choice (aorist epoiesen, “made”); Philo’s is the opening of a philosophical system; Basil’s is the text of a sermon, quoted to be expounded word by word over six homilies; Josephus’s is the first sentence of a national history addressed to Romans. A reader who only compared the sentences would conclude nothing happened. A reader who compares the books finds that the same sentence can be a translation, a system, a sermon text, and a history — and that genre, not wording, is where reuse actually happens.

5. Direct quotation: Augustine quotes Virgil on sparing the humbled

Connection page · Type: direct quotation, Latin given alongside.

Augustine, opening the City of God — his reply to the charge that Christianity caused Rome’s fall — quotes Anchises’ farewell advice to Aeneas in Aeneid 6, and gives the Latin with it:

“Show pity to the humbled soul, And crush the sons of pride. Virgil, Æneid, 6-854. [Parcere subjectis et debellare superbos]” — Augustine, City of God, Preface

Virgil’s own line, in Anchises’ speech on Rome’s imperial art:

“To rule the nations. Thy great art shall be To keep the world in lasting peace, to spare humbled foe, and crush to earth the proud.” — Virgil, Aeneid, Book 6

What changes is the speaker’s empire. In Virgil, sparing the humbled and crushing the proud is Rome’s art of rule, taught by a father’s ghost to the founder of the Roman line: clemency as imperial policy. In Augustine’s preface, the same line stands at the head of a book arguing that Rome’s earthly empire is not the City of God, and that its virtues, including clemency, belong to a city that passes away. Augustine does not argue against Virgil’s line; he adopts it, and lets it judge the empire that coined it. The quotation is exact — he even preserves the Latin, as if to prove he is not paraphrasing away the evidence — and the argument is a reversal: Rome’s own poet supplies the moral standard by which Augustine will measure Rome. Direct quotation at its most economical: two lines, quoted verbatim, turned against their author’s empire without changing a word.

6. Parallel tradition: Justin beside Plato on judgment

Connection page · Type: parallel tradition. Justin names Plato and argues from the parallel.

Justin’s move here is the opposite of Augustine’s. Where Augustine quotes an enemy’s poet against the enemy’s empire, Justin quotes a pagan philosopher in support of a Christian doctrine — and then marks, carefully, where the support stops. Plato’s Socrates, closing the Gorgias myth, appoints Minos and Rhadamanthus judges of the dead. Justin, defending Christians before the emperor, takes the parallel up explicitly:

“And Plato, in like manner, used to say that Rhadamanthus and Minos would punish the wicked who came before them; and we say that the same thing will be done, but at the hand of Christ, and upon the wicked in the same bodies united again to their spirits which are now to undergo everlasting punishment; and not only, as Plato said, for a period of a thousand years.” — Justin Martyr, First Apology, Chapter 8

Three changes are packed into one sentence, and Justin names all three. The judge changes: Minos and Rhadamanthus become Christ. The body changes: Plato’s disembodied souls, judged apart from their bodies, become the wicked “in the same bodies united again to their spirits” — resurrection, not mere survival. The duration changes: Plato’s thousand-year cycle becomes everlasting punishment. What remains is the shape: judgment after death, the wicked punished, the moral order vindicated beyond the grave. Justin’s argument is that the shape was already known to the best pagan philosophy, so that Christian teaching is not novel — and then, in the same breath, that Christianity corrects the philosophy at exactly the points where it matters: judge, body, duration. Parallel passages are often treated as evidence of borrowing; here the parallel is the argument itself, deployed by the later author against the charge of innovation, with its limits stated by the author himself.

Conclusion: three moves of reuse

The six sets reduce to three moves, and the reduction is the essay’s thesis. First, quote and reframe: Eusebius and Augustine quote verbatim, and the reframing — Eusebius’s “our Saviour”, Augustine’s preface to a book against Rome’s pretensions — does the new work while the words stay still. Second, shared question, new answer: Philo takes Plato’s model-and-copy question and answers it from Moses; Justin takes Plato’s judgment and answers it with Christ, resurrection, and eternity. Third, same story, new genre: “In the beginning” is translation, system, sermon, and history in turn, and the genre is the interpretation.

None of the six sets needs a theory of influence to be interesting, and two of them — the Testimonium and the Philo–Justin parallel — positively resist one: Eusebius’s passage may itself carry later retouching, and Justin never names Philo. What the sets show, without any influence theory, is how ancient writers thought with other writers’ words: quoting them to borrow authority, paralleling them to claim antiquity, and always — even in the closest quotation — changing the frame enough that the old words make a new argument. A parallel passage is never just a match. It is a match plus a move, and the move is where the later writer’s mind is visible.

Bibliography

David T. Runia, Philo of Alexandria and the Timaeus of Plato (Leiden: Brill, 1986) — print; the detailed account of Philo’s reuse of Plato, the model-and-copy question at the centre of section 3.
Oskar Skarsaune, The Proof from Prophecy: A Study in Justin Martyr’s Proof-Text Tradition (Leiden: Brill, 1987) — print; Justin’s use of earlier material, the background to sections 2 and 6.
L. D. Reynolds and N. G. Wilson, Scribes and Scholars: A Guide to the Transmission of Greek and Latin Literature, 3rd edition (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1991) — print; how ancient texts were quoted, copied, and retouched, the transmission background to section 1.
Josephus, Antiquities, translated by William Whiston (1737) — open access (public domain); the translation quoted on this site, linked above to its work pages.
Eusebius, Church History, in Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, 2nd series, vol. 1 — open access (public domain); the translation quoted on this site.
Augustine, City of God, in Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, 1st series, vol. 2 — open access (public domain); the translation quoted on this site, with Virgil’s Latin as printed there.
Justin Martyr, First Apology and Dialogue with Trypho, in Ante-Nicene Fathers vol. 1 — open access (public domain); the translations quoted on this site.

Feeds the Day 19 bibliography: the print items above are carried into the scholar’s resources bibliography, with the open-access editions linked from their work pages.