History Online - Chronology

The application of these methods is sometimes made easier by the fact that for many a historical text, the commentators have revealed the repeating fragments. By a "repetition", we mean not only a repetition of a name, but also a repeated description of a particular event, and so forth. For example, the same descriptions, lists of names, religious formulas, and so on, are encountered in the Bible many times. All of them have been discovered in the Bible long ago and were systematized and mentioned in the list of parallel passages; namely, close to certain verses, it is indicated which verses of this or other books of the Bible are regarded as "repetitions" (which are "parallel"). If a text X under investigation has been supplied with this, or a similar, list of parallel passages, then we can apply the duplicate-discovery method, regarding the repeated fragments as "repeated names".
We illustrate this with an example. Consider the books of the Bible from Genesis to the Book of Nehemiah. The partition of the Bible into chapter i generations has been given above. We now enumerate them in the order in i which they replace each other in the canonical ordering. The list of "parallels" ' contains approximately 20,000 repeated verses. We count in each X(T) the I number of verses which have not yet appeared in the preceding chapters X(T) (i.e., first appearing in X(To)). We denote their number by II(To,ro). We then count how many times these verses repeat in the subsequent X(T). We , denote the obtained quantities by II(To,T). All graphs of II(To,T) have been i constructed (altogether 169 graphs). They differ from those of K(To, T) only in ' dealing with verses instead of names, and names instead of verses. The verses i which are not repetitions of each other or some other verse are regarded as different names".
Hence in the correct chronological order of chapter generations, with duplicates being absent, the verse repetition graphs II (To,T) should have the form of that shown in Fig. 24. Similarly to the case of employing names, the author of a text (for the correct order of the described events) says nothing of i the events of the generation To in the preceding chapters (these events have i not yet occurred), says a lot while describing the events of the generation To, and recalls them still less and less in the subsequent chapters, i.e., the graph possesses an absolute maximum at the point To, vanishes to the left of To, and decreases monotonically to the right of To. An experimental check which I performed has justified the frequency-damping principle for all the fragments of the Bible, listed below, namely, (1) Genesis 1-5; (2) Genesis 6-10; (3) Genesis 11; (4) Genesis 12-38; (5) Genesis 39-50; Exodus; Leviticus;
Numbers; Deuteronomy; The Book of Joshua; The Book of Judges 1-18; (6) The Book of Judges 19-21; Ruth; The First and Second Book of Samuel; The First and Second Book of Kings 1-23; (7) The First and Second Book of the Chronicles; The Book of Ezra and Nehemiah. It turns out that all the graphs of II(To, T) are of the form of the theoretical graph in Fig. 24 for each of these texts, which means that the frequency-damping principle is valid in this case; besides, the order of the chapters is chronologically correct, while duplicates are absent.
If all the chapters of a text are enumerated correctly as a whole, then i the duplicates can be discovered by plotting the "verse repetition graphs" of f n(To,T). If two chapters X(To) and X(Co) are duplicates, then the graphs of j n(To, T) and II(Co, T) are of the form demonstrated in Fig. 27. This method i has also been experimentally checked for the above example, namely, [the i First Book of Samuel + the Second Book of Samuel + the First Book of Kings + the Second Book of Kings] duplicate [the First and Second Book of the Chronicles]. The construction of the graphs of II(To,T) revealed that the duplicates were just those chapters from [the First and Second Book of Samuel -|- the First and Second Book of Kings] and [the First and Second Book of the Chronicles], which were duplicates from the standpoint of the graphs of K(To,T), thus indicating the complete consistency of the results of the application of both methods. Meanwhile, it should be noted that the list of parallelisms is not identical with that of repeated names, since, for example, many fragments (verses of the Bible) not containing names at all are regarded to be "parallel".