Patterns & Metaphors
Religious sayings
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The New Testament and Apocrypha sayings of Jesus, the logia, are partly definable in terms of the rhetoric and oratory of the classical world. Thus the logia abound in simile and metaphor, and in parable and allegory which develop respectively from the former pair. However Jesus' sayings are best categorized from the standpoint of the Hebrew Mashal, a category that includes the foregoing but also proverbs, maxims, riddles, and figurative speech in general. It is incorrect to call Jesus' teaching method one of parables (parabole) as another Greek term, paroimia, the equivalent of mashal, is used in the Fourth Gospel to characterize the logia. Equivalent sayings have been engendered by founders of other religions.
