There are phrases to the effect let he who understands this dotted through out the NT. Acts is a riff on Homer. What patterns and codes have been found, for example might the places it is said Jesus went to have been chosen explicitly for some reason?

Clive Durdle wrote:There are phrases to the effect let he who understands this dotted through out the NT.

The earliest Greek NT has abbreviated codes for a whole range of things. Codes are everywhere. If you found this in a book store without a lookup table for the meaning of the codes, would you buy this book? It was a puzzle book. Especially if it was written in bad greek? Of course not. Until it was used a political instrument in the Roman empire by Bullneck.

In Christian scribal practice, nomina sacra (singular: nomen sacrum from Latin sacred name) is the abbreviation of several frequently occurring divine names or titles, especially in Greek manuscripts of Holy Scripture. A nomen sacrum consists of two or more letters from the original word spanned by an overline. Metzger lists 15 such expressions from Greek papyri: the Greek counterparts of God, Lord, Jesus, Christ, Son, Spirit, David, Cross, Mother, Father, Israel, Savior, Man, Jerusalem, and Heaven.[1] These nomina sacra are all found in Greek manuscripts of the 3rd century and earlier, except Mother, which appears in the 4th.[2]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nomina_sacra

Acts is a riff on Homer.

Books of MacDonald, Dennis R. .
——— (1990). The Acts of Andrew and the Acts of Andrew and Matthias in the city of the cannibals. Texts and translations. Vol. 33. Atlanta, GA: Scholars Press. ISBN 9781555404925. OCLC 21950803.
——— (1994). Christianizing Homer: "The Odyssey," Plato, and "The Acts of Andrew". Oxford, UK & New York: Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-508722-2. OCLC 473473966.
——— (2000). The Homeric Epics and the Gospel of Mark. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. ISBN 9780300080124. OCLC 42389595.
——— (2003). Does the New Testament Imitate Homer? Four Cases from the Acts of the Apostles. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. ISBN 978-0-300-09770-2. OCLC 475204848.

He makes a convincing argument for this stuff. One of the more compelling arguments in favor (IMO) is that Homer was read as part of the education system - quite a central part along with other classical literature. Everyone who was able to write in the greek language would have almost certainly have read their Homer two or three or a hundred times.

What patterns and codes have been found, for example might the places it is said Jesus went to have been chosen explicitly for some reason?

The code for Jesus "IS" in the NT is also used in the Christian version of Greek LXX to represent Joshua "IS". You could say that the code for Joshua was passed down to Jesus. What an impressive antiquity that was. Except it was fabricated by whichever scriptorium cooked up the Greek NT - the "Jesus Story Book".

IMO the entire NT has been fabricated and the codes were thrown in for good measure. Roman officials loved abbreviations. The practice of using abbreviations was a Roman obsession. The Romans abbreviated everything. The proliferation of a multiplicity of codes has Roman fingerprints all over them.

Bruno Bauer was probably on target.

WIKI: According to Bauer, the writer of Mark's gospel was "an Italian, at home both in Rome and Alexandria"; Matthew's gospel was written by "a Roman, nourished by the spirit of Seneca"; and Christianity is essentially "Stoicism triumphant in a Jewish garb."

Bruno Bauer thought Christian origins was not in the 1st century. And that Paul is a total fabrication of a later century.

stuff has been slowly marinading! Are there other codes and patterns? How and why were the various stories and parables and teaching chosen? What other framing of this is possible apart from the "it is a semi historical record"

If you write down the various themes points, purposes of the writing, what patterns appear? What does not fit, is obviously an insertion by another hand. Can we work out the first and subsequent drafts of these writings?

Clive Durdle wrote::-) stuff has been slowly marinading!

The bones of three classes of Christian literature have become defined:

1. The New Testament Canonical literature (NTC) - Authors unknown
2. The New Testament Apocryphal literature (NTA) - Authors unknown
3. Ecclesiastical "History" - the Ante Nicene, Nicene and Post Nicene Church Fathers, and Eusebius (EH)

Add to this mix the remaining sources of historical evidence:

4. Non-Christian sources; Josephus and Tacitus (NCL)
5. Archaeology, physical manuscripts (ARC)

And there you have all the bones related to the skeleton of Christian origins

Are there other codes and patterns?

Probably. But the nomina sacra (discussed above) are the major code-like assembly in the original Greek text of the One True Canonical Jesus Story Codex.

How and why were the various stories and parables and teaching chosen?

Here's just one example:

Here is the statement of the Stoic Epictetus (via Ariann) in relation to prayer:

"Nevertheless he has placed by every man a guardian,
every man's Daimon, to whom he has committed the care of the man,
a guardian who never sleeps, is never deceived.
For to what better and more careful guardian could He have entrusted each of us?
When, then, you have shut the doors and made darkness within,
remember never to say that you are alone, for you are not;
but God is within, and your Daimon is within, and what need
have they of light to see what you are doing?
To this God you ought to swear an oath just as the soldiers do to Caesar.".

Here is what Jesus says about Christian prayer according to Matthew 6:6

6 But when you pray, go into your room, close the door and pray to your Father,
who is unseen. Then your Father, who sees what is done in secret, will reward you.

There appears to be a direct correlation between the theology of Stoic message and the theology of the Christian message. What Jesus (via Matthew) calls the unseen "Father", the Stoics (here via Epictetus) call the unseen God - coupled with the unseen personal "guardian spirit" - termed in Greek as the "daimon" and in Latin as either the "daemon" or the "genius".

On the surface of things it would appear that the anonymous Christian authors have simply borrowed the pre-existing theological concepts of the Stoic philosophers. The Christian "Father" figure has been promoted to that place previously occupied by the Stoic God-Spirit. Everyone in the Roman empire in the first few centuries would have been entirely familiar with the Stoic concept of theology. Even a Roman Emperor - Marcus Aurelius - in no uncertain terms expressed this Stoic theology in writing his "Meditations".


"It is man's duty to follow his daimon,
which reflects the cosmic will.
This requires us to love humanity in general
and to act altruistically"

~ Marcus Aurelius

Were the Christians were competing within the religious and theological sector of the Roman Empire by spreading a rebadged theology during the early centuries? A dominance which was then capitalised upon at the Nicene council? Or was Christian theology fabricated by a literary school specifically designed to compose "authorised literature" during a late and hostile take-over of the pre-existing religious sector? This sector was an extremely lucrative industry before it was replaced by the Christian church industry. Do we need to make a study of the economics of the Nicene Church? What does the money trail disclose?

What other framing of this is possible apart from the "it is a semi historical record"

In the words of the last pagan emperor Julian it is likely IMHO that we are looking at a complete fabrication.

This of course might involve one or two of Plato's "Noble Lies" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Noble_lie

Russell Gmirkin's on to something with his "Plato and the Creation of the Hebrew Bible" c.273 BCE. He outlines the way Plato guided those who wished to write "National History" for a new colony or new ruler.


"If there exist laws under which men have been reared up and which (by the blessing of Heaven) have remained unaltered for many centuries, so that there exists no recollection or report of their ever having been different from what they now are, then the whole soul is forbidden by reverence and fear to alter any of the things established of old. By hook or by crook, then, the lawgiver must devise a means whereby this shall be true of his State. (Plato, Laws 7.798a-b)" ---- (Gmirkin, 254).


One could genuinely wonder whether the whole notion of the Christian Bible as a sacred national literature was assembled with the same Platonic guidelines. You take bits and pieces of things which are old and mix them into a new form. Gmirkin also writes the following:


In Plato's Laws, Plato was the first to conceive of a semi-sacred national literature of books carefully edited (i.e. censored) and approved by a board of theologians to be exclusively used in education to shape the character, beliefs and "souls" of the citizenry. Judaism was the only such implementation of this Platonic literary program in the ancient Mediterranean world on a national level, but both the New Testament and the Koran carried over the same idea. Plato thus gave rise to both Judaism, Christianity and Islam as religions "of the book".

If you write down the various themes points, purposes of the writing, what patterns appear?

As far as I can see there appears to be a serious Roman influence on the NT canonical writing.
A great deal of Roman political propaganda such as:


GOSPELS:

(1) Pay tax to Caesar;
(2) Give Caesar whatever he asks for;
(3) In all Judea it is the centurion who has greatest faith;
(4) Go the extra mile carrying the soldiers pack;
(5) Be compliant and turn the other cheek;
(6) Support the Roman military industrial complex and go out and buy a sword (or two);
(7) the management of money, property and tithing for the church (industry)
(7.1) If you try and conceal money from the church God will kill you.

(8) the massive proliferation of the abbreviation of "sacred names" (nomina sacra)
is neither Jewish or Greek but a distinctive trait of the Romans; (And so on and so forth.

(9) Codex media which becomes popular in the 4th century was used for the earliest physical
Christian manuscripts. This was very expensive exercise (The Roman Martial mentions?)

(10) Greek "episkopos" (bishop) also means "spy". (particularly relevant in the 4th century)

(11) SETTING: NT supposedly written within the Roman empire (Palestine) - ruled by Rome.

(12) Christianos: Etymology. The Greek word Χριστιανός (Christianos), meaning "follower of Christ",
comes from Χριστός (Christos), meaning "anointed one", with an adjectival ending borrowed from
Latin to denote adhering to, or even belonging to, as in slave ownership.

(13) Obsessive COPY/PASTE from greek LXX to greek NT (literary school) ??

(14) Earliest references to "Christians" (excluding TF) are all Roman = emperor Trajan, statesman Pliny, historian Tacitus

(15) Pray for Romans ("your enemies") on your way to the feeding of the lions


(90) JC=Julius Caesar and Augustus the son of god and the
Especially the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Calendar_ ... _of_Priene
The Calendar Inscription of Priene speaks of the birthday of Caesar Augustus as the beginning of the gospel announcing his kingdom, with a Roman decree to start a new calendar system based on the year of Augustus Caesar's birth.


PAUL:

101) The Epistle to the Romans is the sixth book in the New Testament. Biblical scholars agree
that it was composed by Paul the Apostle to explain that salvation is offered through the gospel of Jesus Christ.

Romans 13: paraphrasing:

102) "People should be subject to the government - which is appointed by God.
103) Obey these agents of God on earth". [1]


All of this stuff is Roman propaganda.
What's it doing in the One True Jesus Story Book?

What does not fit, is obviously an insertion by another hand.

The NT canonical literature (1) and the NT apocryphal literature (2) are in stark contrast. They were each written in antiquity by different groups of unknown people with completely different agendas.

OTOH the "Ecclesiastical History" (3) was in the first instance written by Eusebius c.325 CE and then continued by the "Continuators of Eusebius" in the 5th century. Out of this we now have 10 volumes of the Ante Nicene Fathers, 14 volumes of the Nicene Fathers and another 14 volumes of the Post Nicene Fathers. It is highly likely much of the literature of all of these "Fathers" was added, deleted and modified between the 4th century and the later middle ages in layer after layer of forgeries.

Can we work out the first and subsequent drafts of these writings?

At present the chronology of all these writings is being governed by two methods. The first is the church dogma of "Falsifying Fathers" (3) The second is by means of paleography in isolation, a dating method that is notoriously subjective. The scientific dating using C14 analysis is a new player in this field. All the C14 dates related to these Christian writings are fundamentally no earlier than the 4th century. In the 4th century we have also an explosion of "Christian archaeology" and the fragments of physical manuscripts.

About these physical manuscript remains Brent Nongbri in his book
"God's Library: The Archaeology of the Earliest Christian Manuscripts – August 21, 2018
writes the following:


Epilogue p.269

"Although a few Christian books may be as old as the 2nd century,
none of them must be that old ... The drive to have older and
older Christian manuscripts, however, shows no signs of abating".