Parallelomania and parallelophobia

Parallelomania is when someone looks for and finds many similarities or connections between different texts or stories. One example of this is when people try to find similarities between different religions’ holy books. For instance, some might say that the story of Noah and the Ark in the Bible is similar to the story of Utnapishtim and the boat in the Epic of Gilgamesh.

Parallelophobia is almost the opposite of parallelomania. It’s when someone is afraid of or against finding similarities between different texts or stories. Sometimes, people might feel like finding similarities between different texts will lead to people believing that one story is more important or true than another. But that’s not true! If two stories share a similarity, it doesn’t mean that one is better than the other or that one is a copy of the other. They could have been influenced by one another or just by common human experience.

In summary, parallelomania means finding similarities between different stories and parallelophobia means being afraid of finding similarities between different stories. But it’s okay to find similarities and enjoy studying them without worrying about which story is better or more true.