My purpose is twofold. We are to conjecture (a) how a preaching technique employed by St Paul comes to resonate with the Mahāyāna, and (b) that a conundrum in the solemn Mahānibbāna-sutta is Jewish, whence it reappears comically in Europe. Struck by these new oddities we ask at long last what can emerge from so many diverse parallels between Buddhist texts and their non-Buddhist counterparts. It is time those many threads were drawn together.