In contrast to this point of view, the field of comparative studies recognizes that we should expect nothing less... That Christians observed the same customs and used words in the same way as their contemporaries is hardly noteworthy in itself. Those things belonged to the place and time when Christianity began. The situation could not have been otherwise for Christianity to have been a real historical phenomenon... We could simply substitute the word Mormonism for Christianity here. Mormonism is clearly rooted in both a place and time. And so we should expect it to use the same customs and words in the same way as its contemporaries.

...

This, as Schaalje insists, is ‘the crux of parallelomania.’ You look for any parallels between two texts, and when you find them (perhaps several of them), ‘you act (mistakenly, not maliciously) as if you had that exact coincidence in mind before you started looking. The real probability that ... you would find a bunch is actually very high.’ In this case, what may seem highly suspect or too coincidental to be believable as random chance is really quite believable.