The Desire of Wages

Appendix B - Sources Screened

by Dirk Anderson

Part Two of this book claims that large parts of The Desire of Ages were copied from other writers. A claim like that should show its work. This appendix lists every source we screened against the book, how we screened it, what we found and what we did not find.

How the Screening Was Done

The work had two stages.

Machine screening. The text of The Desire of Ages and of each source was divided into short passages. A program scored every passage of the book against every passage of the source, giving weight to rare words shared in the same order, to shared pairs and runs of words, and to shared three-word phrases. Bible quotations were masked out first, using the King James Version, so that two writers quoting the same verse would not count as a match.
Close reading. The screen only points to places worth reading. Every parallel in this book was then read side by side in both texts. A parallel was accepted only if the wording was distinctive and verbatim or nearly so, or if a distinctive detail was carried over together with its words. Shared ideas, common biblical phrasing, single shared words and stock devotional language were rejected, however suggestive. For each accepted parallel we also checked whether the same wording was already in White’s earlier books, Spiritual Gifts (1858) and The Spirit of Prophecy, vols. 2–3 (1877–1878), to see whether she or her 1890s assistants did the copying.

Testing the Method

Before trusting the screen, we tested it against parallels already published by the White Estate’s own researchers.

Hanna. In 1979 the White Estate commissioned Walter Specht to compare the second half of The Desire of Ages with William Hanna’s Life of Christ. Run blind, our screen ranked 49 of Specht’s 56 pairs among the top twenty passages of their chapters, and 38 among the top ten. Most of Specht’s pairs are similarities of idea rather than wording, so this is a demanding test.
Harris. Fred Veltman’s report on chapter 3 of the book lists 84 parallels with John Harris’s The Great Teacher, in four clusters. Run blind on that chapter, the screen found all four clusters among its top Harris candidates.
Veltman’s chapters 75 and 76. We parsed 520 of Veltman’s sentence entries for these two chapters and screened every sentence he rated independent against all our sources. Every strong parallel our screen found there was already on his list, except one: the passage on Caiaphas’s torn garments (DA 708–709), which follows John Cumming’s readings on Matthew, a book on Veltman’s own list of sources. See Chapter 10.

Life-of-Christ Books and Devotional Works

Source	Edition used	Connection to White	Result	Chapter
William Hanna, The Life of Christ	American Tract Society, one volume	Signed copy in her office library; Veltman’s leading source (321 parallels)	Strong. Dozens of parallels; the Emmaus words on the cross, the “two strange heresies,” the Kedron drain and the “own testimony” footnote traced to him	8, 9, 12
J. H. Ingraham, The Prince of the House of David	1855; pages cited from the Philadelphia reprint of 1899	Veltman: 26 parallels; a novel	Strong. The source of many Passion legends, most already in White’s 1858 and 1878 books	7
Daniel March, Night Scenes in the Bible	Philadelphia, 1869 (©1868)	Veltman: 72 parallels	Strong. Feast of Tabernacles; the water from the Kedron	9
Daniel March, Walks and Homes of Jesus	Presbyterian Publication Committee, ©1866	Veltman: 57 parallels	Strong	9
Cunningham Geikie, The Life and Words of Christ	2 vols., London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1883	In her private library	Strong. Son of the law at twelve; the most holy place open to view; the broken heart	9, 12
F. W. Farrar, The Life of Christ	one-volume edition	Veltman: 62 parallels	Moderate to strong. “Innocent until proved guilty”; Jericho as a priestly city	9
John Harris, The Great Teacher	2nd ed., Amherst, 1836	Signed copy; Veltman: 62 parallels	Strong. More than twenty new parallels outside Veltman’s sample	6, 10
John Cumming, Sabbath Evening Readings: St. John	Boston: Jewett, 1856	Signed copy	Strong. “Original, unborrowed, underived” and others	10
John Cumming, Sabbath Evening Readings: St. Matthew	Boston: Jewett, 1855	On Veltman’s list as a minor source	Strong. The veil scene, the high priest’s garments, “first four” and “last six”	10, 11
John Cumming, Sabbath Evening Readings: St. Luke	Boston: Jewett, 1855	Same series	Strong but few. Prophet, priest and Saviour on the cross (quoting Alford), already in 1878	—
John Cumming, Sabbath Evening Readings: St. Mark	Same series	Same series	Moderate only. No errors traced to it	—
F. W. Krummacher, The Suffering Saviour	English ed., 1856	On Veltman’s list as a minor source	Strong. The release custom and Barabbas the false messiah	12
Alfred Edersheim, The Life and Times of Jesus the Messiah	2 vols.	Veltman: 29 parallels	Moderate only. Useful mainly as the best scholar on her shelf, who did not support her claims	9
Alfred Edersheim, The Temple: Its Ministry and Services	OCR without page numbers	—	No strong wording. Confirms Siloam as the source of the water	—
G. Jones, Life-Scenes from the Four Gospels	Philadelphia, 1868 (©1865)	Veltman: 52 parallels	Moderate only in the chapters screened; a lead on the size of the guard at the tomb	—
William Stroud, Physical Cause of the Death of Christ	London, 1847	—	Null for wording. The origin of the broken-heart theory, which reached White through Geikie	9

Bible Commentaries

The commentaries were read on biblehub.com, passage by passage, for each error under investigation. Those in White’s library, according to the published bibliography of her private and office libraries, are marked.

Commentary	In her library?	Result	Chapter
Matthew Henry, Exposition	Yes	Strong. The priests officiating at the evening sacrifice; the Good Samaritan as “matter of fact, and not a parable”	11, 14
Adam Clarke, Commentary	Yes	Leviticus 10:6 on the high priest’s garments; the marble of the temple; a Roman origin for the release custom	10, 11, 12
Albert Barnes, Notes on the Gospels	Yes	Leviticus 10:6; the marble of the temple	10, 12
Jamieson, Fausset and Brown	Yes (Portable Commentary)	Strong. The wall and the siege; “how so massive a pile could be overthrown”; the Magi’s house “not the stable”	11, 13
Henry Alford	Yes (New Testament for English Readers)	The Zacharias bloodstain legend (the idea, not the wording)	11
J. P. Lange (Luke by J. J. Van Oosterzee)	Yes	The heathen origin of the release custom, reported and rejected	11
J. A. Bengel, Gnomon	Yes	No parallels of note found	—
Charles Ellicott	Old Testament only	Zacharias legend; the rabbis’ “unwillingness” (rejected as too weak)	—
Gill, Poole, Benson, Meyer, Pulpit Commentary, Cambridge Bible	Not listed	Read for comparison only	—

What We Could Not Trace

Some of the book’s strangest details were not found in any source we screened. They are listed here so that no one can say we claimed more than we found.

The rejected cornerstone at Solomon’s temple (DA 597–598). Not in any of seventeen commentaries. The closest known parallel is the Mark Master legend of Freemasonry (Chapter 14).
Simon as the woman’s seducer (DA 566).
The priest’s knife falling and the lamb escaping (DA 757).
The passers-by defending Jesus on the cross (DA 750).
The guard of one hundred soldiers at the tomb (DA 778; already in 1878).
Booths kept “for fifteen centuries” (DA 291).

These may be White’s own additions, or they may come from books not yet screened. Either way, they are not in the Gospels.

Cautions

Ingraham page numbers are from the 1899 Altemus reprint and may differ from earlier printings by a page or so.
Harris page numbers beyond about page 150 should be checked against a scan; our OCR runs a few pages behind Veltman’s.
Geikie page numbers are printed pages of the 1883 London edition.
The screen covers only the books we had in hand. Veltman found 23 sources in fifteen chapters. Every untested source is another place where more copying may be found, which is why Veltman’s 31.4 per cent is a floor and not a ceiling.