The Desire of Ages Project:
The Conclusions of Fred Veltman

By Fred Veltman, Ministry Magazine, Dec. 1990

1. Ellen White used literary sources when writing DA

... It is of first importance to note that Ellen White herself, not her literary assistants, composed the basic content of the DA text. In doing so she was the one who took literary expressions from the works of other authors without giving them credit as her sources ². Second, it should be recognized that Ellen White used [plagiarized] the writings of others consciously and intentionally. The literary parallels are not the result of accident or photographic memory.

In view of the fact that she employed editorial assistants, our clearest evidence of Ellen White's literary borrowing comes from her personal diaries and manuscripts. If we want to establish more precisely the degree of literary dependence, it would be well to study the manuscripts as they come from her hand, comparing both the dependent and independent sentences. Each manuscript should be treated as a whole. When we take the chapter as the basic unit of composition, we remove ourselves several steps from Ellen White's basic work.

The first and fundamental conclusion never fails to elicit a further inquiry as to its implications. Implicitly or explicitly Ellen White and others speaking on her behalf did not admit to and even denied literary dependency [copying] on her part.³ In the light of this study and other similar studies, what are we to make of such denials? ...

2. The content of DA is for the most part derived rather than original

In light of the data our source studies on the DA text provided, this conclusion might appear to some readers as being unjustified.⁴ To those who have been told that literary sources played a minimal role in Ellen White's compositions such a statement may be incredible. Obviously this second general conclusion calls for some clarification.

Source dependency involves more than verbal parallels. We must consider not only the DA text as it reads today, but also Ellen White's earlier writings, the thematic structure of her writings, and the content of her material even where no direct literary similarity exists. When we do so, we find that she depended on her sources to a much greater degree than the verbal similarities of the DA text to those sources indicate.

We must not place too much weight upon arguments from silence. But it is worthy of note that the DA material that we classified as independent was often material dealing with topics, not usually covered in a work on the life of Christ. Since our study was largely limited to this type of literature, the reader must consider our estimate of the level of source dependency [plagiarism] in DA as conservative.⁵

In practical terms, this conclusion declares that one is not able to recognize in Ellen White's writings on the life of Christ any general category of content or catalog of ideas that is unique to her. We found source parallels for theological, devotional, narrative, descriptive, and spiritual materials, whether in reference to biblical or extrabiblical content.

Ever since the recent surfacing of the issue of Ellen White's literary borrowing [ie Walter Rea's publication of the White Lie in 1981] the question How much? has had center stage. ...

3. The special character of Ellen White's commentary is to be found in its practical use of Scriptures and in its stress on spiritual realities and personal devotion

... It may not be possible to identify Ellen White's "fingerprint" in the material that Marian Davis edited, but certain features of her work are readily apparent. She did not approach the biblical text as a scholarly exegete. Rather, she approached it from a practical point of view, taking the obvious, almost literal meaning. She gave Marian Davis the responsibility of deciding where the earlier publication needed improving. In some instances the revision included a change in the order of events to bring her writings into harmony with the text of Scripture. ...

Our study raised another question that merits further attention: Was Ellen White indebted to sources for her devotional or spiritual comments? We did find several parallels in one or two works of this type, but our research did not survey enough of these works to establish whether her apparent independence is owing to her originality or to the limits of our investigation. ...

My study of her writings on the life of Christ has given me the impression that some of her views changed through time. The very fact that the DA text represents a revision of her earlier work suggests that her writings form a textual tradition.

4. Ellen White used a minimum of 23 sources, including fiction⁷

Actually we have no way of knowing how many sources are represented in Ellen White's work on the life of Christ. In addition to the remaining 72 chapters of the DA text, there are two other books to review: Thoughts From the Mount of Blessing and Christ's Object Lessons. These 23 writers are sufficient, however, to answer the questions so many have asked: From what writers did Ellen White borrow? What kinds of books were they writing?

One obviously fictional account is Ingraham's The Prince of the House of David, a work that Albert Schweitzer referred to as one of the "edifying romances on the life of Jesus intended for family reading.⁸ Ingraham cast his work as a collection of letters written by an eyewitness in Palestine to her father in Egypt.

William Hannah's popular work was designed to be "practical and devotional."⁹ No wonder that parallels from Hanna are to be found in 13 of the 15 DA chapters we investigated.

The books in Ellen White's library at the time of her death appear to corroborate what her writings reveal. She read widely in works of differing literary type, theological perspective, and scholarly depth.

5. Ellen White's literary assistants, particularly Marian Davis, are responsible for the published form of DA

... The evidence suggests that she wrote day by day in her journals, moving from topic to topic as time and opportunity made it possible. No doubt she worked with one source for a while and then moved on to another source and another subject. These jottings would be copied and corrected for grammar, syntax, and spelling when she passed that journal over to one of her secretaries. Several journals would be active at the same time.

From these collections her assistants would compose articles for Adventist journals. It appears that larger publications were produced from collections of materials gathered into a scrapbook. At least that seems to be the way the chapters for DA were compiled. Apparently her assistants at times developed manuscripts from journal entries. Several of the manuscripts consist mainly of excerpts from earlier writings and do not carry Ellen White's signature. ...

I found no evidence to indicate that Marian Davis was involved in the original composition of any Ellen White text. But without the original manuscripts it is difficult to prove that such did not happen with any portion of the text of DA. It might prove helpful to make a stylistic study of the letters of Marian Davis and the handwritten materials of Ellen White. If their "fingerprints" emerge, we would have some basis for determining more precisely the level of involvement Marian Davis exercised in her role as "bookmaker." It may well be that she deserves some public recognition for her services in this regard.

Postscript

Question: How do you harmonize Ellen White's use of sources with her statements to the contrary?

Veltman: I must admit at the start that in my judgment this is the most serious problem to be faced in connection with Ellen White's literary dependence [copying]. It strikes at the heart of her honesty, her integrity, and therefore her trustworthiness. As of now I do not have—nor, to my knowledge, does anyone else have—a satisfactory answer to this important question.

The Validity of Veltman's Research

I am totally satisfied with this study. No one could have done a better job—no one. He [Veltman] did it as a neutral person would have and not as an apologist. Robert Olson, Ministry Magazine, Dec. 1990, 16