Ellen White's Literary Sources

How Much Borrow is There?

In response to questions concerning the extent of Ellen White’s use of literary sources, in 1983 the Ellen G. White Estate staff decided to begin a marking project in which a complete set of Ellen White’s published writings would be highlighted to indicate passages documented as having literary parallels with prior non-Ellen White and non-biblical literary sources.

In addition to its own research, the White Estate marked all parallels that had come to its attention from earlier studies, regardless of whether they were from persons supportive of Ellen White or the Seventh-day Adventist church. The entire set of books used for this project is accessible at the office of the Ellen G. White Estate.

Only parallels demonstrating a clear verbal connection, including paraphrasing, were marked; that is to say, mere thought parallels were not marked because of the impossibility of proving literary dependency in this area. In anticipation of Dr. Fred Veltman’s research, completed in 1988, The Desire of Ages was not included in the study, so as to avoid duplication of effort. Also, Ellen White compilations not indexed in the Comprehensive Index were not included.

It is important to understand that this report does not represent a final total of the extent of Ellen White’s use of literary sources, and it is not intended as such. The project’s purpose is to identify those passages that are presently known to contain literary parallels, as evidenced by proper documentation. This distinction is important. The project is an on-going one and the percentages presented are subject to revision in accordance with new information. The White Estate desires this project to be as thorough as possible and requests that additional parallels be forwarded to its Silver Spring, Maryland, office, with proper documentation, that is, a photocopy of the prior source and its bibliographic information.

The percentages presented have been calculated by dividing the total number of parallel lines of text per book by the total number of lines in the book. The percentages also reflect a considerable amount of repetition of material found in the compilations published since Ellen White’s death, and, to a lesser extent, throughout the writings published in her lifetime.

The books of Ellen G. White average from about 25 to 35 lines per page. For the sake of comparison, a book which contains 85 lines of parallel material has roughly the equivalent of 3 pages of text which draws upon other sources. The first list presents the book titles alphabetically, not according to the percentage of parallel material. The second list presents the book titles by percentage of literary parallels.

The Ellen G. White Estate
October 14, 1986
Updated April 7, 2000

PERCENTAGES OF DOCUMENTED LITERARY PARALLELS BY BOOK TITLE

BOOK TITLES BY PERCENTAGE OF DOCUMENTED LITERARY PARALLELS