The Truth About The White Lie

What about the structure and chapter titles of Ellen White’s Patriarchs and Prophets—Are they similar to Alfred Edersheim’s Old Testament Bible History? ¹⁶

It is easy to create a false impression by looking at superficial similarities. Close examination shows that of the 73 chapter titles in Patriarchs and Prophets, only nine of the titles are either identical to those in Edersheim’s book, or differ only by the inclusion or deletion of the article “the.” Furthermore, these nine include such common titles as “The Creation,” “The Flood,” “Destruction of Sodom,” “The Marriage of Isaac,” and “The Death of Saul.” TAWL 3.5

The misleading nature of the comparison is even more obvious when one discovers that in Edersheim’s book there are no chapter titles as such. Rather, there are up to half a dozen or more summary phrases indicating the subject matter of each chapter. It is from these summary phrases that the allegedly parallel “titles” have been drawn. Furthermore, the order of the chapters is really established by the order in which the stories appear in the Old Testament. TAWL 3.6