Ellen G. White and Her Critics

“Sketches From the Life of Paul”

Let us now examine the book Sketches From the Life of Paul, which, with The Great Controversy, is the chief alleged plagiarism exhibit of the critics. In Spiritual Gifts, volume 1 (1858), to which we have earlier referred, Mrs. White devotes three or four chapters to the apostle Paul. In volume 3 of The Spirit of Prophecy (1878) she expands her discussion of Paul, though she confines herself to the first part of his career. In a pamphlet on Paul published the same year (one of the Redemption series), ^* she traces the story three chapters further, but still not beyond the second missionary journey. EGWC 422.1

She later added to all this and brought forth in June, 1883, ^† a book entitled Sketches From the Life of Paul. This book was most evidently published, not simply as a devotional work, but also as a Sabbath school lesson help. Beginning with the second quarter of the year 1883 and going through to the end of the second quarter of 1884, the Sabbath school lessons in all Seventh-day Adventist churches were on the Acts of the Apostles. EGWC 422.2

The charge against Mrs. White in relation to this book is that she “copied a large part” of it “directly from” an English work by Conybeare and Howson, entitled The Life and Epistles of St. Paul. That she did draw from this work is freely admitted at the outset—the quality and the quantity of the borrowing we shall consider later. But first let us ask: Was the Conybeare and Howson book a rare work unknown to Adventists in general, so that there would be little likelihood of their recognizing quotations from it if they were given in Mrs. White’s book on Paul? EGWC 422.3