We Analyse, You Decide
David J. Conklin
1) Any method of comparison which lists and underscores similarities and suppresses or minimizes differences is necessarily misleading.
2) Parallels are too readily susceptible of manipulation. Superficial resemblances may be made to appear as of the essence.
3) Parallel-hunters do not, as a rule, set out to be truthful and impartial. They are hell-bent on proving a point.
4) Parallel-hunting is predicated on the use of the lowest common denominators. Virtually all literature, even the most original, can be reduced to such terms, and thereby shown to be unoriginal. ...
5) Parallel columns operate piecemeal. They wrench phrases and passages out of context. A product of the imagination is indivisible. It depends on totality of effect. To remove details from their setting is to falsify them.
6) Parallels fail to indicate the proportion which the purportedly borrowed material bears to the sum total of the source, or to the whole of the new work. Without such information a just appraisal is impossible.
7) The practitioners of the technique too often resort to sleight of hand. They employ language, not to record facts or to describe things accurately, but as props in a rhetorical hocus-pocus which, by describing things in identical words, appears to make them magically alike.
8) A double-column analysis is a dissection. An autopsy will reveal a great deal about a cadaver, but very little about the spirit of the man who once inhabited it.
9) Most parallels rest on the assumption that if two successive things are similar, the second one was copied from the first. This assumption disregards all the other possible causes of similarity.
A close examination of the type of double-column analysis you see on the web or in Rea's book bear out Lindey's warning. However, by showing a fuller context (i.e., whole paragraphs and whole chapters) such as I present in my work, eliminates the above concerns (assuming that people actually read the whole). What typically happens when people are presented with supposed evidence of plagiarism is that they develop a severe case of tunnel vision and they only see the similarities--they never even see the dissimilarities (which is exactly what the critics are hoping for!).
Desire of Ages Chapter 1
Misinformation on the Internet
EGW adapts a famous quote
Bibliography
Longest Phrases Index
Verbatim Index
Sketches from the Life of Paul, chapter 13
Great Controversy (pp.317-319) and Life Incidents
Great Controversy (pp.320-325) and Life Incidents
Great Controversy, chapter 1, pages 30-31
Great Controversy, chapter 5, page 80
Also check out comparison studies by Ulrike Unruh:
Desire of Ages, chapter 75, Intro.
Desire of Ages, chapter 75, pages 698-703
Desire of Ages, chapter 75, pages 703-709
Desire of Ages, chapter 75, pages 710-713
Desire of Ages, chapter 75, pages 710, 713-715
Titles from Patriarchs and Prophets and Edersheim
Patriarchs and Prophets, chapter 2
Patriarchs and Prophets, chapter 21
The Great Controversy, (pp. 317-319)and Life Incidents