 |
 |
The Heavy Bible
—S. of P. Treas. Chest |
|
Top "Myths": Ellen White "Lofted a Heavy Bible"
Charge
This charge comes to us from Dirk Anderson's web
site.
The web page in question declares to be a myth the story that
Mrs. White held up a heavy Bible longer than humanly possible while
in vision. Part of the evidence offered in support of this charge
is the contradictions seen between two accounts of the same
incident. The first account is that of John Loughborough:
| I will here state some facts respecting her third
vision...related to me by Mrs. White's father and mother, by her
sister, Mrs. Sarah Belden, and others. In the room where the vision
was given, there was lying on the bureau a very large family
Bible...and weighs a little over 18 pounds. While in vision,
she arose, and took this heavy Bible on her left arm, the book
lying open, and held it out at right angles with her body; and then
for over half an hour, with her right hand, turned from
place to place, and pointed to different texts of Scripture, which
she repeated while her eyes were looking upward...in every instance
she was repeating the Scripture upon which her finger was resting.
(Great Second Advent Movement, pp. 236-37) |
The second account is that of Mrs. Frances (Howland) Lunt:
| The Teale Family Bible, weighing 18 pounds was...taken from the
bureau...it was held on her open hand at an angle of 45
degrees...for several minutes... (Ibid. p.
238) |
In comparing these two accounts, Dirk highlights the following
contradictions:
| Version #1 |
Version #2 |
| Bible weighed over 18 pounds |
Bible weighed 18 pounds |
| Bible held with arm straight out (90-degrees
to body) |
Bible held up at a 45-degree angle |
| Bible was held up for over 30 minutes |
Bible was held up for several
minutes |
| Mrs. White pointed and quoted verses without
looking |
It is physically impossible for the right hand to
point to verses while holding an open Bible (27 inches by 11 inches
in size) up at an angle of 45-degrees with the left hand. Try
it. |
| Conclusion: An obvious supernatural feat of
strength. It is virtually impossible to hold an 18-pound weight at
a 90-degree angle for more than a minute. |
Conclusion: A feat of human strength easily
within the realm of possibility for a motivated 18-year-old
female. | |
[Note: Because of our research, the last two excerpts above have been silently
removed from the web page in question. They were first posted no later than 1999 and were
removed sometime around January 2004. See Revision Notes.]
Initial Observations
What we find peculiar is that a book by Loughborough would
contain such contradictory accounts on adjoining pages. His
recitation of the account of others is on pages 236 and 237 of his
book, and he then includes Mrs. Lunt's apparently contradictory
account on the very next page, page 238. Was he that stupid?
Analysis
Both accounts contains ellipses, which suggests that further
investigation is in order. Do the deleted portions shed any light
on this topic? For the sake of completeness, we will quote both
accounts in their entirety, with the the deleted portions in a
different color.
|
I will here state some facts respecting her third vision,
the one given in her father's house, mentioned in
Chapter XIII, page 212, as related to me by Mrs. White's
father and mother, by her sister, Mrs. Sarah Belden, and
others.
In the room where the vision was given, there was lying on the
bureau a very large family Bible. It was one of an
edition printed in Boston by Joseph Teale, in the year 1822. The
book is eighteen by eleven inches, four inches in thickness,
and weighs a little over eighteen pounds. While in vision, she
arose, and took this heavy Bible on her left arm, the book lying
open, and held it out at right angles with her body; and then for
over half an hour, with her right hand, turned from place to place,
and pointed to different texts of Scriptures, which she repeated
while her eyes were looking upward, and in an
opposite direction from the book. Her sister Sarah (afterward the
wife of Stephen Belden), or, at times, some other person present,
looked at every text to which her finger pointed, and saw clearly
that in every instance she was repeating the scripture upon
which her finger was resting. Mother Harmon said
her daughter Ellen in her natural condition "was unable, for lack
of strength, to lift that heavy Bible from the bureau; but in the
vision she held it as easily, apparently, as though it were only a
pocket Testament." |
|
The Topsham Vision
Very soon after this occurrence the company of Adventists at Topsham, some
thirty miles northeast of Portland, Maine, hearing of the Lord's dealings with
Miss Ellen G. Harmon, invited her to that place. The invitation was accepted,
and thus her first visit was made to Topsham. The Adventist meetings at that time
were held in the house of Mr. Curtiss. Mrs. Frances Lunt (formerly Miss Frances
Howland), of Oakland, Cal., gave me the following statement, dated Jan. 19, 1890:-
"I, with my father's family, attended the
meetings of Sister Harmon in Topsham, in 1845, and during these
meetings she had a vision. It was the first time we ever saw her in
vision. One of those old-fashioned Bibles [the Teale Family
Bible, weighing eighteen pounds was] owned by
Brother Curtiss. This big Bible taken from the bureau
by Sister Harmon while in vision, and texts of
Scripture were pointed out by her as she turned from leaf to leaf,
while her eyes were looking upward, and away from the book. The
texts she repeated were either words of instruction, encouragement,
or reproof. Another peculiarity of the manifestation at that time
was the position of the book. It was held on her open hand
at an angle of forty-five degrees, and no one else
was able to hold any book at a similar angle without its slipping
at once from the hands; but Sister Harmon held this Bible at that
angle for several minutes, as firmly as
though it was stuck to her hand, she passing meanwhile from one to
another in the room." |
To our surprise, we discover that Loughborough's and Lunt's
accounts are of two totally different events! The former occurred at her parents' home in
Portland, and the latter occurred in Topsham. Both visions involved the same Bible edition,
but they weren't even the same copy!
The deletions made to Mrs. Lunt's account
particularly attract our attention. In light of these deletions,
let us reexamine each of the alleged four contradictions:
| Version #1 |
Version #2 |
| Bible weighed over 18 pounds |
Bible weighed 18
pounds | | |
The weight of the Bible in Mrs. Lunt's account is enclosed in
brackets, indicating that Loughborough, not Mrs. Lunt, said that
the Bible was 18 pounds. Because the brackets were deleted, the
reader of Dirk's web page has no way to know this, and indeed is
led to believe that Mrs. Lunt authored every word cited.
It thus appears that Loughborough wanted us to know that the
Bible was a little over 18 pounds. Then, after informing us of that
fact, he later rounds off the number to 18 pounds.
| Version #1 |
Version #2 |
| Bible held with arm straight out (90-degrees
to body) |
Bible held up at a 45-degree
angle | | |
Something isn't quite right with this one. Notice carefully
again the words of Mrs. Lunt, with emphasis added:
| "It was held on her open hand at an angle of forty-five
degrees, and no one else was able to hold any book at a
similar angle without its slipping at once from the hands;
but Sister Harmon held this Bible at that angle for several
minutes, as firmly as though it was stuck to her hand, she
passing meanwhile from one to another in the
room." |
Loughborough stated that Mrs. White held the Bible out in her
left arm, but Mrs. Lunt is addressing something entirely different.
The forty-five degree angle she refers to is that of Mrs. White's
hand, not her arm!
Anyone can hold "any book" of any reasonable weight with one's
arm at a forty-five degree angle without it slipping from "the
hands," but the palm is another matter. Try it and see, but don't
use any glue.
| Version #1 |
Version #2 |
| Bible was held up for over 30 minutes |
Bible was held up for several
minutes | | |
It is apparent that Loughborough is talking about the entire
length of time that Mrs. White held the Bible, while Mrs. Lunt is
talking about the length of time that she held it in her palm. Thus
she held it for several minutes in her palm, out of a total time of, of,
well, we don't really know how long. Consider the next account of the Topsham
vision given by Loughborough:
|
Mrs. Truesdail's Testimony
. . . "I was fifteen years old in 1845, and was present at the time of Sister Harmon's
first visit to Topsham, when she had the vision at the house of Brother Curtiss,
where she took up the great family Bible and held it up in a position in which
none of the others could hold a book on the hands without its slipping off at once.
"Sister Harmon was in vision over two hours. . . . she read to us
passages so comforting and appropriate in our trying position; such as Heb. 2:2, 3;
James 5:7, 8; Heb. 10:35, 39; 1 Peter 1:7; Luke 12:32-37, besides many others,
holding the large family Bible so high that I was obliged to stand on a chair to
read where she was pointing. I do not think Sister Harmon was over two inches the taller."
(Ibid. p. 238, 239)
|
The entire vision lasted two hours, but how long she held the Bible up during that time
we do not know.
| Version #1 |
Version #2 |
| Mrs. White pointed and quoted verses without
looking |
It is physically impossible for the right hand to
point to verses while holding an open Bible (27 inches by 11 inches
in size) up at an angle of 45-degrees with the left hand. Try
it. | | |
To the contrary, it is indeed possible. Did Mrs. Lunt mean that
Mrs. White pointed at texts while the Bible was lying in her left
arm? Nothing implausible there. Did she mean that Mrs. White
pointed at texts while the Bible was at a forty-five degree angle
in her palm. Again, nothing implausible about simply pointing at
texts while in either position.
Further Analysis
Where the above mentioned measurements of the Bible came from,
"27 inches by 11 inches," is a puzzle. The original source said 18
by 11 inches. This raises the question of whether Dirk was quoting
his material from another critic, but failed to give proper
credit.
The same question was also brought to our minds by the fact that
Mrs. Lunt's account as quoted was inaccurate. We therefore wrote to
Dirk on September 07, 2003:
| I assume you didn't write that page and alter the quote like
that. Who did? | |
He responded on the 13th (the ellipsis is his):
| I will check into that. It has been so long ago that I cannot
remember where the quote came from...could have been taken from
Spectrum Magazine. I believe Loughborough's book is available
somewhere on the web now, perhaps the James White Memorial Library
on the Words of the Pioneers CD. I'll check into it. Thanks for
bringing it to my attention. |
Specific Conclusions
There are no apparent contradictions between the two accounts,
accounts of two different events,
when the sources are read in their entirety. Those wishing to
discredit the claimed supernatural nature of these incidents will
need to resort to other evidence.
General Conclusions
Improperly altered quotations can be explained in several
ways:
- Simple human oversight.
- Carelessness.
- Dishonesty.
- Plagiarism.
On that last possible explanation, we would strongly recommend
that critics do not merely copy from each other, without bothering
to do their own independent research in the original sources. And
whenever they do quote from each other, they should always give
proper credit, just like an English teacher would require for a
research paper in school: "as quoted by so and so in such and
such."
This is all the more important in light of the fact that one of
the charges most often leveled at Mrs. White is that of plagiarism.
For a critic to not give proper credit himself gives Mrs. White's
apologists an apparently legitimate complaint against them of
hypocrisy.
Notes on Revisions
Around January 2004, Dirk removed all accusations about contradictions between
Loughborough's and Lunt's accounts. He is to be commended for doing so.
Yet he still, as we initially did in the first version of this page, makes the mistake
of thinking that these two accounts are of the same event.
Unfortunately, it appears that one is left without solid evidence upon which to call into
question these Bible-holding incidents. At least, if there is such solid evidence, his revised
web page does not mention it.
Thus we are left with:
- Ellen White's parents claiming that she held a heavy Bible in her outsretched arm for 30 minutes during a vision, a Bible that she in her sickly condition could not even pick up at other times.
- Mrs. Lunt and Mrs. Truesdail claiming that in another vision at another location, she held the same edition of the Bible a) in her palm at an angle at which it should have slipped, but didn't, and b) high enough that one girl had to stand on a chair in order to read it.
- Yet another account of a third incident, not quoted above, about a heavy Bible that was held up sometime during a six-hour vision at Randolph, Massachusetts, in which the Bible was "lifted up as high as she could reach" (Ibid., p. 243).
- In each of the three incidents, the testimony of the eyewitnesses was that Ellen White turned and pointed at texts and quoted them correctly, while not looking at where she was pointing.
We await the discovery of any new evidence that might prove these
eyewitness accounts to be incorrect.
Give Us Your Opinion
| What do you think of "Lofted a Heavy Bible"? |
|
|
|
