Is the Apocrypha Inspired? An Enlightening Letter from Ellen White’s Son
By Matthew J. Korpman | 24 July 2024 |
When Denis Fortin of Andrews University wrote the encyclopedia entry on Ellen White’s use of the Apocrypha in 2013, he noted what was the central issue involved in the discussion: “whether she considered the Apocrypha to be inspired Scripture.” He notes that “eight references to the Apocrypha appear in Ellen White’s earliest writings” and that these quotations and allusions are called “scripture” by James White in his pamphlet A Word to the Little Flock (1847), leading him to again ask: “should these references lead us to believe that Ellen White considered the Apocrypha as inspired Scripture?”
Once more, Fortin recalls that Ellen White had received a vision in Oswego, New York, during January 1850, in which she reported that “the Apocrypha is the hidden book and that the wise of these last days should understand it” (Manuscript 4, 1850), and he notes that “the passage does not make clear whether she views the Apocrypha as a part of the Bible,” and as a consequence, scripture.
Fortin wrote these questions and observations prior to the White Estate releasing another unpublished vision of Ellen White on the Apocrypha in 2014. In the newly released vision from Topsham, Maine, in September 1849, dated four months earlier than the other vision, White explicitly calls the Apocrypha “the Word of God” and “thy Word” and implores Adventists around her to “bind it to the heart” (see Manuscript 5, 1849). She also accuses Satan of inspiring Christians to remove the Apocrypha and calls this collection of books a “remnant” that is being persecuted.
This vision has largely been ignored by many Adventists since its release, with some choosing to argue that it is too odd or obscure to be of use. Some conservative websites have questioned whether it’s trustworthy, despite the White Estate affirming it. And some have argued that it shouldn’t be relied upon as an accurate reflection on Ellen White’s beliefs because it is a transcript and potentially lacks Ellen White’s own input.
Even for those of us who have affirmed the transcript of her vision, it in truth would only tell us what Ellen White believed between 1849 – 1850, but not what she later believed.
William White’s affirmation
Yet, that has all changed now. On June 17, 2024, I discovered a letter in the digitized White Estate archives. This letter, written by William White, the son of Ellen White, responds to a question by Guy Dail, a European Adventist leader. Writing in May 1911, four years before Ellen White’s own death, William White responds to an inquiry by Dail regarding the Apocrypha. Never before noticed by Adventist scholars, William White’s response is nothing short of stunning. He writes, “In some of Mother’s old writings she speaks of the Apocrypha and says that portions of it were inspired.” He then promises to find the documents and send them to Dail soon so he can be enlightened on the issues.
Yes, William White appears to affirm not only that Manuscript 4, 1850, and Manuscript 5, 1849, are accurate reflections and records of his mother’s visions, but he confirms that she “says that portions of it were inspired.” This is important on many levels because his comments were written down in 1911, sixty-one years after Ellen White had those visions on the Apocrypha. Arthur White, the grandson of Ellen White, had argued that
“it should be observed that Ellen White makes no reference to the Apocrypha at any time in her writings in the subsequent 65 years…. Surely the silences in her published writings on this subject carry significance.”
Fortin had echoed these sentiments, suggesting that perhaps this indicated that “perhaps she did not at first know the difference between the apocryphal books and the rest of the canon of Scripture,” and that “once she understood this difference, she never referred to them again.”
Arthur White’s and Denis Fortin’s suggestions are no longer sustainable for several reasons, particularly because Ellen White did indeed continue to quote and allude to the Apocrypha throughout her lifetime. (See my peer-reviewed article in Spes Christiana, “Forgotten Scriptures,” published in 2020.)
William White’s letter, however, obliterates these suggestions in a more forceful way than mere implication: he provides direct evidence that his mother still believed the Apocrypha was inspired four years prior to her death. She did not change her mind, and she also did not warn her son that those old writings of hers reflected her mistaken youth. Rather, it appears she stood by them. She knew of the manuscripts we now have, and at the very least, never told her son to discount them. Not only that, but based on William White’s testimony, she had additionally never spoken ill of the Apocrypha up until 1911; neither had she dismissed it or apparently changed her mind about the value of those ancient quasi-scriptural documents for Adventism.
As mentioned previously, I discovered this letter on June 17. I shared it with two private groups on June 20 and some academic colleagues, to which one scholar noted: “Wow. You have found something very special, I think.” I am now sharing it, because it is important that this new and sensational piece of Adventist history is added to the emerging puzzle that represents Ellen White’s beliefs about the Apocrypha. This starts a new chapter, one in which for the first time it can be established as a fact that Ellen White was not against the Apocrypha even in her later years. Conservative sectors of the church will now have to wrestle not merely with academic theories, but the facts: Ellen White believed the Apocrypha was inspired, in some way, similar to how scripture was.
To what extent? That is the new question, but whether she did or didn’t has been, for all practicality, settled by this letter. It is now the task of Adventist scholars to dig into this issue with renewed interest and attention.
Proceeding cautiously
The discovery of this letter was well timed. The Adventist journal TeoBiblica accepted an article I wrote demonstrating how Ellen White appears to use and affirm the story of Tobit as biblical in the 1880s—suggesting through her use of the work that she continued to trust it as an authoritative source of not only angelic revelations, but even biblical history. Clearly, this is an issue that must be investigated.
William White’s letter to Guy Dail demonstrates that this research is not off the mark, nor stretching the evidence. Rather, it is opening a new window into Ellen White’s personal beliefs and divine revelations on a topic that has been gaining new traction within Adventism. When Ted Wilson, president of the General Conference of Seventh-day Adventists, preached his sermon for the Annual Council meeting in 2021, he mentioned the Apocrypha. He warned that he had
“even heard of an attempt to question the reliability of the 66 books of the Bible canon, suggesting we need to look at non-canonical apocryphal books to perhaps broaden our view on truth.”
In response to this, he encouraged every Adventist, including the scholars of the church, to “reject this.” Ironically, he followed this warning by imploring Adventists to study Ellen White better and value her counsel. William White’s letter reveals that Elder Wilson was indeed right: we need to value Ellen White’s writings, because even those such as Elder Wilson are painfully unaware that their own views do not align with hers.
Now, having said all of that, there are a few caveats to mention.
First, this is a letter by William White and a comment he makes—not Ellen White herself. Certainly his comments tell us some things confidently: his mother never rejected the Apocrypha, she never rejected her previous visions on it, and the visions we have are accurate and were not rejected by her.
But they also open new questions. For example, what exactly does William White’s mention of “portions of it were inspired” mean? What portions? Does he mean that some entire books contained in the King James Apocrypha are inspired and some aren’t? Does this reflect a later change in Ellen White’s beliefs (a nuance?), since her 1849 vision clearly stated that the entire Apocrypha as a collection was “the Word of God”? Had she nuanced her views in later age and limited her declaration only to some parts?
Or perhaps we should be even more cautious: does the reference to “portions” reflect William White’s own opinion or Ellen White’s? He says “portions” when relating to Dail about what Ellen White had said in “Mother’s old writings” (presumably Manuscript 5, 1849, and Manuscript 4, 1850), and yet those documents do not hint at all that only portions were inspired. So is William White expressing his interpretation of his mother’s comments, rather than expressing it in the words his own mother would approve of in 1911? We can’t know for sure currently, but it’s worth keeping these questions in mind as we move forward with future discussions.
Regardless of the questions that remain, and there are plenty of them, this letter provides us the ability to hopefully move past the skittish nature of the topic. William White’s comments provide Adventists a middle-ground to acknowledge that this topic is not a one-off from Ellen White’s past, nor is it driven by scholarly revisionism: it is an authentic part of our Adventist history and something which holds important value to our understanding of Ellen White and her relationship to scripture. We cannot ignore this any longer.
Does this change things?
A pastor once reported to me that a conservative Adventist scholar was asked privately about the emerging research on this issue last year and they remarked that they didn’t see what the big issue was. This is seen in part by the fact that in the previous five years, only Laurence Turner of Newbold College has contributed an article on the topic (2023). That same pastor asked me what the point of this research was, expressing annoyance that it was distracting potentially from more important issues. As I mentioned to him then, and would say to anyone else wondering the same thing: one cannot evaluate the theological impact of something until the data and facts themselves are established. The value of such research, and discoveries such as this letter, is that they are slowly revealing to us that we have just started to scratch the surface of something we have neglected for the past one hundred years of our church’s history.
As Ellen White herself famously noted, “We have nothing to fear for the future, except as we shall forget the way the Lord has led us, and His teaching in our past history.” Let’s take her advice seriously and stop forgetting. Whether you are conservative or liberal, a scholar or simply an interested lay person, I implore you to take this topic seriously and contribute to the ongoing discussion.
Matthew J. Korpman is an adjunct professor of biblical literature at La Sierra University. He is a graduate of Yale Divinity School where he specialized in apocryphal Second Temple Jewish literature, and is currently completing his doctorate in New Testament studies. He is the author of the bestselling book Saying No to God: A Radical Approach to Reading the Bible Faithfully, a work that to its credit has been widely praised by official and non-official Adventist entities alike.
