LSM's Plagiarism - An Initial Inquiry

Well if it is indeed true that most of the Recovery Version notes come from established and respected Christian authors, I would suppose that criticism of the contents of the notes should end.

And Lee several times rebukes believers in Christianity for passing his ministry off as their own. I can't find the portion at the moment, but I clearly remember them.

[TLFisher]

Originally Posted by Unregistered

And Lee several times rebukes believers in Christianity for passing his ministry off as their own. I can't find the portion at the moment, but I clearly remember them.

I have heard the opposite. Lee using notes from messages Theodore Austin Sparks gave, and passing it off as his own.

[aron]

Originally Posted by Unregistered

And Lee several times rebukes believers in Christianity for passing his ministry off as their own. I can't find the portion at the moment, but I clearly remember them.

I remember watching a video where Lee talked about giving a confernce in Latin America and a preacher from that region attended. Later he (Lee) heard that the man was passing Lee's content out as his own.

Lee had some cheek, to tell us stuff like that, while he was simultaneously cribbing from others.

[Nell]

I'm bringing this "oldie" to the top as a reference for the "putting to test" thread. The first test of any Christian publication should be to test the integrity of the author/s.

Nell

[aron]

The major difference between Nee and Lee is probably this: Nee was willing to learn from others. Lee was not. Nee would at least reference other teachers and other works. Lee, because of his inability and/or unwillingness to recognize their validity, would have to co-opt their output, unattributed, and incorporate it into his teachings.

The "recovery" narrative of Lee was to position Nee such that he lined up with all other previous Great Leaders (one only per age, of course) of the past. Obviously Luther and his break with the RCC is paradigmatic; the others before and after Luther were a more problematic to definitively place (Darby, Wesley...?) But nonetheless the narrative structure was defined.

In this role in the narrative, Nee incorporated and subsumed all other teachers and teachings. As for Lee, naturally since he learned from Nee he couldn't possibly learn from anyone else. So if Lee leaned too heavily on any source it would have to be unattributed.

Also he had an output to keep up - had to present materials for the masses, so some of it may have been sloppy scholarship. Was it deliberate or inadvertent? I know that's what Stephen Ambrose said, when they found that his best-selling books were cribbed. He replied that he didn't really write his books, but had a team of ghost-writers churning out popular-level history. So his "assistants" and "staffers" inadvertently included the source material as his own.

Originally Posted by USA Today January 2002

NEW YORK (AP) — Stephen Ambrose is facing still more allegations of lifting material from other sources.

Forbes.com reported Wednesday that two more books by the best-selling historian, Citizen Soldiers and part three of his Richard Nixon trilogy, contain passages similar to those in other texts.

Four works by Ambrose are now under question.

The author's son and agent, Hugh Ambrose, declined to comment. Victoria Meyer, a spokeswoman for his publisher, Simon & Schuster, said any errors would be fixed.

"If there are indeed additional passages or sentences that are footnoted, but not in quotations marks when they should have been, we will work with our author to make the necessary corrections," she said.

Last weekend, Ambrose acknowledged that his current best seller, The Wild Blue, included passages from Thomas Childers' Wings of Morning. Ambrose footnoted Childers in the sections in question but did not acknowledge quoting directly from the book. Both books are about World War II bomber pilots.

On Tuesday, Forbes.com reported Ambrose's Crazy Horse and Custer included passages close to Jay Monaghan's Custer. In Wednesday's editions of The (New Orleans) Times-Picayune, Ambrose said: "There are places where I used some of his words, and I should have put quote marks around them."

Ambrose was unsure if his other books had similar problems.

"I don't know. It's a lot of books," said Ambrose, author of more than 20 historical works, including Undaunted Courage and Nothing Like It in the World.

In Citizen Soldiers, a World War II book published in 1997, Ambrose includes an author's note that says he "stole material profitably if shamelessly" from Joseph Balkoski's Beyond the Beachhead, which came out in 1989. (Ambrose even wrote the foreword to the paperback edition.)

The actual text includes material, without quotation marks, that closely resembles the Balkoski book.

When queried on the particulars, Ambrose effectively shrugged and said, "I don't know; it's a lot of books."

[Freedom]

Originally Posted by aron

When queried on the particulars, Ambrose effectively shrugged and said, "I don't know; it's a lot of books."

This is probably the same answer that WL would have given had he been forced to give an honest answer regarding what was his own work.

The LC is the type of place where can you have volumes upon volumes of books with not so much as a single page devoted to listing any references. I just have to consider how absurd that it must seem from a scholarly perspective.

I have a few study Bibles. They all cite numerous sources, and on a frequent basis. None of the editors purport to have come up with everything on their own. By contrast, I don't think the RcV cites a single source except by passing reference, as in the cases that Nigel pointed out. Same with the Life-Studies.

Like you said at the beginning of your post, I think that WL couldn't handle anyone else besides himself being credited for anything. He even went as far to say "Lee must have the credit!"

[aron]

Originally Posted by Freedom

The LC is the type of place where can you have volumes upon volumes of books with not so much as a single page devoted to listing any references. I just have to consider how absurd that it must seem from a scholarly perspective.

Ah, but it's living! It's vital!

Says who?

Well, the author, who's his own reviewer and publicist.

And it's proper! It's adequate!

Again, whose judgment?

Again, the author's judgment of his own work.

The parallels between Ambrose and Lee are kind of interesting. Both churned out tome after tome of popular-level work, with quality-control issues, but the publishers didn't care because they were selling copies (in Lee's case he was the publisher). Neither author cared for primary sources, but but realized there was a good living to be had, working from secondary sources, but with fresh titles and glossy book-jackets.

If sales are good it can become a cottage industry: Ambrose's agent was his son. But he paled beside the MOTA, who was author, publisher, reviewer, agent, and publicist. And Ambrose never presumed to write the definitive version of anything - he knew people aren't that gullible! Are they?

[aron]

Originally Posted by Unregistered

Well if it is indeed true that most of the Recovery Version notes come from established and respected Christian authors, I would suppose that criticism of the contents of the notes should end.

I think that the above comment was made sincerely, and if so shows the extent that defenders of Lee will go to "see no evil." If Lee trashed 'Christianity', in toto, as deformed, fallen, as daughters of the harlot of Revelation 17, so be it - let the chips fall where they may. Lee just called it like he saw it - a straight shooter. Too bad if you got offended.

But if anyone sees anything against Lee's ministry, hey, nobody's perfect, right? Quit harping.

Again and again, it comes back to "when Lee does it, it's okay"; a thought-system based on unquestioned, culturally-derived assumptions. That's how you get into his thought-world: don't think, don't ask, don't question. If he criticized someone that was his perogative as MOTA. We on the other hand, should know better than to lift our hands against God's anointed apostle.

Originally Posted by Hope

I knew Witness Lee personally. He was like an older brother and friend. He gave me good personal advice on more than one occasion. Unfortunately, those in the LSM/LC had a myth about the brother. He was excellent in all things period. No problems were ever addressed. Thus his flesh developed. As we mature in age, if we are not under the daily experience of the cross our natural tendencies will grow more prominent and we will become stronger in the works of our flesh.

Eventually his self promoting reached an extreme level. One of the manifestations of this was his inability to take from other Christian teachers and feel no compulsion to acknowledge them. Yet, he zealously guarded his own work and always sought recognition for his work and contributions.

It is possible to have great gifts and to be entrusted with much and have a bad ending. Look at Sampson. What a failure!! And the entire nation suffered as he did not lead the tribe of Dan against the Philistines. Look at Solomon. Is he not perhaps the greatest failure in the Bible? He built the temple but the nation was divided because of his life.

Lee's work was sloppy scholarship, frankly, yet had his work been subject to the pruning forces of the market-place of ideas, there might have been some good from it. Certainly the man had talents, and his enthusiasm and energy were nearly limitless (from a human perspective). But as the years wore on, and the corrective voices were expelled, one by one, and the sycophants and cheerleaders crowded round, and told the Great Man what he wanted to hear, the tendency to imagine himself unassailable, and all others wrong, became even more pronounced. Any pretense of modesty or reticence was abandoned. As Hope put it, "Thus his flesh developed". Indeed.

When we find that he was cribbing sources, unattributed, the apologist says, "This shows that his doctrines were sound!" Yeah, I guess we could see it that way; if we really, really wanted to.

[Freedom]

Originally Posted by aron

I think that the above comment was made sincerely, and if so shows the extent that defenders of Lee will go to "see no evil." If Lee trashed 'Christianity', in toto, as deformed, fallen, as daughters of the harlot of Revelation 17, so be it - let the chips fall where they may. Lee just called it like he saw it - a straight shooter. Too bad if you got offended.

But if anyone sees anything against Lee's ministry, hey, nobody's perfect, right? Quit harping.

Again and again, it comes back to "when Lee does it, it's okay"; a thought-system based on unquestioned, culturally-derived assumptions. That's how you get into his thought-world: don't think, don't ask, don't question. If he criticized someone that was his perogative as MOTA. We on the other hand, should know better than to lift our hands against God's anointed apostle.

I find it amusing that someone would use the fact that Lee plagerized in attempt to argue that the RcV notes are legitimate. Is that how far they are willing to go to defend Lee? Apparently so.

[Ohio]

Originally Posted by Freedom

I find it amusing that someone would use the fact that Lee plagerized in attempt to argue that the RcV notes are legitimate. Is that how far they are willing to go to defend Lee? Apparently so.

The old line about, "standing on their shoulders."

Works every time.

[aron]

The fight against fake-paper factories

Since last January, journals have retracted at least 370 papers that have been publicly linked to ‘paper mills’, an analysis by Nature has found, and many more retractions are expected. Physicians in China are a particular target customer for paper mills — companies that churn out fake scientific manuscripts to order — because of intense pressure to publish combined with long work hours...The effect of such trickery can be very serious, says molecular oncology researcher Jennifer Byrne, who points to suspected fake studies that link genes to particular cancers. “People die from cancer — it is not a game.”

https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-021-00733-5

In the West, academic doctors are also under intense pressure to publish, but the consequences for fakery are so severe, and the benefits are so small, that it isn't widespread. In China the situation is reversed: the benefits are greater and the penalties are less so.

I'm not going to rehash the discussion thus far - interested readers can look back. Watchman Nee got great benefit from copying without attribution the works of others (Jessie Penn-Lewis, and perhaps more), and passing it off as his own, and the penalties when it was discovered, were minimal if any. Witness Lee apparently did the same thing, even going so far as to claim himself as the proprietary source of various 'revelations' that may well not have been his. "Who else has seen this?" he'd ask in meetings (of course, nobody answered the question, for fear of being 'marked').

A lot of people have realized that there's a tidy living to be made from putting out spiritually-oriented words and phrases. Think of Hank Hanegraaf, for one. (Hank also used, without attribute, words and phrases from his 'research associates'). What is outstanding about Nee and Lee is the degree to which they did it using the words of others, and claiming authorship, and then waving it off when the issue was raised. Other authors who lived off the proceeds and public authority of creating published works would find that exposure would be ruinous. But with Nee and Lee the problem was readily dismissed, and there are probably strong, ingrained cultural factors involved. Lee told us China was "virgin soil" for the Lord to move, but it wasn't. Every one of those 370 faked published papers came from China. They're fallen people, like everyone else, and until we begin to deal with the implications of this, we'll suffer the effects.

[aron]

Originally Posted by aron

In the West, academic doctors are also under intense pressure to publish, but the consequences for fakery are so severe, and the benefits are so small, that it isn't widespread. In China the situation is reversed: the benefits are greater and the penalties are less so..

Rather than cloud up the previous post I'll add a post-script here. In reading the Nature article, publishing was cited as a way to advance one's career, not as a way of alleviating human suffering through science, and study, and careful experimentation. No, medicine is a 'career' in which one 'advances' to one's self-benefit.

But many do work at science, and publish in journals, because they're curious. They want to help others and do good, and so they like to solve puzzles. How to discover causes, and mitigate the effects? It's hard work, but the motivation not to advance oneself but to do good, to help others. Puzzle-solving can be fun, but the real payout is when others get helped. Jonas Salk genuinely wanted to help others, to end suffering.

Many Christian speakers and leaders got into it because they had an opportunity to serve God and to help others. I don't doubt that Watchman Nee, Witness Lee, Ravi Zacharias, actually had conversion experiences and wanted to do good. But at some point conflicting desires got in the way - the desire to "advance one's career", for lack of better term. RZ got the VP of the USA to talk at his funeral. WL and WN got read into the Congressional Record. WL got a reflecting pool and his family got residuals. The temptation is there.

(And the fact that Christian 'author' Watchman Nee's only written book, Spiritual Man, was a blatant rip-off of someone else, should give us serious pause. All his other published books came from notes that people took. He'd talk and talk, and people would write notes, and tidy it all up.)