Plagiarism, or synoptic commentators?
Naturally, commentators read commentaries, but at times it seems like more than that, e.g. on Eph 5:6:
(a) "This suggestion has the merit of maintaining the ‘insider/outsider’ contrast that runs through the passage."
(b) "This interpretation also maintains the insider/outsider contrast that runs throughout the passage."
(a) = Peter O'Brien, Pillar New Testament commentary (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1999), 365.
(b) = Andrew Lincoln, Word Biblical Commentary (Dallas: Word, 2002), 325.
Comments
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Allen Browne said:
Naturally, commentators read commentaries, but at times it seems like more than that
As hard as this may seem to believe the "plagiarism" may be unknown and innocent. My brother was a very gifted classical musician trained by world class masters from the age of 12, He composed many original pieces. I recall one time he was sharing a composition with the family and we recognized a portion of the "original" work as something written previously by another musician. My brother had no need or benefit to plagiarize another's work. He already had a recording contract, a free ride through college, and notoriety in his field. Any plagiarism would be devastating to his reputation. The only explanation we could come up with is my brother heard the other musician's work before and it stuck in his subconscious only to surface in the middle of a large piece he had originated.
I know this word-for-word commentary snippet is amazing but it could be a similar scenario. I absolutely believe my brother made no conscious effort to copy another. I will give this commentator the benefit of a doubt. Too bad it made it into print. [:D]
Logos 7 Collectors Edition
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Allen, it looks like the Lincoln book was originally published in 1990 (that's the copyright date on the title page), in spite of Logos's publication date of 2002. That means it came out prior to O'Brien's commentary. So I looked at O'Brien's to see if he gave Lincoln as a source, and he did. This line appears in his bibliography:
Lincoln, A. T., Ephesians (Dallas: Word, 1990).
And in footnote 23 immediately prior to that sentence (a) which you quoted, he cites Lincoln, p. 325. And he put quotation marks around "insider/outsider" though he used a bit more of Lincoln's actual words than that. So I think this is just a case of carelessness as to where he put the footnote reference mark and the quotation marks. Not plagiarism.
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Yes, Lincoln's did preceed O'Brien's, and he does reference it elsewhere.
I guess it's one of the things we need to be aware of: we have lots of good resources in Logos, but they are interconnected.
Thanks
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Allen Browne said:
I guess it's one of the things we need to be aware of: we have lots of good resources in Logos, but they are interconnected.
Of course, it's very easy for a brief quotation to become lodged in one's mind and in the course of writing and editing the source is forgotten, especially if one is dealing with print versions of books instead of searchable electronic versions. When one is writing a thorough technical commentary you are expected to interact broadly with other commentators; if you don't have a good note-taking system then this phenomenon gets much easier to do, I would expect that phenomenon is not uncommon.
Prov. 15:23
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