"That doesn't excuse King, because clearly students are supposed to put even difficult and complex thoughts into their own words," Mr. Carson said in a telephone interview. "But Tillich is particularly difficult because his writing is fairly dense." Discovery of Similarities

Graduate students at Stanford who were working on the papers project first noticed similarities in the dissertation to other works as early as 1988. They then investigated other academic papers, finding a recurrent pattern.

The findings were presented to the project's advisory board of scholars in October 1989, but Mr. Carson, as senior editor, decided not to make public any details until the first installment of the collected papers was published. The original date for publication was the end of this year.

Mr. Carson said yesterday that the first two volumes of the 14-volumne series -- covering Dr. King's early life up to 1955, the year of the dissertation -- were now expected to be published, with footnotes nearly as extensive as the text itself, in 1992.

Scholars familiar with the papers say the academic works are Dr. King's least important writings and show very little of the dramatic orator who was to emerge so forcefully in later years. Mr. Garrow, Dr. King's biographer, described the dissertation as "dry as bones," and said that was why no one had ever published it.

Mr. Garrow, said that as far back as 1970 he was aware that parts of books and articles published by Dr. King after he left Boston University probably had been written by others. He said Dr. King's speeches also borrowed from others because in the oral tradition in which Dr. King lived, it was common for ministers and preachers to adopt as their own the words of prominent men who had come before them.

Mr. Lowery of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference agreed. "Preachers have an old saying," he said. "The first time they use somebody else's work, they give credit. The second time, they say some thinker said it. The third time they just say it." Book to Examine Borrowings