Scofield Reference Bible

The "Scofield Reference Bible" is a widely circulated annotated study Bible edited and annotated by the American Bible student Cyrus I. Scofield. Published by Oxford University Press and containing the traditional King James Version text, it first appeared in 1909 and was revised by the author in 1917. [The title page listed seven "consulting editors": Henry G. Weston, James M. Gray, W.J. Erdman, A.T. Pierson, W. G. Moorehead, Elmore Harris, and A. C. Gaebelein. "Just what role these consulting editors played in the project has been the subject of some confusion. Apparently Scofield only meant to acknowledge their assistance, though some have speculated that he hoped to gain support for his publication form both sides of the millenarian movement with this device." Ernest Sandeen, "The Roots of Fundamentalism: British and American Millenarianism, 1800-1930" (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1970), 224.]

The Scofield Bible had several innovative features. Most important, it printed what amounted to a commentary around the text of the Bible itself instead of in a separate volume. It also contained a cross-referencing system that tied together related verses of Scripture and allowed a reader to follow biblical themes from one chapter and book to another. Finally, the 1917 edition also attempted to date events of the Bible. It was in the pages of the Scofield Reference Bible that many Christians first encountered Archbishop James Ussher's calculation of the date of Creation as 4004 BC; and through discussion of Scofield's notes--which advocated the "gap theory"--fundamentalists began a serious internal debate about the nature and chronology of creation.

The Scofield Bible was published only a few years before World War I destroyed the cultural optimism that had viewed the world as entering a new era of peace and prosperity. Thus, Scofield's premilliennialism itself seemed almost prophetic, and sales of his Reference Bible exceeded two million copies by the end of World War II. [Gaebelein, 11]

The Scofield Reference Bible promoted dispensationalism, the belief that between creation and the final judgment there were seven distinct eras of God's dealing with man and that these eras were a framework for synthesizing the message of the Bible. It was largely through the influence of Scofield's notes that dispensationalism grew in influence among fundamentalist Christians in the United States. Scofield's notes on Revelation are a major source for the various timetables, judgments, and plagues elaborated by such popular religious writers as Hal Lindsey; and in part because of the success of the Scofield Reference Bible, twentieth-century American fundamentalists placed greater stress on eschatological speculation. Opponents of biblical fundamentalism have criticized the Scofield Bible for its air of total authority in biblical interpretation, for what they consider its glossing over of biblical contradictions, and for its focus on eschatology. [Bruce Bawer, "Stealing Jesus: How Fundamentalism Betrays Christianity" (New York: Three Rivers Press, 1997)] .

The text of the 1917 Scofield Reference Bible is now in the public domain. Oxford University Press published a copyrighted revision of the Scofield Bible in 1967 with a slightly modernized KJV text. The Press continues to issue editions under the title "Oxford Scofield Study Bible", which it offers with other translations. (For instance, the French version is printed with a revised version of the Segond translation and with additional notes by a Francophone committee.) The 1967 revision, though still dispensationalist, mutes some of the more extreme and idiosyncratic tenets of Scofield's theology.

References

*Arno C. Gaebelein, "The History of the Scofield Reference Bible" (Our Hope Publications, 1943)
*Searchable text of the 1917 version of the " [http://www.studylight.org/com/srn/ Scofield Reference Bible] " reference notes.