1909
Walk through the Bible section of a bookstore these days (or scroll through a bookstore's web site) and you'll find study Bibles of all shapes and sizes, for all ages, interests, and theological leanings. Today Bibles with notes are commonplace, and dozens { 27 } of Bibles cater to different audiences. But prior to the Scofield Bible, an annotated Bible was a rarity.
In fact the translators of the 1611 King James Version of the Bible had been told, "No marginal notes are to be affixed," except notes relating to Hebrew and Greek. That attitude held for three centuries. And until about 1970, the Scofield Reference Bible was unique, virtually the only study Bible available. Many readers accepted Scofield's notes as gospel truth. After all, it was in the Bible—the Scofield Bible. (In the 1960s, some were singing, tongue-in-cheek, "My hope is built on nothing less than Scofield notes and Scripture Press.)
A lawyer who had served in the Kansas legislature, C. I. Scofield left his law practice to enter the ministry when he was thirty-nine, shortly after his conversion. He became pastor of a small church in Dallas, Texas, which grew rapidly under his Bible-teaching ministry. Evangelist D. L. Moody took note of him and Scofield became Moody's pastor for seven years in Massachusetts. Then he went back to his previous church in Dallas. When he was neaiing his sixtieth birthday, Scofield began working on a reference Bible. His purpose: to help people study Scriptures systematically. The church eventually gave Scofield a leave of absence and he finished his reference Bible in time for it to be published in 1909.
In preparation he consulted with an eight-member panel of consulting editors, most of whom, but not all, shared his theological leanings. Scofield's theology was strongly dispensation-alist. Dispensationalism is based on the idea that God has worked
progressively in seven different dispensations, each characterized by a different divine promise, a different test, and mankind's failure to meet God's standards. Scofield also held to a pre-Adamic race and a gap between Genesis 1:1 and 1:2. Regarding the second coming of Christ, Scofield taught that there would be a rapture of the church before a seven-year tribulation, which would be followed by a thousand-year millennium.
Although many Bible scholars quarreled with nuances of its theology, the Scofield Bible got Christians studying the Word of God as never before and gave them handles on which to hang their beliefs. And even those who don't share his obvious dis-pensationalist views can find benefit in Scofield's thorough chain-references, definitions, and summaries.
, 2g 5 In 1917 some of the rough edges of the Scofield Bible were f removed in a "new and improved edition," which remained the standard Scofield version until 1967, when a Revised Scofield Bible was published. In 1976 the Eyrie Study Bible was published, which was a further adaptation of Scofield's original.
One critic of the Scofield Bible said: "It may fairly be called one of the most influential books—perhaps it is the most influential single book—thrust into the religious life of America during the twentieth century."
He may well have been right. Interestingly enough, when the revised edition of the Scofield Bible was published in 1967, its influence began to wane, but until then it was the Bible of choice for most evangelicals. It ha d shaped the thinking of many Christians for two generations.