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. A study Bible. ... Cyrus Ingerson Scofield (1843-1921) was an American lawyer and Bible scholar. ... Oxford University Press (OUP) is a highly-respected publishing house and a department of the University of Oxford in England. ... This page is about the version of the Bible; for the Harvey Danger album, see King James Version (album). ... Year 1909 (MCMIX) was a common year starting on Friday (see link for calendar). ... Year 1917 (MCMXVII) was a common year starting on Monday of the Gregorian calendar (see link for calendar) or a common year starting on Tuesday of the 13-day slower Julian calendar (see: 1917 Julian calendar). ...

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. Archbishop James Ussher (1581-1656) James Ussher (sometimes spelled Usher) (4 January 1581–21 March 1656) was Anglican Archbishop of Armagh and Primate of All Ireland between 1625–1656 and a prolific religious scholar who most famously published a chronology which calculated the date of Creation as 4004 BC. // Ussher... The Ussher chronology is a 17th-century chronology of the history of the world formulated from an interpretative reading of the Bible by James Ussher, the Anglican Archbishop of Armagh (in what is now Northern Ireland). ... (6th millennium BC – 5th millennium BC – 4th millennium BC – other millennia) Events 4713 BC – The epoch (origin) of the Julian Period described by Joseph Justus Scaliger occurred on January 1, the astronomical Julian day number zero. ... Gap Creationism, also called Restitution creationism or Ruin-Reconstruction, are terms used to describe a particular set of Christian beliefs about the creation of the Universe and the origin of man. ... Fundamentalist Christianity is a fundamentalist movement, especially within American Protestantism. ... Look up Creation in Wiktionary, the free dictionary. ...

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.^[1]

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. This article or section does not cite its references or sources. ... Visions of John of Patmos, as depicted in the Très Riches Heures du Duc de Berry. ... Harold Lee Hal Lindsey (born 1929) is an American evangelist and Christian writer. ... Look up eschatology in Wiktionary, the free dictionary. ...

The original and 1917 text of the 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. The public domain comprises the body of all creative works and other knowledge—writing, artwork, music, science, inventions, and others—in which no person or organization has any proprietary interest. ...

External links

• Searchable text of the 1917 version of the Scofield Reference Bible reference notes.
• Oxford University Press web page for the "Old Scofield".
• The 1967 revision is published as The New Scofield Bible:

References

• Arno C. Gaebelein, The History of the Scofield Reference Bible (Our Hope Publications, 1943)