THE SCOFIELD REFERENCE BIBLE: The Holy Bible, containing the Old and New Testaments: Authorized Version,: With a New System of Connected Topical References to All the Greater Themes Of Scripture, With Annotations, Revised Marginal Renderings, Summaries, Definitions, and Index
New York: Oxford University Press, American Branch, 1909. FIRST EDITION. Leather. [6], 1362 pp. + maps. Brown calf, leather lined, all edges gilt with tilt spine title and owner's name embossed to front cover, gilt-tooled tuck-ins. First gathering loosened, taped reinforced with fore edge protruding and now chipped, spine creased and separating at center gatherings, front hinge head cracked, spine chipped at head, tide mark to latter pages. A well-worn copy with hand-written TOC to FFEP verso and following blank but unmarked otherwise.
Published to great dismay by the OxBridge crowd, the soiling of the Oxford University Press name with an uncredentialed, ex-Confederate, divorcee circuit preacher might have permanently sunk Henry Milford's reputation had it not gone on to be the best-selling book in the history of the press, the first Oxford title to 1 million copies and it's life boat through the First World War. The first modern "Study Bible", Scofield printed a continuous commentary printed alongside the scriptural text, which, along with the new "Chain-Reference" system, offered lay readers a new experience of meaning in Bible reading. Especially as the events of the ensuing World Wars and re-settlement of the Jewish people in Israel, Scofield's millenarian interpretation of biblical texts would gain greater interpretive authority and eventually opaque identification with the plain reading of the text.
Noteworthy also as an early use of Oxford's new "India Paper," which was remarkably given its strength and opacity, allowing the publication of a Bible with Scofield's extensive glosses and interpolations in a hand-sized format.
"...[P]erhaps the most influential single publication in millenarian and Fundamentalist historiography. The Scofield Reference Bible combined an attractive format of typography, paragraphing, notes, and cross references with the theology of Darbyite dispensationalism. The book has thus been subtly but powerfully influential in spreading those views among hundreds of thousands who have regularly read that Bible and who often have been unaware of the distinction between the ancient text and the Scofield interpretation." - Ernest Sandeen, Roots of Fundamentalism.
OCLC 1452425. FAIR. Item #2135
Title cont'd: "to which are added helps at hard places, explanations of seeming discrepancies, and a new system of paragraphs."
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