The Old and (Not-So) New Scofields

[KJVIsBest]

Hi, everyone:

I noticed in the Swordsearcher newsletter a link to this essay:

http://www.swordsearcher.com/bible-...ble.html?cpe=Y3A9MDgwMjA0JnM9TmV3c2xldHRlcg==

Near the end, we read:

"A modern version of the Reference Notes (called the New Scofield Reference Bible) exists, but is a 1967 revision bearing no real relation to C. I. Scofield and also includes modifications to the King James Version text it is based on."
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I found the mention of "modifications" interesting, because it turns out that Oxford University Press in their 1998 edition of the New Scofield actually backtracked from inserting these into the text. From the "Introduction to the 1998 Edition" (p. vii):

"...First and foremost, this edition has the classic King James Version (KJV) text of the original Scofield Reference Bible. Where the 1967 editors inserted alternate translations to help clarify obsolete and archaic words, these words have been moved to the margins, preceded by 'Or.' In this edition, then, the standard KJV text is presented for public and personal Bible reading, and the alternate translations are available to assist new and younger readers of the KJV...."
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I don't know if whoever compiled the Swordsearcher page (Brandon?) knew about this later edition. What the page says currently is right about the 1967 version, but it might be useful at some point to reword the description due to the 1998 edition's changing course (since if anyone looks at the KJV New Scofields in print now, the "modifications" will not be apparent unless one knows where to look for them). Of course the New Scofield still contains a great deal of rewriting and cutting of the original Scofield's notes. But the fact that Oxford essentially "blinked" when it came to one of the most unacceptable points of the New Scofield--those meddlesome, unhelpful, and always detrimental word changes in the KJV text--is, I think, highly significant.

 

[Brandon Staggs]

Great information -- thanks!