The Debt to Scholarship

IS a winter at Clifton Springs it became clear to Dr. and Mrs. Scofield that they should go to Europe again. This time Oxford was the destination; and a two years’ stay in that wonderful English university town followed. Here the treasures of the Oxford libraries were fully at the disposal of the man who was making himself a Bible scholar by mastering the Bible scholarship of the world. He was by no means content to limit his studies and researches to constructive and believing Bible scholarship. He covered the whole field of such ‘scholarship, whether friendly or unfriendly to the Bible. He wanted to know at first-hand all that the critics claimed to have done, and he was open to any light that their scholarly researches might, known or unknown to themselves, throw upon the Word of God. He found Prof. Dr. William Sanday, an outstanding scholarly critic, gracious in his readiness to confer.

So also with the more extreme critic, Prof. S. R.

Driver. Of the conservative Bible scholars abroad, Dr. Scofield gratefully acknowledges his indebtedness to Profs. A. H. Sayce and David Samuel Margoliouth, of Oxford, and to Mr. Walter Scott, the eminent Bible teacher.

It was Dr. Scofield’s deliberate purpose to put himself under obligation to the entire field of modern Bible study and scholarship. All through his labors on. the Reference Bible he was consulting, either by correspondence or personal interview, the leading scholarly and spiritual Bible students of different lands. The destructive criticism and the new theology, both emanating from Germany, were in no sense congruous with his plan, and were wholly rejected as out of harmony with the great historic faith founded upon two thousand years of Christian experience and study.

The title-page of the Reference Bible gives the names of the consulting editors to whom, in the Introduction, the editor acknowledges special indebtedness and who worked with him in counsel, criticism, and guidance. These consulting editors were Henry G. Weston, D.D., LL.D. (deceased), President of Crozer Theological Seminary; James M. Gray, D.D., Dean of Moody Bible Institute; William J. Erdman,

D.D., author of “The Gospel of John,” etc.; W. G. Moorehead, D.D. (deceased), Professor in Xenia (U. P.) Theological Seminary; Elmore Harris, D.D. (deceased), President Toronto Bible Institute; Arno C. Gaebelein, author of “Harmony of Prophetic Word,” etc.; Arthur T. Pierson, D.D. (deceased), author, editor, teacher. In addition to a great deal of correspondence with these consulting editors, three meetings of the group were held; and one can well imagine what interesting conferences these meetings must have been. The last of the three, reviewing the whole work, was held at Princeton, New Jersey, when several of the editorial board spent many days together, with access to the great theological library there.

In the remarkable introduction to the Reference Bible, which is, by a characteristic touch of the editor’s unconventionality, labeled “(To be read),”’ Dr. Scofield says: “‘The editor disclaims originality. Other men have labored, he has but entered into their labors. The results of the study of God’s Word by learned and spiritual men, in every division of the church and in every land, during the last fifty years, under the advantage of a perfected text, already form a vast literature, inaccessible to most Christian workers. The editor has proposed to himself the modest if laborious task of summarizing, arranging, and condensing this mass of material.

“That he has been able to accomplish this task at all is due in very large measure to the valuable suggestion sand co-operation of the consulting editors, who have freely given of their time and the treasures of their scholarship to this work. It is due to them to say that the editor alone is responsible for the final form of notes and definitions. The editor’s acknowledgments are also due to a very wide circle of learned and spiritual brethren in Europe and America to whose labors he is indebted for suggestions of inestimable value. It may not be invidious to mention among these Prof. James Barrellet, of the Theological Faculty of Lausanne; Professors Sayce and Margoliouth, of Oxford; Mr. Walter Scott, the eminent Bible teacher; and Prof. C. R. Erdman, of Princeton.

“Finally, grateful thanks are due to those whose generous material assistance has made possible the preparation of a work involving years of time and repeated journeys to the centres of Biblical learning abroad.”

It is to be remembered, therefore, that everything of importance in the Scofield Reference Bible represents the consensus of leading minds of Great Britain, the United States, and Canada, together with the treasures of Bible study worked out by similar students during the past century or so, as preserved in the best libraries of Europe and America. God led him to the right men; men who dived in Hebrew and Greek; and from these he eagerly received invaluable and judicious counsel. Going to Biblical centres abroad, he made sure that he gained possession of all the facts he needed to have. At Lausanne, Switzerland, for example, he reveled in the books in the great library there, a library begun by Calvin, some of whose books are still on its shelves.

Another statement in the Introduction of the Reference Bible is significant: “‘The last fifty years have witnessed an intensity and breadth of interest in Bible study unprecedented in the history of the Christian Church. Never before have so many reverent, learned, and spiritual men brought to the study of the Scriptures minds so free from merely controversial motive. A new and vast exegetical and expository literature has been created, inaccessible for bulk, cost, and time to the average reader. The winnowed and attested results of this half-century of Bible study are embodied in the notes, summaries, and definitions of this edition. Expository novelties and merely personal views and interpretations have been rejected.”

Did the sojourns in Great Britain and elsewhere in Europe make any real contribution to the Scofield Reference Bible, apart from the opportunity they gave of freedom from interruption in the work? Could not this Reference Bible just as well have been made at home without stepping foot out of the United States? The question has been sincerely asked, and the facts here given answer it.

It is true that most of the explanatory and interpretative comment represents material that was familiar to the comparatively few soundly instructed and well-grounded students of the Word of God in our country and abroad. But the work done on the Scofield Reference Bible includes far more than this. It is a result that could have been produced only after an exhaustive study of books, and conferences with men, both friendly and unfriendly to the Word of God, both believing and unbelieving, both conservative and radical, so that every statement of the editor was finally made only after an intelligent and scholarly familiarity with the whole realm of modern Bible research. When a positive statement is made in the notes it is made in full recognition of the negative positions on that same point. All this made possible an orientation of the editor and gave the work a background, an atmosphere, a sometimes tacit evidence of familiarity with all view-points while presenting only the true view-point, which could never have been brought to pass without the travel and contact and research that went into it.

Those to whom the notes and references, the introductions and paragraph topics in the Scofield Reference Bible seem very simple — and they are simple and easy reading — do not always realize how much costly study and time and energy went into the mere deciding what to leave out. The editor read and read, and rejected and rejected, for cause. He had long personal interviews with Bible scholars with whom he fundamentally disagreed; but he drew out from them all that they could give him, and then went back to his constructive, not destructive, work, infinitely the better equipped. No man could sit in a pastor’s study or a theological library in any one country alone and do this.

It will be remembered that the lifelong training and predisposition of Dr. Scofield, in literature and history and the law, had been making for the scholarly mind and the habits and methods of true scholarship. He had a magnificent Greek tutor away back in the days when he had been preparing to enter college. Later, after entering the Christian ministry, he made such progress in the study of the Bible tongues as was possible to a busy pastor. Despite the attainments thus acquired, Dr. Scofield, in his work upon the Reference Bible, always refused to settle any question linguistic in its nature upon nis own conclusions unsupported by the great conservative authorities living and dead.

The scientific attitude of mind appears in this comment of Dr. Scofield: “If I find that I would tke to have a word mean a certain thing, I pull up! ‘Hold on, now,’ I say to myself, ‘I must see if it does mean that.’” And more than once, in making the Reference Bible, he spent a week on a single word, determined to know the facts before permitting himself to come to any conclusion.

An unexpected and very distinguished recognition of the learning and the scientific scholarship that have characterized Dr. Scofield’s entire life, and that went into the making of the Reference Bible, was received in January of 1919 in a letter from the Société Académique d’Histoire Internationale, notifying Dr. Scofield of his election to membership. The late President of this Society, Frédéric Mistral, was one of the great poets of France. A medal of membership accompanied the election, and the following diploma, sent to Dr. Scofield, is a formal statement of the honor:

Société Académique d’Histoire Internationale
Fondée en 1903
Déclarée conformément 4a la Loi du
ter Juillet 1g01 — No. 154,142
50, Boulevard St. Jacques, 50, Paris
Président d’Honneur Perpétuel:
Mr. Frédéric Mistral
Commandeur de la Légion d’Honneur
Diplome de Membre Fondateur décerne

a Monsieur le Dr. Cyrus I. Scofield
Paris, le 6 Février 1919

Le Président
Officier de la Légion d’Honneur
Vicomte de Faries

Le Secrétaire Général Officier
de l’Instruction Publique

There are, of course, certain merely theologically trained minds that never do, never can distinguish learning unless it is explained and couched in technical and impressive terms. Dr. Scofield came to the Bible with a mature mind, technically trained through the habit of close investigation. He studied the Bible for thirty years. He checked, verified, or corrected his own conclusions by conference with scholarly, Bible-saturated men of God, and by careful study of the writings of the saintly and spiritual as well as of the critical and unbelieving. Then, satisfied as to the conclusions of truth, he asked God that he might be simple, like the Bible itself, and make no display of what he calls “even the poor learning”’ that he himself might have. As a successful lawyer, he had been trained, especially in jury practice, to be simple and clear. He has never had any ambition to be impressive; he has had a great longing to help God’s people and feed Christ’s sheep. The result was the Scofield Reference Bible as it is to-day.

In spite of the modest disclaimer by the editor, and in spite of his frankly avowed and honestly maintained purpose to bring together for the benefit of the many the learning and

—Seee

the Scofield Reference Bible is by no means merely an eclectic work. It is also the ripe result of thirty years of unremitting personal study by its editor, whose methods, as have been seen, were utterly unusual in tracking down and digging out for himself, at no sparing of personal cost, under the direction of the Holy Spirit, the treasures of God’s Word.