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![]() ![]() Notes would also include archeological data, and attention would be given to introductions for each book. A trans-denominational team set out to produce a consensus Bible that would represent the variety of theological views within evangelicalism. The NIV Study Bible became the new pacesetter for study Bibles. That changed in 1985, when Zondervan published the NIV Study Bible. For most of the twentieth century, if you were to walk into a bookstore to purchase a study Bible, you would be hardpressed to find any other option than the Scofield Bible. While the joke is funny to a degree, the results are far from humorous. In other words, the notes controlled the text. The joke went something like this: You read the English Bible from left to right, the Hebrew Bible from right to left, and the Scofield Bible from the bottom up. The point of testing is no longer legal obedience as the condition of salvation, but acceptance or rejection of Christ, with good works as a fruit of salvation. Consider his note on John 1:17 that teaches salvation was not by grace prior to Christ: As a dispensation, grace begins with the death and resurrection of Christ. Scofield worked his dispensationalism into every text he could, promoting an unhealthy understanding of the gospel. Oxford University Press officials once declared that the Scofield Bible kept them financially afloat through the years of the Great Depression. More than two million copies sold in the early years of the 1917 edition. But the 1917 edition had copious notes promoting a dispensational scheme of theology. This Bible had first been published in 1909 with a system of cross-references. It would not be too much of a stretch to speak of the century spanning from 1917 to the present as “The Century of the Study Bible.” In 1917, Oxford University Press published the Scofield Study Bible. All of these study Bibles except the Geneva Bible date from the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. Not counting children’s Bibles, the number topped one hundred, among them a facsimile edition of the 1560 Geneva Bible. By way of an informal nonscientific study, I counted the study Bibles listed in Christian Book Distributors Bibles catalog for spring/ summer 2015. Neither has there been a shortage of study Bibles since the Geneva Bible. There has been no shortage of English Bibles since the Geneva Bible. ![]() Countless readers were helped by the notes reflecting the doctrinal understanding of the Reformation. Despite King James’ attempts in 1611 at positioning his new translation in the market, the Geneva Bible held sway well into the seventeenth century. A Scottish law from 1579 required “every Householder with 300 merks ” to own one. It was the Bible of William Shakespeare, John Bunyan, and the Pilgrims and Puritans who landed in the New World. The Geneva Bible was intended to be read. Pocket-sized editions were made available, as were inexpensive editions of the New Testament. The Geneva Bible was intentionally affordable. Later editions fully replaced the notes it had published on John’s Apocalypse. Then, as now, the book of Revelation posed special challenges to interpreters and annotators. Some later editions even modified the notes or replaced them altogether. As later editions rolled off the press, more annotations for the rest of the canonical books appeared. ![]() This edition also had woodcut illustrations, maps, and even tables, which provided a cross-referencing index for names and topics. The first edition had these annotations in the Gospels only. The Geneva Bible was also the first Bible to have study notes or annotations. Nine years later, these same verse numbers appeared in the Geneva Bible. He introduced his innovative verse divisions in his 1551 edition. Stephanus, a brilliant linguist, published several editions of the Greek New Testament. Prior editions of the English Bible had chapter breaks only. The Geneva Bible was the first English Bible to use verse divisions, thanks to the work of Robertus Stephanus. So, too, the British scholars who came to Geneva needed to work. Most of their prior work revolved around saints’ statues, rosaries, and the like. Florentine jewelers who had converted to Protestantism were also among the exiles who came to Geneva. Many went to Calvin’s Geneva.Ĭalvin wasn’t much for idle hands. Britain’s Reformers found themselves in prison, martyred, or in exile. When “Bloody Mary” took the throne, she threw into reverse the advancing Reformation, taking the nation back to Roman Catholicism. These scholars who worked on the Geneva Bible had been leaders of the Reformation in England and Scotland. #BACKING UP MY NOTES ON BIBLE DISCOVERY FULL#They published the first full edition of the Geneva Bible. In 1560, an exiled group of pastors and theologians made history. ![]()
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