An Ecumenical Ministry in the Parish of St Patrick's Catholic Church In San Diego USA

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The Most Dangerous Book

 

On Faith: The most dangerous book

After many years of reading and thought, I have come to the conclusion the most dangerous book in the English language is “Scofield Reference Bible.” I do not say this lightly or facetiously. This book is the King James Bible accompanied by copious commentary/annotation material written by Cyrus I. Scofield (1843-1921). It came out first in 1909, a revised edition by Scofield in 1917, both published by Oxford University Press. The Press published a revision in 1967 and it has been reprinted many times. It has sold millions of copies over the last 100-plus years. It has been a major moneymaker for Oxford University Press.

The foremost evangelical seminary in America is Dallas Theological Seminary, founded in 1924 by Lewis Chafer, whose mentor was Cyrus Scofield. Scofield was highly influenced by the writings of John Nelson Darby who is credited with founding “Christian Dispensationalism.” The DTS has campuses also in Houston, Washington, D.C., and extensions in Atlanta, Austin, San Antonio, Nashville and Arkansas. The DTS teaches Dispensational theology, which is made clear on the seminary’s website.

Dispensationalism a big word for a big revision of Christian theology. This teaching holds that God has established seven Dispensation Periods in his relation to humankind, and we are in the sixth right now — which is the last one before the End of Days and the Return of Christ and his 1,000-year reign over the Earth, which will be the seventh period. Hence, the full name for this theology/eschatology of Darby and Scofield is “Premillennial Dispensationalism” and is taught to this day by Dallas Theological Seminary, and many other evangelical Christian seminaries.

Darby may have invented this theology in England, but he made several missionary trips to North America in 1862-1877 and his version of Christianity was taken up by many — most especially, Cyrus I. Scofield. A crucial element of Darby’s and Scofield’s teaching concerns the Jews and their return to the Holy Land. Dispensationalism teaches this is a critical part of God’s plan for the Jews and all humanity. The return has to be accomplished; the Jerusalem temple has to be rebuilt on Temple Mount; and animal sacrifices at the temple have to be begun again. Only then will the Second Coming of Christ occur. Modern Israel is essential.

The problem with Scofield’s Reference Bible is many of his annotations are written specifically to “prove” how the Bible teaches exactly this Premillennial Dispensationalist form of Christianity. Scofield uses an ultra-literal interpretation of nearly every biblical passage. At the same time, he never comes forth and states this is his own bias. Instead, his annotations are presented as if they are all widely accepted theology — almost part of the Bible itself. But nothing could be further from the truth. For the previous 1,800 years, no accredited and respected theologian or biblical commentator had put forth anything like Scofield’s twisted, convoluted and idiosyncratic interpretation of the Bible. Scofield himself had a checkered life, which included, before his Christian “conversion,” abandoning a wife and children, being convicted of forgery, and absconding with funds while he was involved in politics.

Yet, as fate would have it, Scofield’s Bible caught on and sold like hot cakes. His intention, and the book’s marketing, was “to make the Bible intelligible to everyone.” Well, he did that, but it was his weird, outlier version of the Bible, and most don’t realize that failing, even today. The problem we have now is millions of American Christians totally “believe in” the Scofield Bible, even if they don’t own one or know what it is. The “Left Behind” series of novels, by Tim LaHaye and Jerry Jenkins, is based on the Scofield Bible’s interpretation of scripture, and they have sold over 65 million copies. Other than the Bible itself, their series of books has the highest sale of any religious titles in American publishing history.

The Scofield Reference Bible has been widely used to teach the Bible to evangelical and fundamentalist Christians and their ministers for a hundred years. As one result of this, the U.K.’s Religion Media Centre on 21 Feb. 2022 estimated there are some 30 million Christian Zionists in the U.S., citing Tristan Sturm’s research, of Queen’s University Belfast. That is a major voting block.

And here’s the punch: This is quite probably how Trump got elected president twice. In this past election, he received 77,284,118 votes; we can be pretty sure about 30 million of those votes were Christian Zionists. Trump and the GOP have been making it very clear they unquestionably support Israel, no matter what.

In point of fact, the issue is much larger than Trump. What paved the way toward the existence of the modern state of Israel was in no small degree Darby’s and Scofield’s widely disseminated proto-Zionist teaching — with a special impact in the English-speaking world. Anyone who has studied the origins of Zionism soon discovers — as counterintuitive as it may be — it was a Christian movement first. There were a number of Christian projects in England in the 19th century to restore the Jews to Palestine. (See “British Projects for the Restoration of Jews to Palestine,” by Albert Hyamson, Publications of the American Jewish Historical Society, No. 26, 1918, available online; and see Donald Lewis, “The Origins of Christian Zionism,” Cambridge University Press, 2014.) But these early attempts for “restoration” to the Holy Land did not become a front-and-center issue until those annotations written by Scofield.

For hundreds and hundreds of years, rabbis taught it would be sacrilegious to return to Jerusalem before the coming of their Messiah. In the 20th century, many rabbis objected strongly to the fact almost all of the original Jewish Zionists were secular, nonreligious Jews. None of this is to say the Jewish people don’t deserve to have Israel. It is to say, however, without the huge influence of Darby and the Scofield Reference Bible, British and American support for the creation of Israel would not have happened. Call me a pessimist, but I’m not sure the gentile world would have been persuaded, even by the Holocaust, to give the Jews their own state — had it not been for the Dispensationalist mindset held by so many Christians living in the U.S.A. and the U.K.

The Scofield Reference Bible changed the very nature of Christianity as it has been, and is being, practiced in the United States. A sizable percentage of America’s Christians believe in a soon-to-arrive End of Days, the great battle of Armageddon, the Jewish rebuilding of the Jerusalem temple, the Rapture of the true Christians into heaven, the seven years of world Tribulation, and the Second Coming. None of the above is actually taught in the Bible itself. It is taught in the Scofield Reference Bible — in the annotations written by Scofield. Not exactly the same thing as the Hebrew or Greek texts themselves.

Perhaps it is Scofield’s notes to the Book of Revelation that are the most dangerous ones and have thrust that book of the Bible into a top position among many Christians today. For example: “Romanism (the Catholic Church) weds Christian doctrine to pagan ceremonies;” “the great tribulation is the period of unexampled trouble … and its vortex Jerusalem and the Holy Land;” “the present world system … refers to the ‘order’ under which Satan has organized the world …;” “ecclesiastical Babylon is apostate Christendom, headed by the Papacy … and is the ‘Great Whore.’” These are just a few of his notes, but one can see how divisive his commentary often is.

If ever there was a perfect example of how one book can cause a mountain of trouble, it is the Scofield Reference Bible. It is now commonly called the “Scofield Study Bible.” It scares me to think people are actually using this book to “study” the Bible. It is hard enough to understand the Bible in itself — without adding a tendentious, idiosyncratic collection of notes to it that push one dangerous misreading after another.

John Nassivera is a former professor who retains affiliation with Columbia University’s Society of Fellows in the Humanities. He lives in Vermont and part time in Mexico.

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