“It is a useful fact for trivia night that Oxford University Press…has a bestselling book of all time that it doesn’t often celebrate. That bestseller is the Scofield Reference Bible, edited by C. I. Scofield, first published in 1909….
In 1909, a Congregationalist minister named Cyrus Scofield published his study bible, which Carl Trueman has called the most influential book of the 20th century. The notes in this study bible popularized premillennial dispensationalism for millions of Christians, and it still exerts a wide influence. His notes are characteristic of so-called “classical dispensationalism,” and (among other things) they emphasize a very hard discontinuity between the Old and New Covenants. Indeed, a reader could interpret Scofield (and, later, Lewis S. Chafer) as advocating a works-based salvation under the so-called “Dispensation of the Law.”
