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R. Todd Mangum and Mark S. Sweetnam, The Scofield Bible: Its History and Impact on the Evangelical Church. Colorado Springs, CO: Paternoster Press, 2009. Pp. 245. $16.99.
While the Scofield Reference Bible (SRB) has enjoyed widespread use and persistent influence within conservative evangelical circles since its publication in 1909, scholarship on its history and impact, as well as that of its editor CI. Scofield, has remained disproportionately scarce. Those works that have examined Scofield and his Bible have tended to be either hagiographie in their assessment or virulently critical. R. Todd Mangum and Mark S. Sweetnam, both historians of evangelicalism, hope to begin filling this historiographical gap with The Scofield Bible. This introductory work aims to provide an even-handed assessment of Scofield and his Bible for students and scholars alike, and prompt further scholarship on these subjects in the future.
The scope of The Scofield Bible is more limited than the subtitle might suggest and is confined almost exclusively to the "Evangelical Church" in England and America. Mangum and Sweetnam divide the work into six chapters, alternating authorship of each one. Mangum, whose previous scholarship has focused on dispensationalist-covenantal relations within evangelicalism, focuses on the American aspects. Sweetnam, whose interests lay primarily in early modern Christianity, contributes sections on the British dimensions. Each chapter is written in such a way that each could stand independently as an essay. However, this division of labor certainly does not take away from the overall coherence of...