Jonathan,
The footnotes of the original edition of the Scofield Bible published
early in the twentieth century supported the gap theory, which allows for
an indeterminate period of time prior to the supposed ruin of creation due
to Satan. It also had a footnote saying that the word day did not have to
mean 24 hours. On the other hand, it also included Ussher's chronology.
The revision published about fifty years later omitted the gap theory and
the chronology but retained the footnote about the meaning of day as I
recall. Thus I don't think the effect of the Scofield Bible was to make
people intolerant of the idea of an old earth.
Gordon Brown
Department of Mathematics
University of Colorado
Boulder, CO 80309-0395
On Sun, 1 Apr 2001, Jonathan Clarke wrote:
> Good question Graham. I wonder if HM and JW have navels?
>
> My reading of writers on the pre HM period (Numbers, Moore, Ramm and
> Livingstone) is that there was no institutional awareness that the age of the
> earth was a fundamental issue amongst anyone except SDAs and Missouri
> Lutherans. Most books on the subject would have argued either a "day age" or
> "gap" perspective. Organic evolution was more widely seen to be an issue,
> however. There was a lot of grass roots support for YEC though, possibly
> because of the influence of the Scofield Bible, something that Numbers does
> not really take into account, dealing with the more formal writings of church
> leaders and thinkers. The grass roots support or sympathy for young earth,
> flood geology, and anti-evolutionary ideas prepared the ground for Whitcomb
> and Morris.
>
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