Yesterday, we demonstrated how the layout of The Preacher’s Bible follows that of the Scofield Reference Bible. Today, we will continue that thought but make it a little more specific.
The Scofield Bible is an Oxford Bible. The text is an Oxford text. This may not mean much to many people, but to some, it does. Some people may not be aware that there are many different King James Bible texts. The most common breakdown is that of the Oxford (loosely labeled) and the Cambridge (loosely labeled) texts. I won’t get into the further breakdown of the different Oxford or different Cambridge texts, but who knew that there were 16 pages (and we used a small font) of differences between the two? We didn’t.
When producing a Bible, we were faced with making some decisions that we never before had to make. Which text should we use? After reading much and studying much on the topic, we believe that the Cambridge texts are more accurate historically than the Oxford texts. This is another reason that we could not simply scan a Scofield Bible – the Scofield is the Oxford text.
Digitally typesetting this Bible allowed us to be able to take the well-known Scofield layout and apply it to the pure text found in Cambridge Bibles. Many have asked me questions about the text of The Preacher’s Bible, and we are now able to publicly announce that this is a Bible text compared to the Cambridge but with a Scofield layout. It truly is the best of both worlds.