Bible Encyclopedia (ISBE)

The International Standard Bible Encyclopedia refers to two different revisions of a Bible encyclopedia. The first version was published under the general editorship of the fundamentalist James Orr (1844–1913), among other objectives to counteract the impact of higher criticism.

The original encyclopedia was published by the Howard-Severance Co., Chicago, in 1915. It is in the public domain and can be found freely available at various sites. A revised version, edited by Geoffrey W. Bromiley, was published by Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co. in 1989. It contains articles by nearly 200 evangelical scholars about archaeological discoveries, the language and literature of Bible lands, customs, family life, occupations, and the historical and religious environments of Bible people.

Writing in a 1984 book review for The Churchman, Stephen Motyer said the conservatism of the International Standard Bible Encyclopedia "is that of broad, main-line evangelicalism, although it seems to be slightly more conservative than the work it replaces". He also says it makes "dogmatic use of the Bible", and adds: "sometimes it seems to go over the top somewhat". However, he concludes "The criticisms I have made do not, to my mind, qualify the great solid worth of this production....I...seriously commend this encyclopedia..."

This list of contributors is taken from the Revised Edition. An asterisk (*) indicates that the person contributed an article to the 1915 edition that is still in the Revised Edition. New articles far outnumber older revised articles in the revised version. For some reason many contributors are listed more than once in the revised version. It is likely that the multiple listings is because of the scholar being at different institutions during the long process of revision. A scholar may have been employed at one school when they submitted one article in the beginning of the revision process and by the end they were employed at another school when they submitted their last article. The subject of the revision process and the rationale for retaining and updating some articles from the 1915 version is discussed in the preface and introduction of the revised version.

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