Evangelicalism has never, ever been about just “the Bible alone.” Sure, the slogan has been used in Protestantism. But the Reformers knew that the Bible is never alone, and provided commentary on it.
And often times the provision of commentary – one thinks of the infamous Schofield Reference Bible – has influenced an incredibly large segment of Christianity in a direction that is problematic from the perspective of the very texts being commented upon.
And so should we be worried that it is conservative Evangelical devotional commentary that is, in most cases, being included along with popular Bible apps, and rarely if ever mainstream scholarly commentary?
What would it take to get a Bible app out there with a mainstream translation and mainstream scholarly commentary? I wonder whether any of the major publishers or an organization like the Society of Biblical Literature would be interested in doing something like that and having it available for free? (For publishers, it sould have to have the potential to lead to sales of additional add-in content.) Or could we crowdsource something like this? There are some sites either already in existence or in the works which make scholarly content available for free. But we need there to be a designated app, too.
UPDATE: It bears highlighting that the phrase in the title of this post (and the article in the NY Times I linked to) is from the Gospel of John, where it refers to Jesus and not the Bible.
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