Changes to “The Biblical Structure of History”


On February 23, 2021, Dr. Gary North wrote a post on his website in which he released his books into Creative Commons 4.0. (His post about this is, strangely, only available to members of his website.) To honor this license, Axehead Press must provide a description of any changes we’ve made to Dr. North’s work. You can view a copy of the original work as it appeared when this Axehead Press edition was first produced here. The current official version of this book can be read here.

All Axehead Press editions seek to be rigorously faithful to the text produced by Dr. North, and most of the changes to any of his books published by Axehead Press consist of very insignificant publishing house style changes or correction of typos.

Any of the changes below that end up being entered back into the official version available on Dr. North’s website will be removed from this changelog.

Second Edition, September 2022

Axehead Press house style changes

  • Dr. North used numerals in some of his later books to refer to the points of biblical covenant model; these have been changed to their spelled-out forms.

First Edition, June 2022

Axehead Press house style changes

  • Removed periods in A.D. and B.C. and ensured they were positioned correctly.
  • Shifted text set in all caps to all small caps.
  • Shifted the final period in block quotations of Scripture to before the parenthetical chapter and verse reference
  • Standardized the data of a quote when it appears at the beginning of a chapter.
  • All citation information to any book currently published (or planned forthcoming) from Axehead Press was updated to reflect that edition.
  • Any URLs were removed if an alternate citation (such as a print copy) was provided. Remaining URLs were checked to verify that the URL was not dead, and the citation information was completed if necessary.
  • Numeric ranges were converted from elided ranges to full numerals; for example, 193–96 became 193–196. Additionally, all instances of p. or pp. preceding page numbers were removed.
  • All Arabic numerals in books of the Bible were converted to Roman numerals (except in quoted material).

Global changes throughout this title

  • Added a subtitle to the book.
  • Added a Scripture Index to the book.
  • In the original book, all citations were inline, in parentheses, rather than footnotes as traditional. These have all been converted to footnotes. In a few cases, the citation information was lacking some data; these were completed or augmented with additional publication data from another book by Dr. North where he cited the same work.
  • Chapter subheading references to Covenant Model, Part [X] were changed to reference Covenant Model, Point [X] in keeping with Dr. North’s favored term.
  • Pronunciation of names in square brackets were removed.
  • Arabic numerals in internal references to Part 1, Part 2, and Part 3 of this book were changed to Roman numerals for consistency with his previously published books.
  • All parenthetical Bible references were abbreviated as was the norm in previously published books.
  • On occasion, Dr. North referenced a verse only by the verse number, without the corresponding book and chapter number. This isolated numeral led to an interruption as the reader looked back up the page to find out what book and chapter the verse was from. These biblical citations were completed for the reader’s sake when it seemed necessary for ease of reading.
  • Changed references such as “my 2012 commentary on Exodus” to proper footnotes.

Specific changes throughout this title

  • In the Dedication the word Who was lowercased.
  • In the Preface, “Western civ” in student chant corrected to “Western Civ”.
  • In Chapter 3:B, “Exodus 21 through 23” changed to “Exodus 21–23”.
  • In Chapter 3:D, Van Til’s terminology for Kant’s philosophy was put in italics for clarity.
  • In Conclusion to Part I, the block quotation of Psalm 94 was combined into one paragraph due to an absence of paragraph break in the KJV, and formatting problems that the break presented.
  • In Chapter 5:E, the reference to Authority and Dominion was moved to a footnote, and the chapter number corrected to Chapter 32.
  • In Chapter 5:F, the reference to Revelation 21:9–10 was corrected to quote those verses, instead of mistakenly quoting Revelation 21:1–2 a second time.
  • In Chapter 6:A and 6:B, reference to 13.7 billion years was corrected to 13.8 billion years in keeping with Wikipedia’s current number (and the number Dr. North used in previous books).
  • In Chapter 6, Kant’s list of nine theses was converted to a numbered list.
  • In Chapter 6, the title Collingwood’s unfinished book Principles of History was put in italics.
  • In Chapter 7:A, an abbreviated editor’s reference to “PH” in a block quote was expanded to the full title, Principles of History.
  • In Chapter 7:B:5, two citations from page 248 of R. G. Collingwood’s The Idea of History occurred back-to-back as two block quotes. Because the two quotes were from the same page, the first citation was removed as unnecessary and the quotes were treated as one quote in two paragraphs with an ellipsis between them.
  • In Chapter 7:C, an single quotation from Van Til awkwardly spanned two inline paragraphs; this was pulled out into a block quotation.
  • In Chapter 9:A, realism and nominalism were in boldface type to single them out as terms Dr. North was defining or discussing. These were changed to italics.
  • In Chapter 9:B, Dr. North mistakenly used the reprint date of 2007 for The One and the Many by Rushdoony; this was corrected to refer to the book’s original publication date of 1971.
  • In the Introduction to Part III, Dr. North’s apparent headings/labels of each of the five points, corresponding to the quoted material from Rushdoony, were altered to read more clearly as normal paragraph text.
  • In Chapter 12:G, a reference to page 15 of “Marx’s Religion of Revolution” was amended to reference the Introduction, in keeping with Dr. North’s general later practice of citing sections rather than specific pages.
  • In Chapter 12:G, a worded reference to page xi of Crossed Fingers was amended to reference just the “Note to the Reader,” in keeping with Gary’s general later practice of citing sections rather than specific pages.
  • In Chapter 12:G, a quote from Conspiracy in Philadelphia was tweaked according to the changes that will be made to that volume when published by Axehead Press: Part III was changed to Part III, and 1787–88 was changed to the expanded form.
  • In Chapter 12, the quote from the Conclusion of Crossed Fingers was corrected to include the italics from the original.
  • In the Conclusion, a footnote was added for the Macbeth quotation.
  • In the Appendix, the publication date for The Biblical Philosophy of History by Rushdoony was corrected to 1969.
  • In the Appendix, Section G, the publication date for Conspiracy in Philadelphia was corrected to 2013.