For many Christians, a Bible without the
words of Christ in red is almost unthinkable. But like other standard Bible
features (such as chapter and verse numbers), the origin of the practice is
virtually forgotten.
It is a surprisingly recent innovation,
instigated by Louis Klopsch (1852-1910), an
enterprising immigrant journalist. Born in
In his teens he had been captivated by a
service conducted by Rev. T. DeWitt Talmage. He made Talmage an editor of his paper, and conceived the idea of
distributing his sermons to hundreds of newspapers. Thus he may have invented
the modern tactic of syndication.
Then on
This new adjunct to the New Testament of
course had to include the words of Jesus quoted by others, in Acts and
Revelation. It was decided to exclude anticipations of Christ (“Christophanies”) in the Old Testament. An initial edition
of 60,000 “Red Letter Testaments” was soon sold out. Accolades streamed in,
from the King of Sweden (a telegram) to President Theodore Roosevelt (a dinner
invitation which Louis Klopsch accepted).
Klopsch also pioneered American overseas
charities in a massive fashion, raising more than three million dollars through
his newspaper. He aided famine victims in many places such as
Red letters are especially useful in the
King James Version and in other translations where quotation marks are not
used. There are also those super-intricate quotations-within-quotations (some
of them four times removed), where the red letters are crucial for separating
the words of Christ from surrounding text.
Of course some large-print Bibles omit
red letters since they are an obstacle for the vision-impaired (such as
Nelson’s Black Letter Giant Print Bible, KJV). One company unsuccessfully tried
to print Christ’s words in green. Some publishers use a pinkish red that is
hard to read. Often the precise shade of red is left to the printer’s
discretion—or whim. Frank Couch, New Products Planner for Thomas Nelson Bibles,
emphasizes that Nelson insists upon a specific hue of brick red, distinctive
yet easier to read.
So, despite the changes in Bible
publishing, the red-letter option seems to be a solid fixture welcomed and
demanded by vast numbers of Christians. Red letters have been a venerable Bible
asset for eighty-five years.
Reprinted by permission from Triads Quarterly.
http://www.biblecollectors.org/articles/red_letter_bible.htm
Wikipedia
Red letter
edition bibles are those in which the Dominical words—those spoken by Jesus
Christ, commonly only those spoken during his corporeal life on Earth—are
printed rubricated, in red ink. This is a modern practice derived from the art
and Roman Catholic practice in mediaeval scriptoria of rubricating headings,
leading letters of sectional text, and words of text in manuscripts for
emphasis, similar to italicization.
The
inspiration for rubricating the Dominical words comes
from Luke,
Klopsch
published the first modern red letter edition New Testament later in 1899. The
first modern, fully rubricated bible was published in 1901. The rubricated
bible instantly became popular, and is sometimes favored by Protestant
Christians in the
Because the
original texts of the Sacred Scriptures do not have quotation marks, which
words exactly are Dominical has been interpreted, as opposed to explanatory
text that follows them. For example, a footnote in the New International
Version for John,
A feature
of the first Klopsch edition[citation
needed] is that the Dominical words were also italicized. This rather defeated
the specific use of italics in the King James Version to mark words supplied by
the translators that are not present in the original texts.[citation needed]
From the title page:
Red Letter
Edition
WITH THE
WORDS OF OUR LORD AND SAVIOUR
SET FORTH
IN DIGNIFIED RED ITALICS
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_letter_edition