Bibles

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englishredrose

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Do you guys ever underline or highlight passages in the Bible or make side line notes and wonder what they mean at a later date. Or don’t you make any markings in the Bible?

I recently got a new Bible and having had it blessed am wondering if to write in it or not? Underline stuff I mean. I can find what I need today but 10 years down the line I may be wondering quite why I underlined it as I had done with the first bible. It looked more like a college text book but then - its meant to be in that sense isn’t it as we do read and use.

what do you guys do?
 
I only very rarely write in my Bible. If I write in it, it has to be for a VERY good reason.

If I DO write in it, I try to keep it in the footnotes area.

I used to highlight but I think highlighting looks messy so I don’t do it anymore. Haha. All very aesthetically oriented here.
 
I think underlining in pencil, or marginal notes, are quite fine. After all, even scribes in the history of the ancient Church used marginal glosses as an aid to understanding. This is especially useful if you’re teaching Catechism / Catholic Doctrine and need to have your key references handy; my mother did, and she would make small notes in pencil if she needed to.

That said, I think the highlighter is more of a Protestant innovation, at least going by what I’ve seen among my friends. 😉 I’d personally feel uncomfortable doing so, especially if it was a leather-bound or “classy” Bible edition, or a gift. An alternative would be to have one (perhaps a paperback edition) for underlining and a more “durable” one (hardcover or leather) free of marginalia. 😃
 
I LOVE writing in, highlighting, and sticky noting my Bible! So much fun… 🙂
 
I never write in my Bible because the pages are so thin I’m afraid they’ll rip 😦

I use post-it notes to mark passages I like.
 
I have one bible that I write in, and two others that I don’t write in.
I write notes, thoughts, any interesting things I’ve heard in homilies about a particular passage, etc.
 
I write all over my paperback bibles, but not in my high quality bibles.

I would never write in a fine book, one with leather binding, parchment paper, gilded edges, etc.

-Tim-
 
englishredrose said:
Do you guys ever underline or highlight passages in the Bible or make side line notes and wonder what they mean at a later date. Or don’t you make any markings in the Bible?

I recently got a new Bible and having had it blessed am wondering if to write in it or not? Underline stuff I mean. I can find what I need today but 10 years down the line I may be wondering quite why I underlined it as I had done with the first bible. It looked more like a college text book but then - its meant to be in that sense isn’t it as we do read and use.

what do you guys do?
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Oh yeah! All the time! I usually have one Bible where I write all over the place and another one where I do not write in it.
 
Write in it, underline in it, highlight in it. When I read something important to me, or something that someone suggested, I even date it. I write in the margins and have used all blank pages in it for notes. I use ‘post a notes’ in it. It’s well used and looks well used. 🙂 I do this to most books I read for knowledge. I also do it in pleasure reading if I find a word I need to look up. 🙂
 
I used to do that, but it became pointless since devotional insights change as I grow older/go through life’s ups and downs. I find reading commentaries/saints’ writings on the passages more helpful/challenging since I’m not depending on my own thoughts/lack of spiritual progress/knowledge.
 
During my days away from our most holy faith (See My Testimony) I did and I still have some of those Bibles, but I also have a couple of paperback Catholic Bibles, one is a Douay-Rheims and the other an NAB that are extensively marked up, but I won’t do that to my RSV-CE 2s or others as they are just too nice and I’ve discovered that I don’t need to do that anymore.

I don’t think the Almighty minds, but I’ve found that all that marking tends to disrupt my own reading and study.
Della said:
I used to do that, but it became pointless since devotional insights change as I grow older/go through life’s ups and downs. I find reading commentaries/saints’ writings on the passages more helpful/challenging since I’m not depending on my own thoughts/lack of spiritual progress/knowledge.
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I was just thinking that very same thing. 👍
 
I would certainly think it’s a good thing. It’s good for clarifying notes, and understanding different issues, as well as ease of recalling and finding things at a later date. Also a great evangelization tactic.

I’ll never forget the story told me by an older classmate in college, who I hear is now a dorm director at that same college about a flight she took once. She says she was sitting next to a Baptist pastor and they got to talking about theology and she mentioned that she was Catholic and he brought up some issue with Catholicism, so she whipped out her bible, which shocked him. And then she opened it, and shocked him further because apparently he had been a pastor longer than she had been alive and been using the same bible that entire time, and yet her bible still had more writing in it than his. She says he really didn’t know what to say after that, he was so shocked at being outdone by such a young Catholic in scripture reading, so the conversation quickly and mysteriously turned to C.S. Lewis and away from his problems with Catholicism.

A strange goal I know, but one of my goals in life is to have this same situation happen to me.
 
Farsight001 said:
I would certainly think it’s a good thing. It’s good for clarifying notes, and understanding different issues, as well as ease of recalling and finding things at a later date. Also a great evangelization tactic.

I’ll never forget the story told me by an older classmate in college, who I hear is now a dorm director at that same college about a flight she took once. She says she was sitting next to a Baptist pastor and they got to talking about theology and she mentioned that she was Catholic and he brought up some issue with Catholicism, so she whipped out her bible, which shocked him. And then she opened it, and shocked him further because apparently he had been a pastor longer than she had been alive and been using the same bible that entire time, and yet her bible still had more writing in it than his. She says he really didn’t know what to say after that, he was so shocked at being outdone by such a young Catholic in scripture reading, so the conversation quickly and mysteriously turned to C.S. Lewis and away from his problems with Catholicism.

A strange goal I know, but one of my goals in life is to have this same situation happen to me.
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It may be, in fact, a strange goal. But, now that you mention it, I think I share it. Although I’m lazy. So that tends to get in the way. Also, I find that I struggle with deciding what kind of marking “system” to use. You can highlight, by the way, using colored pencils. They work great for me. I’ve toyed with the idea of using different colors for different types of passages. That way, if I ever am found to be in the situation described above, I can find easily passages that relate to the discussion at hand. I’ve also wondered if I should underline verses I “like”. I would think, eventually, everything would be underlined…am I over-thinking this? 😃
 
Back when everyone used the King James Version (I speak from a Protestant background, obviously), and you could expect to keep the same Bible your entire life, and it made sense to get a nice leather bound Bible and write extensively and underline passages. Of course now publishers regularly update their Bible translations as if they were the latest software versions which everyone has to have, and nice leather Bibles have short life spans.

I recall seeing display cases with old, well marked KJV Bibles which had belonged to famous ministers, and it was inspiring.

My evangelical church environment encouraged writing in your Bible, and I even found notes written in my Bible by other people who apparently couldn’t resist the force of habit when they borrowed my Bible!

I started underlining Bible verses when I was in high school in the 70s, but at the time I used a dull red colored pencil and was not very careful, so I ended up crossing out many of the verses I wanted to highlight! I ended up getting a new Bible, a nice leather bound NASB reference Bible.

I actually kept that one as my main Bible for over 30 years, and it is full of highlights, underlines, notes and even a few hand-drawn charts. But when I started investigating the claims of the Catholic Church, I found lots of crucial Bible verses in my Bible which I couldn’t recall even seeing in the past, and perhaps one reason was that they were hidden between the highlighted passages!

Now I am reluctant to highlight or underline since I’ve realized it takes the focus off of neighboring verses which may be just as important, and I am careful to only add a few notes to clarify the original meaning of the text (lots of my New Testament notes are written in Greek). My old written comments and charts from my dispensationalist days are embarrassing now.

Most of my current notes are in my giant RSV-2CE but these days my main Bible is the compact RSV-CE which goes with me everywhere, and I was wondering just this week if I should start writing notes in that one instead. Or will a better version come along someday (maybe am ESV-CE) which will become my new main Bible and demand I start writing in that one instead? Ah, here we go again. I long for the days when everyone used the same version, and a single Bible lasted a person a lifetime…
 
englishredrose said:
Do you guys ever underline or highlight passages in the Bible or make side line notes and wonder what they mean at a later date. Or don’t you make any markings in the Bible?

I recently got a new Bible and having had it blessed am wondering if to write in it or not? Underline stuff I mean. I can find what I need today but 10 years down the line I may be wondering quite why I underlined it as I had done with the first bible. It looked more like a college text book but then - its meant to be in that sense isn’t it as we do read and use.

what do you guys do?
Click to expand...
To be honest I don’t read from hard copy Bibles much nowadays. 😊 But even then I’m not exactly the type who would want to write or scribble on a book’s page - unless if it’s a textbook, and I’m very bored unto death.
 
I can’t get myself to write in my Bibles 🤷, I don’t know why but I can’t.
 
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