Writing in your Bible

I've never been one to write, mark or highlight in my Bible. I don't find it helpful and writing in books just doesn't feel right. I know many Christians do find it helpful though, including my pastor. Last night I got a look at his well-worn Bible and almost every page is a kaleidoscope of reds, greens and yellows. For those of you who do write in your Bible, blogger Jesus Saenz gives some helpful advice on what to use. I found it interesting even though I don't.

Another concept that saints throuhgout the ages have found helpful, and which I may try some day, is the interleaved Bible. You can buy them now, but in the old days people had to make their own. I'm reading God's Passion for His Glory and in it John Piper has a fascinating aside about encountering Jonathan Edwards's interleaved Bible.

I visited Yale's Beinecke Library where most of Edwards's unpublished works are stored. A friend took me down to the lower level into a little room where two or three men were working on old manuscripts with microscopes and special lighting. I was allowed to see some of Edwards's sermon manuscripts (including "Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God") and his catalogue of reading, and his interleaved Bible.

The interleaved Bible he had evidently made himself. He had taken a large Bible apart page by page and inserted a blank sheet of paper between each page and then resewn the book together. Then he drew a line down the center of each blank page in order to make two columns for notes. On page after page in even the remotest parts of Scripture there were extensive notes and reflections in his tiny, almost illegible, handwriting.

Thus there is good reason to believe that Edwards really did follow through on his 28th resolution: "Resolved: To study the Scriptures so steadily, constantly and frequently, as that I may find, and plainly perceive, myself to grow in the knowledge of the same."