Millions of people read the New Testament printed with the words of Jesus in red, but in terms of Bible history, it’s a relatively recent development.
Neil Rees writes in Christian Today that the idea was developed by Louis Klopsch who arrived in the US as a toddler from Prussia in 1854.
At the turn of the century, he bought the New York newspaper The Christian Herald which was started by Joseph Spurgeon, a cousin of the famous preacher Charles Spurgeon.
It had a large cross-denominational readership, peaking at nearly a quarter of a million.
Klopsch was a good friend of prominent Evangelical leaders at the time like Thomas De Witt Talmage, Dwight Moody and Ira Sankey.
He was working on an editorial when he read Luke 22:20 in the King James Version where Jesus said: “This cup is the new testament in my blood, which is shed for you.”
This gave him the inspiration to print the very words of Jesus in the colour of blood.
The process of colouring some words in red, known as rubrication had been common in medieval manuscripts to emphasise certain passages.
The King James Version dated back to a time before quotation marks were used as punctuation, so it was not always obvious what was speech in the Scriptures.
After consulting various Bible scholars, Louis Klopsch decided which parts to colour red.
In 1899, The Christian Herald printed the first red letter New Testament with a print run of 60,000.
It was so popular that in 1901, the newspaper printed the first red letter Bible titled The Holy Bible: Red Letter Edition.
These days some red letter Bible editions only include the words of Jesus in the four Gospels, while others also colour sections in red in Acts and the epistles.
Others colour verses red in Revelation where John is spoken to in his vision.
Christian Today points out one contentious issue over these Bibles is that they imply to the reader that we know exactly where speech started and finished.
But that’s not always the case.
Because there was no punctuation or speech marks in the original Greek version, which words were written in red was up to the discrimination of the editors of various editions of the Bible.
So, not all red letter editions are the same.
However, it seems that for many people, the red letters are helpful to quickly and easily identify the words of Jesus.
By the time Louis Klopsch died in New York at the age of 57, his idea had already been copied.
But his legacy lives on in the millions of red letter Bibles published today.
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