Adding a Ribbon to Your Bible

Why moan and complain about the lack of ribbons in your Bible when you can take a page from Matt Blair's book and add them yourself? Matt, who blogs at The Foolish Galatian, has created a photo tutorial demonstrating his method, which involves a pencil, epoxy, some ribbon, and scissors. Check it out:Adding Ribbons to Your Bible You may be wondering why anyone would need more than a single ribbon, so here's a quick explanation of the multi-ribbon craze. If you're reading your Bible front to back, or you only use your ribbon to mark a single passage (say, the text for a particular sermon), then one will do fine. But suppose you adopt a reading plan that involves daily excerpts from the Old Testament, the New Testament and the Psalms? You'll need three ribbons to mark each place. Prayer books and breviaries, which send readings back and forth in search of the various parts of a single service -- order, psalter, collect, lectionary readings, etc. -- have long sported multiple ribbons, often of various colors, but until relatively recently, it was unusual to find a Bible with more than a single ribbon. Now, having two is considered a luxury, but the optimal number seems to be three (OT, NT, Psalms). With Matt's help, you can now add ribbons to your heart's content!

J. Mark Bertrand is a novelist and pastor whose writing on Bible design has helped spark a publishing revolution. Mark is the author of Rethinking Worldview: Learning to Think, Live, and Speak in This World (Crossway, 2007), as well as the novels Back on Murder, Pattern of Wounds, and Nothing to Hide—described as a “series worth getting attached to” (Christianity Today) by “a major crime fiction talent” (Weekly Standard) in the vein of Michael Connelly, Ian Rankin, and Henning Mankell.

Mark has a BA in English Literature from Union University, an MFA in Creative Writing from the University of Houston, and an M.Div. from Heidelberg Theological Seminary. Through his influential Bible Design Blog, Mark has championed a new generation of readable Bibles. He is a founding member of the steering committee of the Society of Bible Craftsmanship, and chairs the Society’s Award Committee. His work was featured in the November 2021 issue of FaithLife’s Bible Study Magazine.

Mark also serves on the board of Worldview Academy, where he has been a member of the faculty of theology since 2003. Since 2017, he has been an ordained teaching elder in the Presbyterian Church in America. He and his wife Laurie life in Sioux Falls, South Dakota.