Can Your Wide Margin Take the Heat? (Or the Rain?)
In his eighties anthem to robot gratitude, Dennis DeYoung thanks Mr. Roboto for "doing the jobs that nobody wants to." In a similar spirit, Jonathan Ammon at Bible Reading Project deserves a hearty domo arigato. If you've ever wondered what your Cambridge wide margin would look like after a "two day backpacking adventure" stuffed inside a sixty pound pack, he's done the job for you:
While the wide margin is rained-on and a little worse for wear, Jonathan is impressed by how well it held up. Here's his assessment:
Overall the Bible underwent the trial amazingly well. It is fully functional. The pages are slightly wrinkled and have some orange discoloration where the art gilding was rubbed off and bled through. The gilding on the top is roughed up quite a bit and the cover has some impressions pressed into the leather, but in a few months this will just be character and will remind me of the ministry.
When I write about the durability of a well-made Bible, what I have in mind is that it stands up better to bookish use than a glued binding. Every so often, I get requests for Bible vs. water, Bible vs. fire, deathmatch-type scenarios, which kind of misses the point. No book is impervious to damage, certainly no book made of leather and paper. If a Bible falls apart after stopping a bullet, being dropped from a twenty story high rise, or forgotten on a Deep South dashboard for six months, I don't see that as an indictment of the manufacturer. The kind of patina I'm interested in is the result of ordinary use.
Having said that, I like Jonathan's spirit. A lot of people would have left the goatskin edition at home and taken something cheaper on that trip, but he figured he'd bought the thing as a lifetime investment and might as well get some use from it. I'm glad he did, if for no other reason than that was can see the results. For more photos and Jonathan's firsthand account, check out the post at Bible Reading Project.
And if you know of more "use" photos, share the links!
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.
