The ESV Bible blog has posted an interesting history [1] of the use of “red-letter” editions of the Bible, in which the “words of Christ” are printed in red text to be set apart from the rest of Scripture.
I wrote here about red-letter Bibles [2] a couple of years ago, aguing against the practice. While the ESV Blog’s history shows that the origins of the practice may not be as nefarious as I suspected, I still think red-letter editions can cause us to misread Scripture by giving artificial weight to certain passages over others. Read my full post regarding the matter here [2].