Reformation or Revolution: Genres, Part 2

This is the second part of a series of reflections on the various “genres” of Bible design. In this installment, we consider whether the current flourishing of Bible publishing is more indebted to the spirit of reformation or revolution.

By temperament I’m not much of a bomb-throwing revolutionary. I tend to assume that chaotic gradual change will always produce a better result than any master-planned Great Leap Forward. When G. K. Chesterton observed that the chief aim of Christianity’s order was “to give room for good things to run wild,” he was speaking my language. Theologically speaking, I align with the so-called Magisterial Reformation — not the burn-it-all-down-and-start-over radicals but the divines who hoped, rightly or wrongly, that the ship might be turned toward Scripture without deliberately sinking it. In other words, reformation is my watchword, not revolution.

And yet, when it comes to Bible design, I have always been a bit more of a Robespierre than a George Washington. In this one arena, I tend to fly the red flag. “Why do you hate verse-by-verse typesetting?” people will ask. Or, “Why do you think people who print red-letter Bibles should have their own blood shed?” Who me? I can’t imagine where they get this impression … and then I look at what I’ve written and, yes, it’s pretty much there.

So now I want to acknowledge something: a great part of the flourishing we now see in the world of Bible publishing is not the result of revolution, but rather the fruit of what would be better described as a gradual reformation. Instead of chucking out the old inherited genres in favor or new, more readable alternatives, for the most part publishers have stuck with the tried and true formulae while paying much greater attention to the canons of good design.

It turns out there’s more than one way to design a readable Bible.

For years I have advocated for “reader friendly” Bibles across the board. I wanted every edition to be more readable, and for at least some to sacrifice other traits in order to be as readable as possible. I have commended various strategies that seem to me to have resulted in greater readability, primarily setting text in paragraphed single columns with a minimum of intrusive apparatus. Simply put, I’ve wanted Bibles that look like they’re meant for reading, not for looking things up. And I’ve taken for granted that making them easier to read will make them harder to use for looking things up, because that’s how it works in reverse: the easier they are to look things up in, the harder they are to read. That, in a nutshell, is my case for revolution.

But what if you stuck with the Reference Bible, the Study Bible, and the Wide Margin Bible, what if you kept within the recognized parameters of each genre and simply tried to make them more readable without sacrificing anything? In a sense, that’s what most publishers have been doing. There are design choices that used to scream “specialty reader’s edition” that have now become common across the traditional genres. Paragraphed text, for example, is much more common than verse-per-line, which used to dominate. Single column settings haven’t overtaken traditional double column, but you encounter them often enough in modern Bibles that the thrill of discovery has gone. It turns out there are a lot of things a designer can do to make the Bible more readable without producing a dedicated Reader’s Bible.

A great example of this is the Schuyler Quentel, the standard Reference Bible of that prolific publishing house. The Quentel bears many hallmarks of a classic Reference Bible: the double volume text, the in-text apparatus to indicate chapter, verse, and various notes, the cross references at the foot of each page. And yet in many ways it embodies the modern canons of good design: a paragraphed text in a crisp, clear font sized for good legibility, and tasteful use of typography to minimize any distraction the apparatus might cause. No one would mistake the Quentel for a Reader’s Bible, and yet there can be no argument that it is not a readable one.

Then there’s the most genre-bending edition in modern Bible publishing, the Cambridge Clarion, an early pioneer of readable design. For the user who wants to have it all, the Clarion is hard to beat: a Reference Bible that gets as close as you can get to a Reader’s Bible without losing any of the apparatus. I recommend Clarions all the time to people who aren’t looking to get into Bibles as a hobby but just want a one-and-done solution to their quest. As long as you don't want to write or draw in your Bible, the Clarion is going to serve you well in a wide variety of circumstances: it’s readable, useful for study, relatively compact for taking with you, and nicely appointed.

Perhaps the best indicator of cultural stagnation is the repetition of old inherited forms by rote. The most byzantine thing about the Byzantines, for example, was their tendency to paint their soldiers in the armor of antiquity and, when it came time to chronicle their victories, to put the speeches of antiquity into the mouths of their generals. Conforming to tradition for the sake of tradition. By contrast, one of the best indicators of a living, vibrant culture where good things are indeed running wild is not the abandonment of traditional forms but their reinvigoration.

By that standard, one of the strongest signs that modern Bible publishing has entered a promising new chapter is the way that even our Reference Bibles are more readable than ever before.

Even so, I believe the most exciting landscape in Bible design right now is the molten, shifting, unpredictable ground where entirely new genres are emerging, where choices that would been unthinkable a generation ago (or would have at least relegated the design to the purgatory of specialty editions) now have a shot at entering the mainstream. In the next installment, we’ll look at a couple of the more solid of these new genres: “Brave New Formats: Genres, Part 3.”