Welcome to my blog, "Wide Margin Bible Notes."
I have always been fascinated by the notes that Christians make in their Bibles. When I was a child, my mother's worn-out Bible was covered with hand-written notes on literally every page. I became a Bible note taker myself in the late 1990s.
As I have gone through the tedious task of transferring notes from one Bible to another every time I got a new Bible, I kept thinking that I should have a "central repository" for my Bible notes, so that I never have to transfer them again. It would have to be in electronic format. It would have to be accessible from nearly anywhere. It would have to be searchable, indexed, etc - everything we expect from computers. I realized that a blog can do all of this. So this blog is a part of the realization of my goal. With the notes in computer format, the future possibilities are limitless.
Perhaps this collection can be an encouraging resource for Bible students everywhere. You may feel free to copy these notes into your own Bible if you find them helpful. I have always enjoyed and benefited from reading the notes written in other people's Bibles and believe others may as well, so that is the reason that this blog is public and available to everyone.
On this blog I will be categorizing and posting any helpful notes that might be placed in the margin of a Bible, whether or not it is in fact a wide-margin Bible. In most regular Bibles without a wide margin, there is still a fair amount of room for notes.
In particular, the following types of notes will be posted on this blog:
- Cross references. Either the more pertinent cross references already found in many printed Bibles or additional cross references to consider.
- Word definitions or word studies.
- Relevant quotations from sermons, commentaries or other sources.
- Explanatory notes, paraphrases, expanded translations and other helpful items.
- Pulpit zingers or quips. One or two line phrases that help drive a preaching point home on a certain passage.
- Sermon outlines for a particular text. These may be outlines I have written and/or preached, or they may be from preachers I listen to.
- Notes from published study Bibles. Occasionally I will post a note from Scofield or some other study Bible. This will be rare, but if a very helpful note is published somewhere it will be used.
- Critical text differences. In places where the Received Text underlying the KJV differs from the Critical Text underlying the modern versions, this may be noted in the margin for a variety of reasons.
When I post a note on any given text, you may comment with your own notes on that text or any other observations.
I will try to label all the posts with relevant tags such as "Word study" or "Quotes" or something similar. I will also tag with the book(s) of the Bible, any relevant doctrines and so forth. In this way the various margin notes posted here can be categorized and collated under a variety of labels.
Please enjoy the blog and be edified.
--- Victor E. Mowery
