The Red and the Black

Ben Spratling, who is the creator of a great little bible app called BibleXpress, has included a little feature that I absolutely love: the ability to turn off the default red letter text that tends to come with most bible translations on most apps in iTunes App store.


With the default settings, the accursed red letter text can be found in abundance in the Gospels.


However, in the settings you can switch off the red letter text so that you can read the bible in blessedly uniform black letter text as below.


So far, BibleXpress has the ASV, ESV, KJV, NASB, NRSV, The Message, and a couple of Spanish translations, with more to come (he's negotiating with the folks who hold the rights to the NLT and even attempting to get the rights to the Greek NT and LXX). Unfortunately, or fortunately, depending on your perspective, Zondervan declined to allow him to include the NIV. For more information about this app, you can check out his home page here or check out the app in iTunes.

It seems to me, for the price ($30) it's the best choice out there for those who don't need access to the text in the original languages, for which Olive Tree Software is, of course, indispensable. I hope the folks at Olive Tree are paying attention because their App is the one I use most frequently (the Greek and Hebrew is really coming along in beta) but it's annoying that I have to stare at red letter text anytime I read the gospels in English.

Update: And just like that, Olive Tree Software has a new beta that enables readers to change the color of Jesus' words to whatever they like. Awesome. Additionally, it appears that lemma search in Greek and Hebrew is just around the corner.