My Bibles 1 The Classic Note Bible

I have over the past 15 years, become somewhat of a collector of bibles. I only have 3 or 4 (depending on how you count) in my collection right now but that's because I've sold, given away, or lost a good many of them.  I know I usually talk about political things on this blog but decided for a change of pace to talk about this hobby of mine. For the next few posts, I'm going to review some bibles I own.  I'm going to start with the oldest one that I regularly use. The Classic Note Bible.

I bought this bible in 2004 while I was attending Hyles-Anderson College.  It was the same type of bible that Jack Hyles used to preach from, though it had been redesigned to be smaller and easier to carry around then the one he used.  It is a plain black text KJV with one big difference;  It has a blank page beside every bible page with the exception of Genesis 1.  It is only made in Genuine Leather. The leather is kind of stiff which I am not a big fan of but it had held up well in the 5 years since I bought it.  It has two bookmarks which comes in handy if you are reading from the Old and New Testament at the same time.  Although Dr. Hyles was the co publisher of The Bible, except for his name on the front, and an introduction that talks about how this bible came about, it doesn't have any notes or commentary from him.  There is a bit of separation going on in Genesis 20 and Revelation 13.  Of course, the main reason that someone would buy this is for the blank pages, so they can write notes and sermon outlines.  I won't argue that it is good for notes, but I have found in my personal experience, that trying to preach a sermon from a two sided page isn't as good as just taking your sermon notes up to the pulpit with you.  I know Dr. Hyles wrote his outlines in his bible but maybe it was easier when the bible was bigger and thus, you had more room on the page to write on. (Though those editions are so thick, it would probably pull your back out to carry one very far.)

Do I recommend this bible? If you are someone that finds that his or her wide margin bible is still not enough to record their notes on, or you want to be able to write notes from sermons you hear then yes;  If you want to use it to preach from, then I would say no, unless you can find one of the thicker first editions on eBay.