The words were spoken once, written down in Greek, copied for centuries, and only printed in red in 1899. The red is the youngest thing about them.
Every contested point below is an open question, shown from both sides with its sources. None of it is a verdict — it is the honest texture of how the text reached us.
The red is a design decision about 125 years old. The words are ancient.
The words of Jesus were only printed in red recently. Louis Klopsch, editor of The Christian Herald, conceived the idea on 19 June 1899 — inspired by Luke 22:20, “This cup is the new covenant in my blood” — and produced the first red-letter New Testament that year, and the first full red-letter Bible in 1901. The Greek manuscripts had no quotation marks and no colour; which words are red has always been a publisher’s interpretive choice.
This site reveals what was always present in every manuscript and translation — and lets you see it even in the original Greek, where it was never red. It holds two attitudes at once: reverent stillness, and honest curiosity about how the text travelled. Texts are public domain: the World English Bible, the King James Version, and the Textus Receptus Greek.
Scripture reproduced verbatim from public-domain sources. The red-letter spans are an editorial choice and are presented as such; in John 3 the red ends at verse 15 by default, with the dispute shown in Scholar mode.
Every red letter here is free, and it always will be. If one lands, write and tell us. And if you'd like the letters to keep finding you, just say so.
read@lettersin.redA real person reads every note.
Every control here is a different way of seeing the same words more honestly.
WEB — World English Bible. A modern English translation, completed in 2020, and fully public domain — which is why we can show it freely. It's a careful update of the 1901 American Standard Version, and it's the primary text here.
KJV — King James Version. The famous 1611 English Bible. About 83% of its New Testament keeps William Tyndale's 1526 wording, so reading it is following a chain that runs back five centuries.
Ἑλλ — the original Greek. The Textus Receptus (Stephanus, 1550), the Greek the KJV was translated from. There were no quotation marks and no colour here — so seeing "red letters" in Greek is seeing something that was never actually printed red. That's the whole idea.
How they relate: Greek → Latin → a long line of English (Wycliffe 1382 → Tyndale 1526 → Geneva 1560 → KJV 1611 → ASV 1901 → WEB 2020). The Timeline draws the full family tree.
Purist. A clean, quiet read — just the letters in red and the grey around them, nothing else.
Scholar. Turns on the history behind the text: the two-sided open questions, where thoughtful people dig deep into how and who carried these books through the centuries. That discourse invites real mystery, and honest disagreement, and it's open to everyone. But some just want the simple wisdom already sitting in the red letters, and that quiet read is exactly what Purist is for. Open Questions any time to wade in.
Magnify vs. Classic. Magnify swells the line you're reading and eases the rest away, like a lens. Classic lays it flat and even. Paper vs. Space is simply the look — a warm page or a dark sky.