The Bible: A Word Count Analysis

Back in 2017, I read the Bible twice. The first time, I did it as a speed-run challenge – I got it done in 73 days. I took the rest of the year completing the second read.

I read the New King James Version for the first time, then switched to The Message for the second time, though I couldn’t handle it and switched to the New International Version about halfway through.

If you want to do this, my sole recommendation is to get a reading Bible. This is a version of the Bible designed for narrative reading, rather than research or reference. There are no verse numbers, no footnotes, and the text is in larger type, usually down a single column. Mine didn’t even have chapter numbers, except in the footer next to the page number. It makes reading the Bible a much different experience than a traditional Bible.

The picture at the top of this page is from my reading Bible. I couldn’t find this exact one, but here’s a very similar example on Amazon.

During this process, I got interested in word counts, primarily to keep up my motivation. I felt like I needed to know my progress and context, to stay motivated to get it done. So I compiled the below from a list of counts in the King James version (I figured this was canonical-ish), then did some math.

This was originally in a spreadsheet, but since the counts aren’t likely to change, I’ve flattened them here to a table.

Here’s a key to the columns.

• Name: The name of the book
• Position: The ordinal position of the book (this is the default ordering; it’s provided to get them back in order if you sort by words)
• Testament: The testament the book is in: [O]ld or [N]ew
• Words: The word count of that book
• Percent: The percent of total words that particular book – in isolation – comprises
• Cum(ulative) Words: The cumulative words through the end of this book – if you read through this book, what total number of words would you have read?
• Cum(ulative) Percent: The cumulative percent of words through the end of this book – if you read through this book, what percent of total words would you have read?
• Rank: The order of this book by length, from longest to shortest (i.e. – “1” is the longest book, “2” is the next longest, etc.)

A few observations which I found interesting.

• The Torah, or the first five books of the Bible, are fully one-fifth of the total length
• The Old Testament is 75% of the Bible
• The Old Testament and the four Gospels are almost 90% of the Bible
• The books of the Old Testament are about 2.5 times longer than the books of the New Testament (about 5,000 words compared to over 12,000)
• Jeremiah is the longest book of the Bible, followed not far behind by Genesis
• 3 John is the shortest book of the bible. At 219 words, it’s basically a long paragraph.

The “Name,” “Words,” and “Position” columns in the below table are sortable. Clicking will alternate between ascending and descending order.