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Some various facts and other things about the Bible I have collected over the years follow.
The 27th edition of the Nestle-Aland Novum Testamentum Graece has 138,020 words including those in double and single brackets. The NA28 has seven less words.
The electronic text of Westcott and Hort has 137,655 words and the Robinson-Pierpont Byzantine text has 140,155.
What OT book is most frequently cited in the NT, shown by number of citations?
419 Isaiah
414 Psalms
240 Exodus
238 Genesis
196 Deuteronomy
141 Ezekiel
133 Daniel
125 Jeremiah
107 Leviticus
73 Numbers
NOTE: There are no quotations in the New Testament from Ruth, 2 Kings, 1 and 2 Chronicles, Ezra, Nehemiah, Song of Solomon, Lamentations, or Obadiah.
OT verse most frequently cited in the NT with quotations/allusions to that verse:
18 Psalm 110:1
13 Daniel 12:1
12 Isaiah 6:1
Greek Texts of the New Testament ordered from easiest use of Greek to most difficult:
1. II John
2. III John
3. I John
4. John (Gospel of)
5. Galatians
6. Philemon
7. Colossians
8. Ephesians
9. Philippians
10. I Thessalonians
11. I Corinthians
12. Romans
13. Revelation
14. Jude
15. II Peter
16. II Timothy
17. Titus
18. I Timothy
19. II Corinthians
20. II Thessalonians
21. I Peter
22. Mark
23. Matthew
24. Acts
25. Luke
26. James
27. Hebrews
For about sixty years now a tiny papyrus fragment of the Gospel of John has been the oldest manuscript of the New Testament. This manuscript (P52) has generally been dated to ca. A.D. 125.
A term everyone should know: hapax legomenon. This term describes a word that only occurs once in a particular body of literature. In the New Testament alone, there are 1,932 Greek words that occur only once (from the USB Greek version). If you know where a list of all hapax legomenon exist in electronic form, please contact me. I have books with the list, but would like an electronic version of the Greek words for some searching and other uses.
With regards to the Scriptures, exegetes will often find a word that only appears one time. When this happens, it is often difficult to determine the exact meaning of the word because there are no other usages with which one can compare it. Revelation 21:20 contains eight hapax legomenon, more than any other verse in the Bible:
Revelation 21:20 (NLT)
Revelation 21:20 the fifth onyx, the sixth carnelian, the seventh chrysolite, the eighth beryl, the ninth topaz, the tenth chrysoprase, the eleventh jacinth, the twelfth amethyst.
Learning New Testament Greek by memorization is not the way to do things
Of the approximately 5,437 words in the Greek (of which almost 36% are hapax legomenon), 313 words occur more than 50 times.
The total occurrence of these 313 words account for 110,425 of the total Greek words used, which is around 138,162 in the USB Greek version.
Students memorizing Mounce’s 319 words from Learning Greek will know 79.92% of the words in the Greek NT, or about 4 out of every 5 words.
But, of the 110,425 occurrences of these memorized words, 29,023 are the Greek words for “the” and “and”, so more than 26% of the words student will recognize are the two most common words.
In fact, by learning the words that occur more than 50 times, the student will have learned only 6% of all the lexical forms found in the Greek NT (5,437). So that leaves 5,118 words that the student does not know. These 5,118 words account for 27,737 (out of around 138,162) words found in the NT Greek text.
Assuming 27,737 words and 9,942 verses, each verse will contain about 3.5 words the reader may not recognize.
Some Bible translation word counts:
The word count of the Hebrew and Greek text in the standard critical editions is 545,202.
Some other total word counts from popular translations:
• Original KJV 774,746
• Current KJV 790,676 (Blayney 1769 version: 788,280)
Total New Testament word counts:
ASV 180,056
ESV 175,599
KJV 180,565
NASB 95 182,446
NASB 184,062
NET 178,929
NIV 2011 176,122
NIV 175,037
NKJV 177,980
NLT 2ed 186,596
NRSV 176,417
REB 176,705
RSV 173,293
RV 179,873
TEV 192,784
TNIV 176,267
Modern Hebrew NT 111,154
Vulgate 125,720
Italian La Sacra Bibbia 163,870
Luther 169,536
French Novelle Version 184,449
La Sainte Bible (Geneve) 185,859
See also: https://www.crossway.org/blog/2007/11/bible-text-stats/ for some interesting statistics about the readability of various translations. For example, the NKJV FOG Index is 12.2, but the AMP translation's 945,454 words requires at least one year of college for readability, FOG index, 13.5. Now that is an amplified Bible!
Using the KJV, we find...
Number of chapters in the NT 260
Number of chapters in the OT 929
Number of chapters in the Bible 1,189
Number of verses in the OT 23,214
Number of verses in the NT 7,959
Number of verses in the Bible 31,173
All in all, the Bible has 1,189 chapters but it was still quite difficult to get ‘on the same page’ when studying the Bible, so in 1551, Robert Estienne came up with the idea of numbering verses.
More interesting Bible facts:
Only 525 verses in the Bible do not contain a single word that occurs fewer than fifty times, so word studies are helpful.
The New Testament chapter with the fewest rare words is John 17. No word in the chapter occurs fewer than eleven times in the New Testament.
Psalms – The longest book in the OT and in the Bible
Obadiah – The shortest book in the OT
Acts – The longest book in the NT
2 John – The shortest book in the NT and in the Bible
Psalm 119 – The longest chapter in the OT and in the Bible
Luke 1 – The longest chapter in the NT
Psalm 117 – The shortest chapter in the Bible
Esther 8:9 – The longest verse in the OT and in the Bible
Ezra 7:21 – Verse containing all letters of the alphabet
Revelation 20:4 – Longest verse in the NT
1 Chronicles 1:25 – The shortest verse in the OT
John 11:35 – The shortest verse in the NT and the Bible (in English)
1 Thessalonians 5:16 – The shortest verse in the NT (in Greek)
Micah and Nahum – Middle books of the Bible
Psalm 117 – Middle chapter of the Bible
Psalm 118:8 – Middle verse of the Bible
Proverbs – Middle book of the OT
Job 20 – Middle chapter of the OT
2 Chronicles 20:17,18 – Middle verses of the OT
2 Thessalonians – Middle book of the NT
Romans 8, 9 – Middle chapters of the NT
Acts 27:17 – Middle verse of the NT
10 Longest Books in the KJV Bible
• Psalm - 150 chapters, 2,461 verses, 43,743 words
• Jeremiah - 52 chapters, 1,364 verses, 42,659 words
• Ezekiel - 48 chapters, 1,273 verses, 39,407 words
• Genesis - 50 chapters, 1,533 verses, 38,267 words
• Isaiah - 66 chapters, 1,292 verses, 37,044 words
• Numbers - 36 chapters, 1,288 verses, 32,902 words
• Exodus - 40 chapters, 1,213 verses, 32.602 words
• Deuteronomy - 34 chapters, 959 verses, 28,461 words
• 2 Chronicles - 36 chapters, 822 verses, 26,074 words
• Luke - 24 chapters, 1,151 verses, 25,944 words
10 Shortest Books in the Bible
• 3 John - 1 chapter, 14 verses, 299 words
• 2 John - 1 chapter, 13 verses, 303 words
• Philemon - 1 chapter, 25 verses, 445 words
• Jude - 1 chapter, 25 verses, 613 words
• Obadiah - 1 chapter, 21 verses, 670 words
• Titus - 3 chapters, 46 verses, 921 words
• 2 Thessalonians - 3 chapters, 47 verses, 1,042 words
• Haggai - 2 chapters, 38 verses, 1,131 words
• Nahum - 3 chapters, 47 verses, 1,285 words
• Jonah - 4 chapters, 48 verses, 1,321 words
Isaiah 8:1 – The longest word in the Bible: Maher-Shalal-Hash-Baz
Number of promises given in the Bible: 1,260
Commands: 6,468
Predictions: over 8,000
Fulfilled prophecy: 3,268 verses
Unfulfilled prophecy: 3,140
Number of questions: 3,294
Longest name: Mahershalalhashbaz (Isaiah 8:1)
Number of times the word God appears: 3,358
Number of times the word Lord appears: 7,736
A number of verses in the KJV contain all but 1 letter of the alphabet:
- Ezra 7:21 contains all but the letter j
- Joshua 7:24, 1 Kings 1:9, 1 Chronicles 12:40, 2 Chronicles 36:10, Ezekiel 28:13, Daniel 4:37, and Haggai 1:1 contain all but q
- 2 Kings 16:15 and 1 Chronicles 4:10 contain all but z
- Galatians 1:14 contains all but k
1,500 years – Time span of writing (ca. 1,400 B.C. – ca. 100 A.D.)
40+ – Number of authors (from all walks of life, kings to peasants)
9 – Number of inspired writers of the NT (8 if you assume Paul wrote Hebrews)
3 – Continents written on (Asia, Africa, Europe)
3 – Languages written in (Hebrew, Aramaic, Greek)
70 – Hours it would take to read the entire Bible aloud
1663 A.D. – First Bible printed in the Americas, in a Native American language, and the first Bible translated for the purpose of evangelism.
1769 A.D. – Fourth and final revision of the KJV published (Blayney's version of the KJV commonly available today)
1782 A.D. – First English Bible printed in the United States
Approximately What percentage of Matthew's Gospel is quotation/allusion to the OT? This is tough because it is easy to see quotations of phrases or verses, but "allusions" are in the eye of the reader, but something as follows:
31% (310 of 1071 verses) Matthew
28% (328 of 1151 verses) Luke
19% (131 of 678 verses) Mark
14% (129 of 890 verses) John
I hope you enjoyed this collection!
AMR
The 27th edition of the Nestle-Aland Novum Testamentum Graece has 138,020 words including those in double and single brackets. The NA28 has seven less words.
The electronic text of Westcott and Hort has 137,655 words and the Robinson-Pierpont Byzantine text has 140,155.
What OT book is most frequently cited in the NT, shown by number of citations?
419 Isaiah
414 Psalms
240 Exodus
238 Genesis
196 Deuteronomy
141 Ezekiel
133 Daniel
125 Jeremiah
107 Leviticus
73 Numbers
NOTE: There are no quotations in the New Testament from Ruth, 2 Kings, 1 and 2 Chronicles, Ezra, Nehemiah, Song of Solomon, Lamentations, or Obadiah.
OT verse most frequently cited in the NT with quotations/allusions to that verse:
18 Psalm 110:1
13 Daniel 12:1
12 Isaiah 6:1
Greek Texts of the New Testament ordered from easiest use of Greek to most difficult:
1. II John
2. III John
3. I John
4. John (Gospel of)
5. Galatians
6. Philemon
7. Colossians
8. Ephesians
9. Philippians
10. I Thessalonians
11. I Corinthians
12. Romans
13. Revelation
14. Jude
15. II Peter
16. II Timothy
17. Titus
18. I Timothy
19. II Corinthians
20. II Thessalonians
21. I Peter
22. Mark
23. Matthew
24. Acts
25. Luke
26. James
27. Hebrews
For about sixty years now a tiny papyrus fragment of the Gospel of John has been the oldest manuscript of the New Testament. This manuscript (P52) has generally been dated to ca. A.D. 125.
A term everyone should know: hapax legomenon. This term describes a word that only occurs once in a particular body of literature. In the New Testament alone, there are 1,932 Greek words that occur only once (from the USB Greek version). If you know where a list of all hapax legomenon exist in electronic form, please contact me. I have books with the list, but would like an electronic version of the Greek words for some searching and other uses.
With regards to the Scriptures, exegetes will often find a word that only appears one time. When this happens, it is often difficult to determine the exact meaning of the word because there are no other usages with which one can compare it. Revelation 21:20 contains eight hapax legomenon, more than any other verse in the Bible:
Revelation 21:20 (NLT)
Revelation 21:20 the fifth onyx, the sixth carnelian, the seventh chrysolite, the eighth beryl, the ninth topaz, the tenth chrysoprase, the eleventh jacinth, the twelfth amethyst.
Learning New Testament Greek by memorization is not the way to do things
Of the approximately 5,437 words in the Greek (of which almost 36% are hapax legomenon), 313 words occur more than 50 times.
The total occurrence of these 313 words account for 110,425 of the total Greek words used, which is around 138,162 in the USB Greek version.
Students memorizing Mounce’s 319 words from Learning Greek will know 79.92% of the words in the Greek NT, or about 4 out of every 5 words.
But, of the 110,425 occurrences of these memorized words, 29,023 are the Greek words for “the” and “and”, so more than 26% of the words student will recognize are the two most common words.
In fact, by learning the words that occur more than 50 times, the student will have learned only 6% of all the lexical forms found in the Greek NT (5,437). So that leaves 5,118 words that the student does not know. These 5,118 words account for 27,737 (out of around 138,162) words found in the NT Greek text.
Assuming 27,737 words and 9,942 verses, each verse will contain about 3.5 words the reader may not recognize.
Some Bible translation word counts:
The word count of the Hebrew and Greek text in the standard critical editions is 545,202.
Some other total word counts from popular translations:
• Original KJV 774,746
• Current KJV 790,676 (Blayney 1769 version: 788,280)
Total New Testament word counts:
ASV 180,056
ESV 175,599
KJV 180,565
NASB 95 182,446
NASB 184,062
NET 178,929
NIV 2011 176,122
NIV 175,037
NKJV 177,980
NLT 2ed 186,596
NRSV 176,417
REB 176,705
RSV 173,293
RV 179,873
TEV 192,784
TNIV 176,267
Modern Hebrew NT 111,154
Vulgate 125,720
Italian La Sacra Bibbia 163,870
Luther 169,536
French Novelle Version 184,449
La Sainte Bible (Geneve) 185,859
See also: https://www.crossway.org/blog/2007/11/bible-text-stats/ for some interesting statistics about the readability of various translations. For example, the NKJV FOG Index is 12.2, but the AMP translation's 945,454 words requires at least one year of college for readability, FOG index, 13.5. Now that is an amplified Bible!
Using the KJV, we find...
Number of chapters in the NT 260
Number of chapters in the OT 929
Number of chapters in the Bible 1,189
Number of verses in the OT 23,214
Number of verses in the NT 7,959
Number of verses in the Bible 31,173
All in all, the Bible has 1,189 chapters but it was still quite difficult to get ‘on the same page’ when studying the Bible, so in 1551, Robert Estienne came up with the idea of numbering verses.
More interesting Bible facts:
Only 525 verses in the Bible do not contain a single word that occurs fewer than fifty times, so word studies are helpful.
The New Testament chapter with the fewest rare words is John 17. No word in the chapter occurs fewer than eleven times in the New Testament.
Psalms – The longest book in the OT and in the Bible
Obadiah – The shortest book in the OT
Acts – The longest book in the NT
2 John – The shortest book in the NT and in the Bible
Psalm 119 – The longest chapter in the OT and in the Bible
Luke 1 – The longest chapter in the NT
Psalm 117 – The shortest chapter in the Bible
Esther 8:9 – The longest verse in the OT and in the Bible
Ezra 7:21 – Verse containing all letters of the alphabet
Revelation 20:4 – Longest verse in the NT
1 Chronicles 1:25 – The shortest verse in the OT
John 11:35 – The shortest verse in the NT and the Bible (in English)
1 Thessalonians 5:16 – The shortest verse in the NT (in Greek)
Micah and Nahum – Middle books of the Bible
Psalm 117 – Middle chapter of the Bible
Psalm 118:8 – Middle verse of the Bible
Proverbs – Middle book of the OT
Job 20 – Middle chapter of the OT
2 Chronicles 20:17,18 – Middle verses of the OT
2 Thessalonians – Middle book of the NT
Romans 8, 9 – Middle chapters of the NT
Acts 27:17 – Middle verse of the NT
10 Longest Books in the KJV Bible
• Psalm - 150 chapters, 2,461 verses, 43,743 words
• Jeremiah - 52 chapters, 1,364 verses, 42,659 words
• Ezekiel - 48 chapters, 1,273 verses, 39,407 words
• Genesis - 50 chapters, 1,533 verses, 38,267 words
• Isaiah - 66 chapters, 1,292 verses, 37,044 words
• Numbers - 36 chapters, 1,288 verses, 32,902 words
• Exodus - 40 chapters, 1,213 verses, 32.602 words
• Deuteronomy - 34 chapters, 959 verses, 28,461 words
• 2 Chronicles - 36 chapters, 822 verses, 26,074 words
• Luke - 24 chapters, 1,151 verses, 25,944 words
10 Shortest Books in the Bible
• 3 John - 1 chapter, 14 verses, 299 words
• 2 John - 1 chapter, 13 verses, 303 words
• Philemon - 1 chapter, 25 verses, 445 words
• Jude - 1 chapter, 25 verses, 613 words
• Obadiah - 1 chapter, 21 verses, 670 words
• Titus - 3 chapters, 46 verses, 921 words
• 2 Thessalonians - 3 chapters, 47 verses, 1,042 words
• Haggai - 2 chapters, 38 verses, 1,131 words
• Nahum - 3 chapters, 47 verses, 1,285 words
• Jonah - 4 chapters, 48 verses, 1,321 words
Isaiah 8:1 – The longest word in the Bible: Maher-Shalal-Hash-Baz
Number of promises given in the Bible: 1,260
Commands: 6,468
Predictions: over 8,000
Fulfilled prophecy: 3,268 verses
Unfulfilled prophecy: 3,140
Number of questions: 3,294
Longest name: Mahershalalhashbaz (Isaiah 8:1)
Number of times the word God appears: 3,358
Number of times the word Lord appears: 7,736
A number of verses in the KJV contain all but 1 letter of the alphabet:
- Ezra 7:21 contains all but the letter j
- Joshua 7:24, 1 Kings 1:9, 1 Chronicles 12:40, 2 Chronicles 36:10, Ezekiel 28:13, Daniel 4:37, and Haggai 1:1 contain all but q
- 2 Kings 16:15 and 1 Chronicles 4:10 contain all but z
- Galatians 1:14 contains all but k
1,500 years – Time span of writing (ca. 1,400 B.C. – ca. 100 A.D.)
40+ – Number of authors (from all walks of life, kings to peasants)
9 – Number of inspired writers of the NT (8 if you assume Paul wrote Hebrews)
3 – Continents written on (Asia, Africa, Europe)
3 – Languages written in (Hebrew, Aramaic, Greek)
70 – Hours it would take to read the entire Bible aloud
1663 A.D. – First Bible printed in the Americas, in a Native American language, and the first Bible translated for the purpose of evangelism.
1769 A.D. – Fourth and final revision of the KJV published (Blayney's version of the KJV commonly available today)
1782 A.D. – First English Bible printed in the United States
Approximately What percentage of Matthew's Gospel is quotation/allusion to the OT? This is tough because it is easy to see quotations of phrases or verses, but "allusions" are in the eye of the reader, but something as follows:
31% (310 of 1071 verses) Matthew
28% (328 of 1151 verses) Luke
19% (131 of 678 verses) Mark
14% (129 of 890 verses) John
I hope you enjoyed this collection!
AMR