Weak Things · New Testament data · Bethlehem to Patmos
The New Testament, counted.
Twenty-seven books. Four witnesses to one life, one physician's history of the Church, and letters carried by hand across the Roman world. This is the book measured, then followed down the roads it travelled.
Every figure links to its source in How we counted. Verse, word and talk counts are our own, made from the King James text and conference data used in New Testament, Connected.
Chapter 1 · 27 books
The shape of the book
Each band is one book, sized by how much of the New Testament it fills. The four Gospels and Acts are well over half of it. Paul's thirteen letters, together, are about the length of Luke and John.
Chapter 2 · Come, Follow Me 2027
A year of reading, week by week
The 2027 course reads the whole New Testament in 50 reading weeks, plus Easter and Christmas. Some weeks are a single chapter. Others ask for more than 300 verses. Each bar is one week. Tap it to see the chapters and open the lesson.
How long to read it yourself?
At 200 words a minute, the whole King James New Testament is about 15 hours.
Chapter 3 · Four witnesses, one life
The 69 moments, and who tells them
These are the same 69 moments as The Road and Follow Him, in order, grouped into the seven chapters told by seven witnesses. Each column is one moment. A dot means that Gospel records it. Tap any column.
One week, a third of the Gospels
Verses from the triumphal entry to the last Resurrection appearance, as a share of each Gospel.
Where the moments happen
Places with more than one of the 69 moments, from The Road map.
Chapter 4 · Acts 13 to 28
Paul's journeys, in miles
Luke records three missionary journeys and a final voyage to Rome as a prisoner. Pick a journey to trace it stop by stop. Our miles are straight lines between named stops, so the real roads and sea lanes were longer.
Chapter 5 · 21 letters and a revelation
Where the letters went
Most of the New Testament after Acts is mail. Here is where each letter was sent, as the letters themselves say, and the seven churches John was told to write to in Revelation. Tap a city.
Chapter 6 · The cast
The names you meet most
How many times each name appears in the King James text. Some names belong to several people. A star marks a name we can't count as one person. Switch to see how often the New Testament reaches back to Old Testament figures.
Thirty women, named
The women of New Testament times named in the King James text, sized by how often each name appears. Mary is one name shared by at least six women.
Same name, different person
Common names were common. Each card opens the verse where that person first appears, in New Testament, Connected.
Chapter 7 · 5,461 Greek words
Words and Greek
The New Testament was written in Koine, the everyday Greek of the Roman world. Its 137,554 words come from just 5,461 dictionary words, and a few hundred of them do most of the work.
Small books, big vocabularies
Different dictionary words per 1,000 words of Greek. Short books score higher simply because they repeat less, so compare books of similar length. John's Gospel and 1 John are the plainest Greek in the New Testament.
Used only once
1,966 Greek words appear exactly once in the New Testament. Scholars call them hapax legomena, “said once.” Some are among its best-known lines.
Big words, counted in both languages
Greek counts are dictionary forms, so “love” includes loved, loving and beloved. English counts are the King James words listed on each card.
“Lovest thou me?” John 21:15–17
English uses one word. The Greek uses two. Twice Jesus asks with agapaō, and Peter answers with phileō. The third time Jesus asks with Peter's word.
Search the King James New Testament
Chapter 8 · 5,825 manuscripts
How the text survived
No original letter or Gospel survives. What we have are copies, made by hand for 1,400 years. The official list of Greek New Testament manuscripts now runs to 5,825 numbers. Each square below is one of them.
Counts from the Institute for New Testament Textual Research list as of March 5, 2024, after removing numbers later found to be duplicates or parts of the same manuscript. Some listed manuscripts are now lost or destroyed.
From papyrus to your bookshelf
Chapter 9 · 2,651 languages
The New Testament around the world
In 1880, 185 languages had at least a New Testament. By September 2026 the number was 2,651. That counts 807 with the full Bible and 1,844 with the New Testament alone.
“For God so loved the world.” John 3:16
One verse in 904 languages from 23 writing systems, every language with John 3 in a free online Bible library. Filter by writing system, or search for a language.
Loading the verses…
Chapter 10 · Latter-day Saint connections
Joseph Smith's New Testament
Joseph Smith's inspired revision of the Bible changed many New Testament verses. These are the Joseph Smith Translation cards attached to New Testament, Connected, counted by book. Matthew alone has more than a fifth of them.
JST cards in each book
One sermon, two hemispheres
The Sermon on the Mount in Matthew, and the sermon the risen Christ gave at the temple in Bountiful in 3 Nephi.
Chapter 11 · General Conference, 2000 to 2026
The verses quoted from the pulpit
Of 50,685 scripture links in conference talks since April 2000, 14,432 point to the New Testament, second only to the Book of Mormon. These are its most-quoted verses. Each one opens in New Testament, Connected.
Share of all scripture links
The 12 most-quoted verses
Every chapter, by talks citing it
How we counted
Sources and notes
- Books, chapters, verses and words. We counted the King James verse text used in New Testament, Connected (no headings or footnotes): 27 books, 260 chapters and 7,957 verses, matching published counts such as TheWordPath. Our English word count is 180,501. Others report 180,570 (Bible Stats) or 188,522 (Dabhand), depending on the text and how words are split.
- Greek words. 137,554 words and 5,461 dictionary forms (lemmas) are counted from MorphGNT, the word-by-word tagging of the SBL Greek New Testament. The Greek panels in New Testament, Connected, from STEPBible, split a few words differently and give 137,536. “Used only once” means one occurrence of a dictionary form across the whole New Testament. Glosses are short, simple meanings, not full definitions.
- Big words. Greek groups: love is ἀγάπη, ἀγαπάω and ἀγαπητός; faith is πίστις, πιστεύω and πιστός; the others are single words. English counts are whole-word matches of the King James words named on each card. “Densest” means most uses per 1,000 Greek words in a book. The search box counts whole words in the King James text, ignoring capitals.
- Manuscripts. Counts by type are from the Institute for New Testament Textual Research (INTF) list as of March 5, 2024, as published in Table 1 of this 2024 study: 136 papyri, 290 majuscules, 2,901 minuscules and 2,498 lectionaries after duplicates and merged entries are removed. The same paper gives an estimate of about 5,700 known Greek manuscripts. Papyrus 52 details are from Wikipedia's summary of the scholarship. Sinaiticus is described by the Codex Sinaiticus Project, and Vaticanus by Wikipedia. Minuscule script came into use in the ninth century, per BYU Religious Studies Center. Tischendorf's 1844 rescue is from the Church Newsroom.
- Printed Bibles. Erasmus, 1516: Bridwell Library and Christie's. Tyndale, 1526: Library of Congress. King James Version, 1611: BYU Library. The 84% figure is from Jon Nielson and Royal Skousen's 1998 sampling study, as reported by BYU Religious Studies Center. Joseph Smith's revision: Revelations in Context.
- Languages. Translation counts are Wycliffe Bible Translators' figures by year, as compiled in Wikipedia's Bible translation statistics table, through September 2026. Years before 2015 are spaced unevenly, and counting methods have changed over time, which is why the portions line dips in 2005 and 2010. The John 3:16 wall uses one translation per language from the Free Use Bible API, with the King James text for English and the SBL Greek New Testament for Koine Greek. Each card names its translation. Writing systems are detected from the letters used.
- Book groups. We list Hebrews on its own because its author is not named in the letter. Paul's thirteen letters are Romans to Philemon. James to Jude are the general letters.
- Come, Follow Me 2027. Weekly readings are the chapters assigned in Come, Follow Me — For Home and Church: New Testament 2027, as linked from each chapter in New Testament, Connected. The Easter and Christmas weeks have no assigned chapters, so they are not shown. Minutes assume 200 words a minute.
- The 69 moments. The events, places, witnesses and Gospel lists come from The Road, which follows the Harmony of the Gospels in the Church's Bible study aids. A dot means that Gospel has its own account of the moment. Shorter passing references are not counted.
- The last week. We counted verses from Matthew 21:1, Mark 11:1, Luke 19:28 and John 12:12 through the end of each Gospel: 1,260 of 3,779 verses, or 33%.
- Paul's journeys. Stops follow Acts 13:1–14:28, 15:36–18:22, 18:23–21:17 and 27:1–28:16. Where Acts names only a region, such as Galatia and Phrygia, we use the cities Paul visited there on his first journey. Our miles are great-circle distances between ancient-city coordinates, rounded. Published estimates that follow roads and sea lanes are higher.
- Where the letters went. Destinations come from each letter's own greeting, such as Romans 1:7, 1 Corinthians 1:2 and 1 Timothy 1:3. Galatia and the regions in 1 Peter 1:1 are shown at a central point. Hebrews, James, 2 Peter, 1–3 John and Jude name no city. Revelation's seven churches are from Revelation 1:11.
- Names. Counts are whole-word matches in the King James text. Peter includes Cephas. Silas includes Silvanus. Elias is the New Testament spelling of Elijah, and Esaias of Isaiah. Paul is counted as “Paul” only. “Saul” appears 26 times more, once for the Old Testament king (Acts 13:21). Zacharias counts only Luke's ten mentions of John the Baptist's father. The people in Same name, different person are identified from the verses linked.
- Joseph Smith Translation. These are the 213 JST cards attached to verses in New Testament, Connected, each linking to the Joseph Smith Translation appendix in the Church's edition of the Bible. One appendix passage can cover several cards, so this is not the appendix's own count.
- General Conference. 50,685 scripture links and 14,432 to the New Testament, April 2000 to October 2026, from the same corpus as Book of Mormon by the Numbers. Verse and chapter talk counts are the “connected talks” shown in New Testament, Connected, from official talk links. A talk that cites a verse range counts once for each verse in it.
- What the numbers can't say. A count shows how much space a story takes, not how much it matters. The shortest books hold some of the most loved verses. For those, read them.
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