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Summary
- Psalms is the longest book by chapters and verses: 150 chapters and 2,461 verses in English Bibles, and 2,527 in Hebrew Bibles, which number many psalm headings as verses.
- By words Jeremiah is the longest book in the Hebrew (21,836 words in the Westminster Leningrad Codex); in the King James Version Psalms (42,682 words) and Jeremiah (42,654) are 28 words apart, and Psalms leads clearly once its titles are counted.
- 3 John is the shortest book by words, 219 in Greek and 294 in the King James Version; 2 John has fewer verses, 13 against 14, and in the NIV and ESV it also has fewer words.
- Obadiah is the shortest book of the Old Testament: one chapter, 21 verses and 291 Hebrew words.
- Psalm 119 is the longest chapter (176 verses, an alphabet acrostic) and Psalm 117 the shortest (2 verses); Esther 8:9 is the longest verse and “Jesus wept” (John 11:35) the shortest in English.
- The King James Version has 66 books, 1,189 chapters, 31,102 verses and about 790,000 words, and Catholic Bibles have 73 books.
- Stephen Langton divided the Bible into chapters while teaching at Paris, and Robert Estienne’s New Testament of 1551 was the first to carry his verse numbering, the system Bibles still use.
Bibliography (Click to show)
- King James Version: Psalm 117; Psalm 119:1; Esther 8:9; John 11:35; 1 Thessalonians 5:16–17; Exodus 20:13; Obadiah 1:1; 2 John 1:12; 3 John 1:1, 1:13–14, BibleGateway. Word, chapter and verse counts made from the full King James Version text (1769 standard text) published by eBible.org, eng-kjv2006, checked against Project Gutenberg eBook #10; the Apocrypha counts from eBible.org’s King James Version with Apocrypha.
- Westminster Leningrad Codex, version 4.20, in the Open Scriptures Hebrew Bible, openscriptures/morphhb (Hebrew word, chapter and verse counts; Psalm 119’s alphabet order).
- The SBL Greek New Testament, ed. Michael W. Holmes (Society of Biblical Literature and Logos Bible Software, 2010), in the MorphGNT edition, morphgnt/sblgnt (Greek word and verse counts).
- Word counts of 2 John and 3 John in the New International Version, English Standard Version, New King James Version, Douay-Rheims and Reina-Valera 1960, from the full text of each letter on BibleGateway.
- Catechism of the Catholic Church, paragraph 120, The Holy See.
- The Westminster Confession of Faith, chapter 1, section 2, Orthodox Presbyterian Church.
- W. H. Kent, “Stephen Langton”, Catholic Encyclopedia (1913), Catholic Answers.
- “Archbishop Stephen Langton 1207–1229”, Archbishop’s Palace Conservation Trust, Otford, 12 June 2020, otfordpalace.org.
- “Pitts acquires 1551 Estienne New Testament”, Pitts Theology Library, Emory University, pitts.emory.edu.
- Homer Heater Jr., “Once More, Jeremiah 10:4–10: Masoretic Text and the Septuagint”, Bibliotheca Sacra 174:695 (July–September 2017), Galaxie.
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