Tag Archive for: The Centre of the Bible

The Centre of the Bible

The truth is there are 31,102 verses in the King James Bible.  Therefore there is no single middle verse.  You cannot have a middle verse with an even number of verses.  However there are two middle verses. These would be verses 15,551 and 15,552 (Psalms 103:1-2.) 

PSALM 103:1-2

BLESS the LORD, O my soul:  and all that is within me, bless his holy name. ² Bless the LORD, O my soul, and forget not all his benefits:

These are the middle two verses of the King James Bible.  Both verses start with “Bless the LORD, O my soul”.  Verse 1 continues – and all that is within me, bless his holy name.  Verse 2 concludes with – and forget not all his benefits.  These are powerful words coming from the two center verses of the Book.  

Now let’s count the words in these two middle verses.  There are twenty-eight.  That’s seven quadrupled (7 times 4) instead of seven doubled (7 times 2.)  Here we have seven compounded twice as much.

Now let’s see if we can find some middle words in the center of God’s middle verses.  Yes, I see four (bless his holy name.)  There are twelve words on one side of this phrase and twelve words on the other side.  So the King James Bible has bless his holy name right in the center of the two middle verses!

This phrase also has exactly twice as many words (12) on each side of it.  God loves the number twelve also.  Next to the number seven, it is his favorite number.  He uses it a lot in his word.  For example there were twelve apostles and twelve tribes of Israel. There are twelve manner of fruits bared by the tree of life.  It is the number of authority and power.  What else would you expect in the center of God’s Holy Bible?  Bless his holy name. 

PSALM 138:2…I will worship toward thy holy temple, and praise thy name for thy lovingkindness and for thy truth: for thou hast magnified thy word above all thy name.

Note:  Total verses: 31,102.  3+1+1+0+2 = 7

(completeness, spiritual perfection, pure)

The following statistics apply to the 1769 edition of the 1611 King James Bible:

All word counts are the work of computer programmer Dave Whitinger.  I have checkedand doubled-checked his counts with a manual count in 10 of the 66 Books and they all match perfectly.  Therefore I believe these word counts to be 100% accurate (I hope.) 

Old Testament

New Testament

*The book of Psalms has superscriptions under some of the Psalms (chapters.) These were not counted in this chart because they are not in the verses.  Also Psalm 119 has the Hebrew Alphabet translated into English.  Even though these words are not in the verses they were counted because they are scattered throughout this Psalm (Chapter.) 

* The fourteen epistles of Paul are sometimes accompanied by subscriptions at the end of each letter.  These were not counted because they are not in the verses.  They are credited to Euthalius, a bishop of the 5^th Century.  The wording has slightly been modified during the process of time.  Some of them seem to disagree with the text. 

SUMMARY OF KING JAMES BIBLE STATISTICS:

Total Books – 66  Total Chapters  1,189 Total Verses…31,102

Total words in the 31,102 verses – 788,258 (not including the Hebrew Alphabet in Psalm 119 or the superscriptions listed in some of the Psalms)

Total words in the Hebrew Alphabet in Psalm 119 – 22

Total words on the cover – 2 (HOLY BIBLE)

Total words in the Book Titles – 85 (the full titles as written in the 1611 edition – 374)

Total times the word “CHAPTER” is listed – 1,034 (in 5 books the word is not listed because they only have one chapter)

Total times the word “PSALM” is listed – 150

Total words in superscriptions (sub-titles) of Psalms – 1,034

Total words in subscriptions (concluding remarks) in the epistles of Paul – 186

Total words in Testament dividers – 6 (The Old Testament, The New Testament)

Total words in Table of Contents – 94 (the Book Titles, the Testament dividers plus the phrase Table of Contents) If you use the full titles as in the 1611 edition – 383

Total words either on the cover or the first page explaining which Bible you have:

1. A)   Authorized Version – 2or
2. B)   King James version – 3or
3. C)   King James Bible – 3 

Can you see now why there are so many word counts floating around?

BIBLE STATISTICS (King James Authorized):
Number of books in the Bible: 66
Chapters: 1,189
Verses: 31,102
Words: 783,137
Letters: 3,116,480
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)
Longest verse: Esther 8:9 (78 words)
Shortest verse: John 11:35 (2 words: “Jesus wept”).  This is the King James Bible.  Some Bibles might be Job 3:2 (Job said.) but King James has that as “Job answered” which is longer than Jesus wept.
Middle books: Micah and Nahum
Middle verse: Psalm 103:2-3
Middle chapter: Psalm 117
Shortest chapter (by number of words): Psalm 117 (by number of words)
Longest book: Psalms (150 chapters)
Shortest book (by number of words): 3 John
Longest chapter: Psalm 119 (176 verses)
Number of times the word “God” appears: 4,094
Number of times the word “Lord” appears: 6,781
Number of different authors: 40
Number of languages the Bible has been translated into: over 1,200

OLD TESTAMENT STATISTICS:
Number of books: 39
Chapters: 929
Verses: 23,145
Words: 602,585
Letters: 2,278,100
Middle book: Proverbs
Middle chapter: Job 20
Middle verses: 2 Chronicles 20:17,18
Smallest book: Obadiah
Shortest verse: 1 Chronicles 1:25
Longest verse: Esther 8:9
Longest chapter: Psalms 119
Largest book: Psalms

NEW TESTAMENT STATISTICS:
Number of books: 27
Chapters: 260
Verses: 7,957
Words: 180,552
Letters: 838,380
Middle book: 2 Thessalonians
Middle chapters: Romans 8, 9
Middle verse: Acts 27:17
Smallest book: 3 John
Shortest verse: John 11:35
Longest verse: Revelation 20:4
Longest chapter: Luke 1
Largest book: Luke