King James Bible Statistics

King James Bible statistics

Book count: 66
Chapter count: 1,189
Verse count: 31,102
Word count: 789,629 (*)

* Excludes superscriptions (+1,034)

Word Count Considerations

Below are some common complications when counting words in the King James Bible that result in varied final counts.

1. Psalm Superscriptions

Before each Psalm is a superscription or title detailing who wrote the Psalm. Some counts include and some exclude depending on their opinion of their inspiration. They exist in the Hebrew texts of the Bible having been passed down from before the Bible’s completion. This is a total of 1,034 words.

2. Psalm 119 – Hebrew Letters

Psalm 119 is the longest chapter in the Bible, and it is in the form of an acrostic poem using each letter of the Hebrew alphabet. In the King James Bible there is a written name of each Hebrew letter before each section of this Psalm. In Hebrew, there is just the Hebrew character. If you count these letters then there are 22 extra ‘words’.

3. Postscripts after Paul’s epistles.

There is a brief annotation after many of Paul’s epistles. These were known additions in the 5th century. They also contain some information that appears to contradict the inspired text. There are 186 words here.

Varied Word Counts

The base text of the King James Bible (1769 edition) contains 789,629 words. This does not include chapter headings, verse numbers, book titles, table of contents, or any of the above text considerations. Anything lower than this number has somehow miscalculated by leaving out words of the inspired text. Due to differences in belief about the inspiration or lack of consideration for the Psalm superscriptions and Hebrew letters the final word counts can vary according to the table below.

Since the postscripts are known to be added to the text much later, if you hold that there is not further inspiration added to the text of the Bible after its creation in the 1st century, then any count above 790,685 is adding words to the text that are indisputably not part of the inspired text.

Chapter, Verse, Word Count per Bible Book

The counts below do not include the superscriptions or the epistle postscripts.

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