Bible Question:

How many words are in the Greek New Testament?

Bible Answer:

It is not very often that someone asks about the number of words in the Greek New Testament. The number of words depends upon the complied apparatus used to translate the Bible.

It is recommended that the reader read the article “Is The King James Bible The Best Bible?” in order to understand an apparatus. However, the differences will be slight.

Greek New Testament - Gospel of John

William D Mounce writes the following about the Greek words in the New Testament:

There are 5,437 different words in the New Testament. They occur a total of 138,162 times. But there are only 319 words (5.8% of the total number) that occur 50 times or more . . . These 319 words account for 110,425 word occurrences, or 79.92% of the total word count, almost four out of five.[1]

David M. Steimle writes this about the Greek New Testament,

NT has only 138,162 words drawn from 5,437 words.[2]

Each book of the New Testament has some unique Greek words that the Holy Spirit used in order to teach important truths, but the book of Hebrews has the largest number at 154.[3]

Conclusion:

We thank our God that the New Testament was written mainly in the Greek language because of the wide range of words the Holy Spirit could use to teach us truth.

 

Reference:

1.  William D. Mounce. Basics of Biblical Greek. Zondervan Publishing. 1993. p 17.
2. David M. Steimle. Preliminary Biblical Studies. Books-A-Million. p. 351.
3. Paul Ellingworth. New International Greek Testament Commentary. The Paternoster Press. 1993.

 

Suggested Links:

Is The King James Bible The Best Bible?
How many chapters, verses, and words are in the Bible?