How long does it take to read the Bible?

The short answer

Read silently at the average adult pace of 238 words a minute, the 66-book Protestant Bible takes about 52 hours, roughly 40 for the Old Testament and 12 for the New. At a relaxed 200 words a minute it is about 62 hours, and read aloud about 68. The 73-book Catholic Bible adds around 7 hours. Over a year, that comes to about 10 minutes a day.

In this guide

1. How long it takes, Bible by Bible
2. Why every answer online is different
3. How long each book takes
4. What that comes to per day
5. Making fifty hours feel like less
6. Questions people ask
7. Sources

Most answers to this question are a single number copied from somewhere else. The honest answer depends on three things: which Bible you mean, how fast you read, and whether you are reading silently, aloud or listening. So instead of quoting a figure, we counted. Every number below comes from our own word count of two public-domain translations, timed at reading speeds taken from research rather than guessed.

• 52 hoursthe 66-book Bible, read silently at an average pace
• 40 hoursthe Old Testament
• 12 hoursthe New Testament
• 2½ minan average chapter

How long it takes, Bible by Bible

Christians do not all read the same number of books. The Protestant Bible has 66, the Catholic Bible 73, and the Orthodox and Ethiopian traditions more again. Here is each of the five canons, with its length and the time it takes to read at the average adult pace:

The Catholic Bible’s extra seven books (Tobit, Judith, Wisdom, Sirach, Baruch and 1 and 2 Maccabees), along with its longer Esther and Daniel, add about seven hours to the Protestant total. If your Bible is one of the wider ones, our guide to how many books are in the Bible explains where the difference comes from.

Why every answer online is different

You will find estimates anywhere from 50 to 90 hours, and most of them are right for some reader. Four things move the number.

Reading speed. The best evidence we have is a 2019 review of 190 studies with 18,573 participants, which put the average adult’s silent reading speed at 238 words a minute for non-fiction and 260 for fiction. That is slower than the figures usually repeated in popular writing, as the review itself points out. We use 238 for the headline and 200 as a relaxed pace, which is closer to how most people read something they want to take in.

The translation. A translation’s word count depends on how literal it is and how it handles small words. By our count the King James Version has 790,676 words in its 66 books and the World English Bible, a modern public-domain translation, has 750,220. The figure most often quoted for the KJV is 783,137; counts differ with how hyphenated names, possessives and the Psalms’ titles are treated. At 238 words a minute the KJV takes about 55 hours, three more than a modern translation.

Silent, aloud or listening. The same review found people read aloud at about 183 words a minute. At that rate a modern translation takes about 68 hours, and the KJV about 72.

What you are reading. Genealogies and census lists go quickly or slowly depending on whether you read every name. Letters like Romans reward reading slowly. An average says little about the afternoon you spend on Leviticus.

How long each book takes

The table below gives every book of the Protestant Bible with its chapters, its words in the World English Bible and the time it takes to read silently at 238 words a minute. Use the times to plan a sitting: Ruth, Jonah and most of Paul’s letters fit in one, and Mark’s Gospel takes about an hour.

The longest and shortest reads

Psalms takes the longest at just under three hours, followed closely by Jeremiah (about 2 hours 50 minutes), Ezekiel and Genesis. At the other end, 2 and 3 John each take a little over a minute, and Philemon, Jude and Obadiah take two or three. Some useful groupings:

What that comes to per day

Fifty-two hours sounds like a lot until it is divided up. The table below gives the chapters a day for common finishing times, with the minutes each one takes at about 3.3 minutes a chapter, a comfortable pace that leaves room for the longer chapters.

A year is a little over three chapters a day, or about ten minutes. Fifteen minutes a day gets you through in about nine months, and five minutes a day in a little over two years. If you would rather work out your own dates, the reading plan calculator does it for any Bible and any finishing day.

Making fifty hours feel like less

Knowing the total is useful mostly for one reason: it shows the whole Bible is within reach of an ordinary week. A few things make the hours easier to spend.

• Pick a daily amount you could keep on a busy day, not on your best day. Ten minutes kept is worth more than thirty planned.
• You do not have to read in order. Reading some of the Old and New Testaments each day keeps the long stretches of law and history from arriving all at once. Our guide to the best order to read the Bible compares the main ways through.
• Listening counts too. An audio Bible on a commute covers ground a desk never would.
• Keep a record of the chapters, not the days. A missed day costs nothing if what you track is how much of the Bible you have read, rather than an unbroken chain.

However long it takes you, the hours add up the same way: one chapter, then the next.

Questions people ask

Can you read the whole Bible in one day?

Not in one sitting. At an average silent pace the Protestant Bible is about 52 hours of reading, so even eight hours of reading a day takes close to a week.

How long does it take to read the New Testament?

About 12 hours of silent reading at 238 words a minute, or 15 hours at a relaxed 200. That is 260 chapters, so a chapter a day takes about eight and a half months, and three a day takes under three months.

How long does it take to read the Bible in a year?

About 10 minutes a day. The Protestant Bible's 1,189 chapters over 365 days is a little over 3 chapters a day, and an average chapter takes 2½ to 3 minutes to read silently.

How long does it take to read the Bible out loud?

Around 68 hours for a modern translation at the average reading-aloud rate of 183 words a minute, and about 72 hours for the King James Version, which has more words.

Which book of the Bible takes the longest to read?

Psalms, at just under three hours of silent reading, with Jeremiah close behind. By chapters Psalms is longest by far, with 150; by words the two are within a few percent of each other.

Sources

1. Brysbaert, M. (2019). How many words do we read per minute? A review and meta-analysis of reading rate. Journal of Memory and Language, 109, 104047.
2. World English Bible, verse-per-line edition (public domain), eBible.org
3. King James Version, verse-per-line edition (public domain), eBible.org