How many books of the Bible did Paul write?

The short answer

Thirteen books of the Bible carry Paul's name, all of them letters. Romans, 1 and 2 Corinthians, Galatians, Ephesians, Philippians, Colossians, 1 and 2 Thessalonians, 1 and 2 Timothy, Titus and Philemon are almost half the New Testament's 27 books. Together they run to 87 chapters, about a quarter of its words and three hours of silent reading. Hebrews names no author. It was long counted as Paul's fourteenth letter, but most modern scholars think someone else wrote it.

In this guide

1. The 13 books Paul wrote, in Bible order
2. How much of the New Testament did Paul write?
3. Did Paul write Hebrews?
4. Which letters did Paul write himself?
5. In what order did Paul write his letters?
6. How long does it take to read all of Paul’s letters?
7. Questions people ask
8. Sources

More of the Bible’s books carry Paul’s name than any other writer’s: thirteen, every one a letter, from the apostle who first appears in the Book of Acts as Saul of Tarsus. Even so, how many books Paul wrote has more than one answer. Since the early church, readers have asked whether to count the Letter to the Hebrews, which names no author, and for the last two centuries scholars have asked whether he wrote every letter that names him. Here are the letters, measured from our own word count, and what each view holds.

• 13letters that open with Paul’s name
• 87chapters, a third of the New Testament
• 3 hoursto read all thirteen silently
• 25%of the New Testament’s words

The 13 books Paul wrote, in Bible order

Paul’s thirteen letters run from Romans to Philemon, and every one of them opens with his name (“Paul, a servant of Jesus Christ”, “Paul, an apostle of Christ Jesus”). Each is named for whoever received it: nine went to churches, in Rome, Corinth, Galatia, Ephesus, Philippi, Colossae and Thessalonica, and four to individuals, Timothy twice, Titus and Philemon.

The order is not the order Paul wrote them in. It runs from longest to shortest, first the letters to churches and then the letters to individuals, which is why Romans leads and Philemon, a single chapter, closes the set. Scholars describe the principle as the descending length of the Greek text, with one exception: in Greek, Galatians comes before the slightly longer Ephesians. In the English of our word counts even that pair falls in line, so within each group every letter in the table is shorter than the one before it.

How much of the New Testament did Paul write?

Paul’s letters are almost half the New Testament’s books but only about a quarter of its words, because most of them are short. Thirteen of 27 books is 48%; by chapters the share is a third, and by words a quarter:

Two comparisons put that in proportion. All thirteen letters together are about as long as the Book of Psalms, which has 41,314 words in the same translation. And by length Paul is not the New Testament’s biggest contributor: the Gospel of Luke and the Book of Acts, which tradition gives to Luke, come to 47,552 words between them, about 4,200 more than Paul’s thirteen letters. Count Hebrews as Paul’s and he moves back ahead, at about 50,300 words and 100 chapters.

Among the eight divisions of the Bible, Paul’s letters make up most of the Epistles: 13 of its 21 books and 87 of its 121 chapters. The rest are Hebrews, James, the two letters of Peter, the three of John, and Jude. If you are reading the whole of the New Testament, our guide to how long the New Testament takes gives the time for all 260 chapters.

Did Paul write Hebrews?

Nobody knows who wrote Hebrews, and that has been true since the early church. The book opens with no greeting and no name (“God, having in the past spoken to the fathers through the prophets”), and calls itself “the word of exhortation” (Hebrews 13:22) rather than presenting itself as a letter from Paul. It does mention “our brother Timothy” near the end, but never its author.

The question is old. Origen, as Eusebius records him in his Church History, judged that the thoughts were the apostle’s but the wording was someone else’s, and concluded: “But who wrote the epistle, in truth, God knows.” Eusebius also notes that some in the church at Rome did not count it as Paul’s. Even so, Hebrews was long included among Paul’s collected letters, and Jerome and Augustine both backed his authorship. When the Council of Trent set out the Catholic canon in 1546, it listed “fourteen epistles of Paul the apostle”, ending with Hebrews, and the King James Version printed it as “The Epistle of Paul the Apostle to the Hebrews”.

From the sixteenth century on, scholarly opinion moved steadily away from Paul, and modern scholarship mostly treats the author as unknown. Names proposed over the centuries include Barnabas, Apollos, Luke, Silas, Clement of Rome, and Priscilla and Aquila. None has won general agreement, which is why the usual count today is 13, with Hebrews as the fourteenth that Trent’s list and the older tradition include.

Which letters did Paul write himself?

Most scholars today are confident Paul wrote seven of the thirteen letters, and divided or doubtful about the other six. That is a question about who held the pen, not about which books belong in the Bible: all thirteen are in every Christian Bible whichever view you take.

The doubts rest on vocabulary, style, and church offices, the overseers and elders of 1 Timothy and Titus, that some scholars think could not have existed yet in Paul’s lifetime. The debate is live rather than closed. In a 2011 survey at the British New Testament Conference, 63 of 111 scholars favored Paul’s authorship of 2 Thessalonians and 56 of 109 favored it for Colossians; the rest rejected it or were unsure. The Pastoral letters were accepted as Paul’s by many, perhaps most, of the early church writers, and German scholars first questioned them in the early nineteenth century. Some scholars still hold that he wrote them.

One thing both sides weigh is that Paul did not work alone. Seven of the letters name a co-sender in their first line (Timothy, Silvanus or Sosthenes). Romans was written down by a secretary, who adds his own greeting (“I, Tertius, who write the letter, greet you in the Lord”), and in several letters Paul takes the pen for the last lines himself:

I, Paul, write this greeting with my own hand, which is the sign in every letter. This is how I write.

2 Thessalonians 3:17, World English Bible

A secretary with a free hand could account for differences of style, and some scholars use that to explain why certain letters seem unlike the others.

In what order did Paul write his letters?

By the dates most often given, Paul wrote Galatians first (around AD 48), then 1 Thessalonians (49 to 51), 1 Corinthians (53 to 54), 2 Corinthians (55 to 56) and Romans (55 to 57), with Philippians and Philemon from 57 to 59 or about 62. That puts the seven letters scholars agree on within about fifteen years, and makes them among the earliest Christian writings that survive.

Four letters say they were written in chains: Ephesians (“I, Paul, am the prisoner of Christ Jesus”), Philippians, Colossians (“Remember my chains”) and Philemon (“Paul, a prisoner of Christ Jesus”). They are often grouped as the prison letters. Where the disputed letters go depends on who wrote them. Read as Paul’s, Ephesians and Colossians belong with the other prison letters, and the Pastoral letters come last, with 2 Timothy reading as a farewell: “the time of my departure has come.” Our guide to the books of the Bible in the order they were written sets these dates beside the rest of the Bible.

How long does it take to read all of Paul’s letters?

All thirteen letters take about three hours to read silently at the average adult pace of 238 words a minute, or about 3 hours 40 minutes at a relaxed 200. A chapter of Paul averages about 500 words, against 631 for the Bible as a whole, so his chapters go by in about two minutes each.

That makes the letters unusually easy to read whole, as their first readers heard them read aloud. A few ways through them:

• A letter a sitting. Thirteen sittings, none longer than about 40 minutes (Romans and 1 Corinthians). Philippians takes about 9 minutes, and Philemon, one of the five shortest books of the Bible at a single chapter, about 2. Read one a day and the set takes under two weeks.
• A chapter a day. 87 chapters is 87 days, about three months. Two a day takes 44 days, and three a day 29.
• In the order written. Start with Galatians and 1 Thessalonians, follow the dates above, and end with the Pastoral letters.
• Alongside Acts. Acts, 28 chapters and about an hour and 40 minutes, follows Paul to Galatia, Philippi, Thessalonica, Corinth, Ephesus and Rome, six of the seven places his letters to churches went.

If some of it is hard going, that is an old observation. One of the New Testament’s own letters says as much:

…our beloved brother Paul also, according to the wisdom given to him, wrote to you, as also in all of his letters, speaking in them of these things. In those, there are some things that are hard to understand…

2 Peter 3:15–16, World English Bible

Short letters reward a second reading, and all but the three longest of Paul’s can be read twice in under half an hour.

Questions people ask

Did Paul write the Book of Acts?

No. Acts tells much of Paul's story, from his conversion as Saul of Tarsus to his two years under guard in Rome, but it does not name its author. It is addressed to the same Theophilus as the Gospel of Luke and calls itself the writer's second book. Church tradition, including the Council of Trent's decree on the canon, gives both books to Luke, whom Paul's letters name as a companion.

Which of Paul's letters were written from prison?

Four are often grouped as the prison letters, Ephesians, Philippians, Colossians and Philemon, and each one mentions Paul's chains or calls him a prisoner. Second Timothy speaks of imprisonment too and reads as a farewell, though it is normally counted with the Pastoral letters. The four prison letters come to 15 chapters, a little over half an hour of reading.

What was the first letter Paul wrote?

Probably Galatians or 1 Thessalonians. The dates most often given put Galatians around AD 48 and 1 Thessalonians between 49 and 51, which makes them among the earliest Christian writings that survive. Romans, which comes first in the Bible because it is the longest, was written several years later, around 55 to 57.

Who wrote the most books of the New Testament?

Paul, with 13 of the 27 books, or 14 if Hebrews is counted as his. By length the answer changes. The Gospel of Luke and Acts, both traditionally given to Luke, come to about 47,600 words in the World English Bible, more than Paul's thirteen letters at about 43,400. Counting Hebrews as Paul's puts him ahead again.

Are Paul's letters the same in Catholic and Protestant Bibles?

Yes. Catholic, Orthodox and Protestant Bibles share the same 27-book New Testament, so all thirteen of Paul's letters, and Hebrews, appear in every one of them with the same chapters. Where these Bibles differ is the Old Testament, which is why the Catholic Bible has 73 books and the Protestant Bible 66.

Sources

1. Pauline epistles, Wikipedia
2. Authorship of the Pauline epistles, Wikipedia
3. Pastoral epistles, Wikipedia
4. Epistle to the Hebrews, Wikipedia
5. Epistle to the Colossians, Wikipedia
6. Eusebius, Church History, Book VI (chapter 25 quotes Origen on Hebrews), New Advent
7. Council of Trent, Fourth Session (8 April 1546), decree on the canonical scriptures
8. 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.
9. World English Bible, verse-per-line edition (public domain), eBible.org
10. King James Version, verse-per-line edition (public domain), eBible.org