How Long Does It Take To Read The Bible?

For 2,000 years, the Bible has been the sacred text of Christians. The document, written (or compiled, depending on your doctrinal point of view) over centuries by dozens of men, contains just about everything required of a major religion: history, doctrine, law, passages of comfort and inspiration, passages of wrath and condemnation, and everything in between.

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As religious texts go, the Bible is actually a pretty thick one, too. According to Word Counter, an English translation of the text (there are several) is in the neighborhood of 800,000 words, roughly on par with Stephen King's novel "The Stand." The Koran, by comparison, is a relatively light read, at 77,000 words, according to Study.com.

So how long would it take to read the Bible, from Genesis 1:1 to Revelation 22:21? The answer will depend on how quickly you read generally, how closely you pay attention (your eyes may glaze over during long passages of "begats"), how often you take rests, and so on. But in general, an average reader could probably knock it out in a couple of weeks or so if they committed to it.

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You can probably read the entire Bible in a matter of days

Working out how long it would take to read the Bible is, at its core, a matter of simple arithmetic. We know that the document is roughly 800,000 words long (depending upon your English translation), and we know, per Iris Reading, that the average adult reads about 200 words per minute. Mathematically, that means that the Bible can be read in 4,000 minutes. In one eight-hour day, there are 480 minutes. So if you were to treat reading the Bible like a job, and devote eight hours per day to it, it would take just over eight days.

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To calculate how long it would take to read the Bible under other conditions (such as straight through, or by only devoting an hour a day to it, or what have you), all you have to do is account for the variables in the calculation; the basic arithmetic is still the same. So for example, if you wanted to read the Bible straight through with no breaks, it could be done in 66 hours, or two and a half days.

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