How many characters are in Luke in Chinese?

30,495 Chinese characters in total, written with 1,493 distinct characters, across 1,146 verses and 24 chapters.

What HSK level do I need to read Luke?

67.7% of its word tokens are HSK 1-3 and 75.9% are within HSK 1-6; the remaining 18.8% are outside the HSK lists altogether, mostly names.

How long does Luke take to read in Chinese?

About 117 minutes at 260 characters a minute — a fluent pace, so expect two to four times that while learning.

Is Luke a good book to start with?

Yes — it ranks 6 of 66 books from easiest to hardest by vocabulary, so it is among the gentler starts.

Luke in Chinese: 1,493 Characters

Answering: “how many characters in Luke in Chinese”

Updated 2026-09-22 · plain text · JSON

Luke writes an ordered account for a Gentile readership, with particular attention to the poor, to women, and to prayer. It contains the parables of the good Samaritan and the prodigal son.

Every figure below is counted from the 和合本 (Chinese Union Version), simplified script text of Luke on this site: characters from the simplified text, words from its segmentation, HSK levels from the word lists. The difficulty rank compares this book with the other 65 by the share of word tokens at HSK 1-3.

Luke in numbers

Measure	Value
Chapters	24
Verses	1,146
Chinese characters	30,495
Distinct characters	1,493
Word tokens	21,596
Distinct words	2,749
Average verse	27 characters
HSK 1-3 word tokens	67.7%
HSK 1-6 word tokens	75.9%
Not in HSK 1-9	18.8%
Difficulty rank	6 of 66 (1 = easiest)
Reading time	117 min at 260 chars/min
Testament	New Testament

The words Luke uses most

#	Word	Occurrences in this book
1	说	517
2	耶稣	350
3	人	307
4	有	238
5	要	218
6	来	166
7	去	153
8	神	126
9	儿子	107
10	事	103
11	给	87
12	主	87
13	一	87
14	看见	71
15	叫	69
16	告诉	69
17	必	57
18	那里	57
19	众人	57
20	个	54

Function words excluded. Each word has its own page with pinyin, stroke order and the verses it appears in.

Words that occur in Luke and nowhere else in the Bible

Words
莎强健逸捶讹诈锭做生意马槽熟识希斯仑湖边酬谢

12 found, capped at 40 per book.

The easiest chapters of Luke

Chapter	HSK 1-3	Verses	Characters
Luke 10	72.2%	42	1,211
Luke 24	71.1%	53	1,288
Luke 17	70.8%	36	854
Luke 7	70.5%	50	1,452
Luke 15	70.5%	32	841
Luke 22	69.9%	71	1,685
Luke 19	69.8%	48	1,151
Luke 8	69.4%	56	1,633

Read it

Luke in the parallel reader — Chinese, pinyin and your own language side by side. Or take its vocabulary deck first, ordered by how often each word occurs in this book.

Questions

How many characters are in Luke in Chinese?: 30,495 Chinese characters in total, written with 1,493 distinct characters, across 1,146 verses and 24 chapters.
What HSK level do I need to read Luke?: 67.7% of its word tokens are HSK 1-3 and 75.9% are within HSK 1-6; the remaining 18.8% are outside the HSK lists altogether, mostly names.
How long does Luke take to read in Chinese?: About 117 minutes at 260 characters a minute — a fluent pace, so expect two to four times that while learning.
Is Luke a good book to start with?: Yes — it ranks 6 of 66 books from easiest to hardest by vocabulary, so it is among the gentler starts.

Related reference pages

Take it further

97 ready-made vocabulary decks — by HSK level, by book or by topic, exportable to Anki, Pleco or Quizlet.
Printable 田字格 worksheets — passages with pinyin, meanings and tracing rows.
The parallel reader — Chinese, pinyin and your own language side by side, every word tappable.
The dataset behind these numbers — plain JSON, free to reuse with attribution.

How these numbers were produced

Text: 和合本 (Chinese Union Version), simplified script — public domain — 66 books, 1,189 chapters, 31,021 verses.
Words: forward maximum matching against CC-CEDICT (this site's own segmentation). A different segmenter gives slightly different word counts; character counts are unaffected.
HSK levels: HSK 3.0 levels from the complete-hsk-vocabulary list; band 7 covers HSK 7-9.
Reading times: 260 characters a minute — an assumption about a fluent adult reader, not a measurement.
Computed: 2026-09-22, from the text on this site.

These are counts anyone can reproduce from the published dataset. They are not a peer-reviewed linguistic study, and the difficulty rankings are one stated formula rather than a validated readability score.

Definitions: CC-CEDICT, licensed CC BY-SA (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/). If you share this file onward, keep this notice and share alike. Character data: Make Me a Hanzi (Arphic Public License / LGPL).