Beyond HSK: 22.5% of the Chinese Bible
Answering: “Bible words not in HSK”
Updated 2026-09-22 · plain text · JSON
No HSK level finishes the Chinese Bible. The lists stop at 77.5% coverage of this text, and the remaining 22.5% is not hard vocabulary so much as unlisted vocabulary: 耶和华, 祭司, 会幕, and several hundred transliterated names.
That is good news for anyone learning from Scripture rather than for an exam. Unlisted words repeat far more often inside the Bible than an HSK 6 word does, so they are acquired by reading rather than by drilling — and the decks on this site are built from the Bible's own frequency order for exactly that reason.
The books where unlisted vocabulary bites hardest are the genealogical and prophetic ones; the table shows which books carry the least of it.
| Level | Word tokens known | Still unknown |
|---|---|---|
| HSK 1 | 44.2% | 55.8% |
| HSK 2 | 53% | 47% |
| HSK 3 | 59.7% | 40.3% |
| HSK 4 | 63.2% | 36.8% |
| HSK 5 | 67.5% | 32.5% |
| HSK 6 | 71.4% | 28.6% |
| HSK 7-9 | 77.5% | 22.5% |
22.5% of word tokens are on no HSK list, which is why the last row stops short of 100%.
| Book | Not in HSK | Distinct words | Minutes |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 John | 11.7% | 395 | 12 |
| 2 John | 13.4% | 138 | 2 |
| 3 John | 15.2% | 160 | 2 |
| John | 16.5% | 1,647 | 91 |
| 2 Corinthians | 17.1% | 1,165 | 31 |
| 2 Thessalonians | 17.4% | 360 | 5 |
| James | 18% | 707 | 12 |
| 1 Corinthians | 18.5% | 1,453 | 47 |
| Mark | 18.6% | 1,933 | 67 |
| Job | 18.6% | 2,722 | 80 |
Questions
- Why is so much vocabulary unlisted?
- Because HSK covers contemporary Mandarin for learners, and Scripture uses names and cultic terms it has no reason to include. 662 words in this text look like proper names alone.
- Which book should I read at this level?
- 1 John (88.3%), 2 John (86.6%), 3 John (84.8%) — the highest coverage of the 66 books at this level.
- Where does the level data come from?
- HSK 3.0 levels from the complete-hsk-vocabulary list; band 7 covers HSK 7-9. Words are matched after segmenting the text: forward maximum matching against CC-CEDICT (this site's own segmentation).
- Is there a deck for the gap?
- Yes — the book and topic decks are ordered by frequency in the Bible rather than by HSK, so they teach exactly the words a syllabus leaves out.
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).