How many characters are in 3 John in Chinese?

419 Chinese characters in total, written with 171 distinct characters, across 15 verses and 1 chapter.

What HSK level do I need to read 3 John?

63.7% of its word tokens are HSK 1-3 and 79.5% are within HSK 1-6; the remaining 15.2% are outside the HSK lists altogether, mostly names.

How long does 3 John take to read in Chinese?

About 2 minutes at 260 characters a minute — a fluent pace, so expect two to four times that while learning.

Is 3 John a good book to start with?

Yes — it ranks 13 of 66 books from easiest to hardest by vocabulary, so it is among the gentler starts.

3 John in Chinese: 171 Characters

Answering: “how many characters in 3 John in Chinese”

Updated 2026-09-22 · plain text · JSON

3 John is a single-chapter letter about welcoming travelling teachers, and the shortest book in the Bible by word count.

Every figure below is counted from the 和合本 (Chinese Union Version), simplified script text of 3 John 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.

3 John in numbers

Measure	Value
Chapters	1
Verses	15
Chinese characters	419
Distinct characters	171
Word tokens	303
Distinct words	160
Average verse	28 characters
HSK 1-3 word tokens	63.7%
HSK 1-6 word tokens	79.5%
Not in HSK 1-9	15.2%
Difficulty rank	13 of 66 (1 = easiest)
Reading time	2 min at 260 chars/min
Testament	New Testament

The words 3 John uses most

#	Word	Occurrences in this book
1	给	7
2	行	6
3	真理	5
4	接待	5
5	作	4
6	亲爱	4
7	弟兄	4
8	见证	4
9	就是	3
10	兄弟	3
11	有	3
12	按	3
13	神	3
14	写信	2
15	爱	2
16	愿	2
17	兴盛	2
18	正如	2
19	证明	2
20	喜乐	2

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

The easiest chapters of 3 John

Chapter	HSK 1-3	Verses	Characters
3 John 1	63.7%	15	419

Read it

3 John 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 3 John in Chinese?: 419 Chinese characters in total, written with 171 distinct characters, across 15 verses and 1 chapter.
What HSK level do I need to read 3 John?: 63.7% of its word tokens are HSK 1-3 and 79.5% are within HSK 1-6; the remaining 15.2% are outside the HSK lists altogether, mostly names.
How long does 3 John take to read in Chinese?: About 2 minutes at 260 characters a minute — a fluent pace, so expect two to four times that while learning.
Is 3 John a good book to start with?: Yes — it ranks 13 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).