1,271 Words Are New Testament Only
Answering: “words only in the New Testament”
Updated 2026-09-22 · plain text · JSON
The New Testament is the smaller vocabulary problem in every respect: 27 books, 222,137 characters, and 1,271 words that appear nowhere else in the Bible. Its own words are the ones a reader of Christian Chinese needs first — 福音, 门徒, 使徒, 教会, 复活.
It is also easier by the vocabulary measure used across this site. The books with the highest share of HSK 1-3 tokens are John, Matthew, 2 John, Mark — all in the New Testament, all narrative.
A reader starting here needs far less than the whole-Bible figure suggests. The New Testament's own frequency lists are what its book decks are built from, so the words arrive in the order the text actually uses them.
In round numbers: 7,940 verses, 222,137 characters and about 14 hours of reading at 260 characters a minute, against 59 hours for the whole Bible.
| Book | Distinct words | Distinct chars | HSK 1-3 | Minutes |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2 John | 138 | 151 | 67.9% | 2 |
| 3 John | 160 | 171 | 63.7% | 2 |
| Philemon | 210 | 226 | 61.8% | 2 |
| Jude | 317 | 357 | 58.6% | 3 |
| 2 Thessalonians | 360 | 361 | 63.8% | 5 |
| 1 John | 395 | 330 | 67.8% | 12 |
| Titus | 423 | 416 | 56.1% | 5 |
| 1 Thessalonians | 534 | 483 | 61.9% | 10 |
| 2 Peter | 572 | 515 | 58.5% | 8 |
| 2 Timothy | 615 | 569 | 58.8% | 9 |
| Colossians | 628 | 558 | 61.2% | 11 |
| Philippians | 642 | 549 | 61.1% | 11 |
| James | 707 | 635 | 64.9% | 12 |
| Galatians | 757 | 605 | 61.7% | 16 |
| 1 Peter | 757 | 653 | 56% | 13 |
| 1 Timothy | 761 | 629 | 56.7% | 12 |
| Ephesians | 800 | 645 | 59.5% | 15 |
| 2 Corinthians | 1,165 | 827 | 64.3% | 31 |
| Hebrews | 1,440 | 976 | 60.5% | 34 |
| 1 Corinthians | 1,453 | 954 | 62.9% | 47 |
| Romans | 1,504 | 971 | 59.1% | 47 |
| Revelation | 1,555 | 1,068 | 65.1% | 52 |
| John | 1,647 | 1,011 | 72.3% | 91 |
| Mark | 1,933 | 1,227 | 67.8% | 67 |
| Matthew | 2,475 | 1,415 | 68.1% | 108 |
| Acts | 2,628 | 1,377 | 63.2% | 111 |
| Luke | 2,749 | 1,493 | 67.7% | 117 |
Questions
- How long is the New Testament in Chinese?
- 222,137 characters — about 14 hours at 260 characters a minute.
- Which New Testament book is the easiest?
- John, at 72.3% HSK 1-3 tokens.
- Is there a New Testament deck?
- Every book has a deck of its own, and the topical decks cut across them.
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).