# 80.2% of New Testament Words Are in the Old

> 5,153 distinct words occur in both halves of the Chinese Union Version (和合本, simplified), which is 80.2% of the New Testament's vocabulary and 52.1% of the Old Testament's.

Question: vocabulary shared by both testaments
Answer: 5,153 shared words
Page: https://chinese-bible.com/en/reference/shared-vocabulary-of-both-testaments

The two testaments were written centuries apart in different languages, but they are read here in one Chinese translation, which means their vocabularies can be compared directly. 5,153 words appear in both. Measured as a Jaccard index — shared words over total distinct words — the overlap is 46.1%.

The asymmetry matters more than the overlap. The Old Testament uses 9,897 distinct words against the New Testament's 6,424, so almost all of the New Testament's vocabulary is contained in the Old, while the reverse is far from true. A reader who works through the Gospels and the epistles first will still meet 4,744 genuinely new words on turning back to Genesis.

Set against the exclusive counts published separately — 4,744 words only in the Old Testament, 1,271 only in the New — this gives the whole picture: a large shared core, a modest New Testament extension, and a long Old Testament tail of names, offerings and measurements.

## Vocabulary of the two testaments

| Measure | Value |
| --- | --- |
| Old Testament distinct words | 9,897 |
| New Testament distinct words | 6,424 |
| Words in both | 5,153 |
| Jaccard overlap | 46.1% |
| New Testament vocabulary found in the Old | 80.2% |
| Old Testament only | 4,744 |
| New Testament only | 1,271 |


## Questions

**Is the overlap unusual?**

Not for one translation of one canon: a shared translator's vocabulary is exactly what a single Chinese edition produces. The figure describes this edition, not the original languages.

**Which is the bigger vocabulary jump?**

Old Testament first: 4,744 words that the New Testament never uses, against 1,271 in the other direction.

**Where do the exclusive-word figures come from?**

The same dataset, counted by occurrence: a word counts as exclusive when every one of its occurrences falls on one side.

## Method

- Text: 和合本 (Chinese Union Version), simplified script — public domain
- Words: forward maximum matching against CC-CEDICT (this site's own segmentation)
- 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)
- Computed: 2026-09-22

These are reproducible counts over a public-domain text, not a peer-reviewed study. Difficulty ranks are one stated formula, not a validated readability score.


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- Definitions: CC-CEDICT, licensed CC BY-SA (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/).
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- Character data: Make Me a Hanzi (Arphic Public License / LGPL).
- Bible text: public domain — 和合本 · World English Bible · Louis Segond 1910.
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