# Isaiah's Words Unlock 90% of the Bible

> Learn the 3,754 distinct words used in Isaiah and you can read 90% of every word token in the whole Chinese Union Version (和合本, simplified) — more than any other single book of the 66.

Question: which Bible book teaches the most vocabulary
Answer: Isaiah — 90%
Page: https://chinese-bible.com/en/reference/which-book-teaches-the-most-vocabulary

Every book of the Bible shares most of its vocabulary with the rest, so "which book should I learn from" has a measurable answer: for each book, take its distinct words, and count what share of all 663,876 word tokens in the Bible those words account for. A big book with ordinary prose wins; a short book with specialised vocabulary does not.

The top of the table is Isaiah (3,754 words → 90%), Jeremiah (3,139 words → 89.2%), Psalms (3,490 words → 88.3%). The floor is higher than expected: even 2 John, with only 138 distinct words, covers 39.7% — because the commonest words are everywhere.

Stacking books is where it gets useful. Adding the book that raises coverage most at each step gives Isaiah → Luke → 2 Chronicles → Psalms: 6,386 distinct words for 97.2% of the entire Bible. That is a concrete vocabulary target — 57.2% of the 11,168 words the full text uses, for almost all of what it says.

## Stack the books that add the most

| Step | Add | Vocabulary so far | Covers of the whole Bible |
| --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | Isaiah | 3,754 | 90% |
| 2 | Luke | 4,917 | 94.4% |
| 3 | 2 Chronicles | 5,567 | 96.2% |
| 4 | Psalms | 6,386 | 97.2% |
| 5 | Genesis | 6,914 | 97.8% |
| 6 | Ezekiel | 7,356 | 98.2% |

Greedy selection: at each step, the book whose vocabulary raises whole-Bible token coverage the most.

## Questions

**Is this the same as the easiest book?**

No. John is the easiest to read by HSK vocabulary, while Isaiah teaches the most that transfers elsewhere. Easy and useful are different measures, and both are published.

**What about the Gospels?**

Their combined 3,986 words cover 89.6% of the whole Bible and 95.7% of the New Testament — the usual place to start, and a defensible one.

**Can I get one of these as a deck?**

Every book has a deck ordered by frequency inside that book, exportable to Anki, Pleco, Quizlet or CSV.

## 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.


---

- 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).
- Bible text: public domain — 和合本 · World English Bible · Louis Segond 1910.
- Built with https://chinese-bible.com