Genesis in Chinese: 1,502 Characters
Answering: “how many characters in Genesis in Chinese”
Updated 2026-09-26 · plain text · JSON
Genesis opens the Bible with the origin of the world, the first human families, the flood, and the founding generations of Israel — Abraham, Isaac, Jacob and Joseph. It moves from universal beginnings to the story of one family.
Every figure below is counted from the 和合本 (Chinese Union Version), simplified script text of Genesis 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.
| Measure | Value |
|---|---|
| Chapters | 50 |
| Verses | 1,532 |
| Chinese characters | 44,626 |
| Distinct characters | 1,502 |
| Word tokens | 32,144 |
| Distinct words | 2,848 |
| Average verse | 29 characters |
| HSK 1-3 word tokens | 65.1% |
| HSK 1-6 word tokens | 75.2% |
| Not in HSK 1-9 | 20.7% |
| Difficulty rank | 9 of 66 (1 = easiest) |
| Reading time | 172 min at 260 chars/min |
| Testament | Old Testament |
| # | Word | Occurrences in this book |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | 说 | 615 |
| 2 | 人 | 301 |
| 3 | 地 | 269 |
| 4 | 给 | 263 |
| 5 | 神 | 221 |
| 6 | 儿子 | 219 |
| 7 | 要 | 216 |
| 8 | 雅各 | 212 |
| 9 | 约瑟 | 207 |
| 10 | 去 | 178 |
| 11 | 来 | 175 |
| 12 | 父亲 | 173 |
| 13 | 有 | 171 |
| 14 | 耶和华 | 164 |
| 15 | 那里 | 143 |
| 16 | 一 | 139 |
| 17 | 亚伯拉罕 | 139 |
| 18 | 生 | 136 |
| 19 | 必 | 136 |
| 20 | 拉 | 127 |
Function words excluded. Each word has its own page with pinyin, stroke order and the verses it appears in.
| Words |
|---|
| 英勇 巴别 撒莱 侄儿 幔利 以拉撒 基大老玛 西订谷 暗笑 小树 麦比拉 镯 跑出 草料 巴旦 野味 看不中 梯子 悉帕 失宠 有点 纹 花斑 外孙 |
40 found, capped at 40 per book.
| Chapter | HSK 1-3 | Verses | Characters |
|---|---|---|---|
| Genesis 45 | 72.7% | 28 | 925 |
| Genesis 42 | 72.6% | 38 | 1,299 |
| Genesis 20 | 71.3% | 18 | 618 |
| Genesis 24 | 71.2% | 66 | 2,098 |
| Genesis 27 | 70.9% | 46 | 1,407 |
| Genesis 37 | 70.8% | 36 | 1,102 |
| Genesis 1 | 70.2% | 31 | 751 |
| Genesis 18 | 69.4% | 33 | 1,037 |
Read it
Genesis 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 Genesis in Chinese?
- 44,626 Chinese characters in total, written with 1,502 distinct characters, across 1,532 verses and 50 chapters.
- What HSK level do I need to read Genesis?
- 65.1% of its word tokens are HSK 1-3 and 75.2% are within HSK 1-6; the remaining 20.7% are outside the HSK lists altogether, mostly names.
- How long does Genesis take to read in Chinese?
- About 172 minutes at 260 characters a minute — a fluent pace, so expect two to four times that while learning.
- Is Genesis a good book to start with?
- Yes — it ranks 9 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: 2026-09-26, 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).