How many characters are in 1 Corinthians in Chinese?

12,262 Chinese characters in total, written with 954 distinct characters, across 437 verses and 16 chapters.

What HSK level do I need to read 1 Corinthians?

63% of its word tokens are HSK 1-3 and 74.6% are within HSK 1-6; the remaining 18.4% are outside the HSK lists altogether, mostly names.

How long does 1 Corinthians take to read in Chinese?

About 47 minutes at 260 characters a minute — a fluent pace, so expect two to four times that while learning.

Is 1 Corinthians a good book to start with?

Not the gentlest: it ranks 16 of 66 by vocabulary. John and Matthew are easier by this measure.

1 Corinthians in Chinese: 954 Characters

Answering: “how many characters in 1 Corinthians in Chinese”

Updated 2026-09-26 · plain text · JSON

1 Corinthians addresses a divided and troubled congregation on factions, marriage, worship and resurrection, and contains the well-known chapter on love.

Every figure below is counted from the 和合本 (Chinese Union Version), simplified script text of 1 Corinthians 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.

1 Corinthians in numbers

Measure	Value
Chapters	16
Verses	437
Chinese characters	12,262
Distinct characters	954
Word tokens	8,535
Distinct words	1,436
Average verse	28 characters
HSK 1-3 word tokens	63%
HSK 1-6 word tokens	74.6%
Not in HSK 1-9	18.4%
Difficulty rank	16 of 66 (1 = easiest)
Reading time	47 min at 260 chars/min
Testament	New Testament

The words 1 Corinthians uses most

#	Word	Occurrences in this book
1	人	142
2	神	107
3	有	96
4	要	87
5	说	81
6	主	76
7	若	76
8	叫	63
9	基督	55
10	事	47
11	作	41
12	就是	34
13	智慧	28
14	属	27
15	乃是	27
16	吃	27
17	来	26
18	用	26
19	能	26
20	弟兄们	24

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

Words that occur in 1 Corinthians and nowhere else in the Bible

Words
倒毙审察分门别类设若隐情不复不朽做主神奥不情愿主张再嫁离去身分打场

15 found, capped at 40 per book.

The easiest chapters of 1 Corinthians

Chapter	HSK 1-3	Verses	Characters
1 Corinthians 10	68%	33	833
1 Corinthians 3	66.8%	23	649
1 Corinthians 11	66.2%	34	851
1 Corinthians 8	65.2%	13	395
1 Corinthians 9	65%	27	860
1 Corinthians 4	64.3%	21	678
1 Corinthians 5	64.1%	13	431
1 Corinthians 15	63.9%	58	1,531

Read it

1 Corinthians 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 1 Corinthians in Chinese?: 12,262 Chinese characters in total, written with 954 distinct characters, across 437 verses and 16 chapters.
What HSK level do I need to read 1 Corinthians?: 63% of its word tokens are HSK 1-3 and 74.6% are within HSK 1-6; the remaining 18.4% are outside the HSK lists altogether, mostly names.
How long does 1 Corinthians take to read in Chinese?: About 47 minutes at 260 characters a minute — a fluent pace, so expect two to four times that while learning.
Is 1 Corinthians a good book to start with?: Not the gentlest: it ranks 16 of 66 by vocabulary. John and Matthew are easier by this measure.

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).