It's all in the numbers

Glenn asked an interesting question today, and one I've thought about a lot - Did We Misunderstand God? If I may summarize it, he wonders why Christians throughout history and in present times seem to miss what grace really means, but instead "the human awareness of our badness and foolish thinking that we can fix everything ourselves has led us to place of perpetual guilt and striving." Amen.

I think there's a very natural, human explanation for this. Actually, I think there are lots of them - our constant need to prove ourselves better than someone else, our innate judgmental natures, our tendency to not trust good news. But I also think there's a simple, mathematical explanation. It's because our canon as Christians emphasizes law and works over grace. Now, I am not saying that in a theological sense - I understand completely the building of God's story of forgiveness through the Old Testament and then the New, how things in the first "half" lead to things in the second. That's all clear. But here's the problem - the Old Testament isn't "half" - it's more like "three quarters". And I will get to what I mean by that in a second.

First, I want you to think about something. Let's say you have a family member or friend and you talk about things in your lives every day. Over time, you will know what's really important to that person, what's really on their mind, because they will talk about it a lot. If you cared, you could count the number of times they mention it, and find out where their children vs. their spouse vs. their pet vs. their job vs. the economy vs. global warming and on and on all lay out in terms of relative importance to them. If they talk about it a lot, then it's important. If they don't talk about it at all, then it's not important. And topics will be scattered everywhere in between. We of course don't do that type of explicit analysis with our family and friends (unless you're an obsessive compulsive nutjob), but we do do it at some level subconsciously. I bet if I asked you, "What are the top five most important things to your spouse?", with a bit of thinking you could come up with an answer.

So we all do that sort of analysis, whether we're aware of it or not. Well, here's the deal - the Bible spends roughly 75% of its time talking about the old covenant, and only 25% on the new. Moreover, if you look at just the "red letter" books in the New Testament (the ones in which Jesus spake, versus the other NT books comprised of sittin' 'round talkin' 'bout Jesus), the ratio is less than one sixth of the entire Bible.

Where am I getting these numbers? I did some analysis using book, chapter, verse and word counts of the Bible conveniently provided by one of those Biblical numerology crazoids on the 'net. Now, I am not saying I think there's anything "magical" or hidden in these numbers. But in terms of pure statistical analysis they do provide an objective measure of the sheer amount of verbiage in each book of the Bible, and allow for comparison between the Old Testament and the New Testament (and the "red letter" books as well). I have included a partial table at the bottom of this post with more details. But I will sum it up here, rounded to the nearest percent:

	Old Test.	New Test.	(Red Letter)
Books	59%	41%	(9%)
Chapters	78%	22%	(12%)
Verses	74%	26%	(17%)
Words	77%	23%	(15%)

I think the most telling of all those percentages are the word counts, given that the others, especially chapters and verses, are pretty much arbitrary divisions added on by later generations. So, with our natural human tendency to weight the importance of something by the number of words devoted to it, we can see that only one in four words in the Bible have to do with Jesus's life, death, resurrection and what that means, and only around one in seven have to deal with His life and words directly. Over 75%, more than three quarters of the entire book, deals with the Fall, Law and how impossible man's relationship with God is until grace enters the picture.

Yes, yes, the entire OT is pointing toward Jesus, but I think so many people get hung up with the minutiae in it that shows trying to follow God through good deeds (I could be snarky and lump in the book of James with that, but I won't). Never mind that it shows that mankind fails over and over to do it on their own and God was wroth. The mere fact that so much space, so much verbiage, is devoted to it means it is subconsciously weighted as more important in our minds. I wonder if so many Christians come across as judgmental "Old Testament" Christians precisely because of this? Three quarters of what they read is law, judgment and wrath? Less than a fourth is Good News. Seems sort of backwards, huh?

What do you think?

APPENDIX

Note: In the following table, if a percentage represents more than 2% of the entire Bible it is bold, and if it is more than 4% it is in bold red. Observe that only the Old Testament has books in bold red. Also, these numbers were taken from the KJV, but I don't think the percentages would change in any material way using any other English translation. A full spreadsheet that shows more (including percentages for each book relative to its respective testament) is available upon request.

	Book	Chap.	Verses	Words	%Ttl Ch	%Ttl Vs	%Ttl Wd
1	Genesis	50	1533	38262	4.21%	4.93%	4.85%
2	Exodus	40	1213	32685	3.36%	3.90%	4.15%
3	Leviticus	27	859	24541	2.27%	2.76%	3.11%
4	Numbers	36	1288	32896	3.03%	4.14%	4.17%
5	Deuteronomy	34	959	28352	2.86%	3.08%	3.60%
6	Joshua	24	658	18854	2.02%	2.12%	2.39%
7	Judges	21	618	18966	1.77%	1.99%	2.41%
8	Ruth	4	85	2574	0.34%	0.27%	0.33%
9	1 Samuel	31	810	25048	2.61%	2.60%	3.18%
10	2 Samuel	24	695	20600	2.02%	2.23%	2.61%
11	1 Kings	22	816	24513	1.85%	2.62%	3.11%
12	2 Kings	25	719	23517	2.10%	2.31%	2.98%
13	1 Chronicles	29	942	20365	2.44%	3.03%	2.58%
14	2 Chronicles	36	822	26069	3.03%	2.64%	3.31%
15	Ezra	10	280	7440	0.84%	0.90%	0.94%
16	Nehemiah	13	406	10480	1.09%	1.31%	1.33%
17	Esther	10	167	5633	0.84%	0.54%	0.71%
18	Job	42	1070	18098	3.53%	3.44%	2.30%
19	Psalms	150	2461	42704	12.62%	7.91%	5.42%
20	Proverbs	31	915	15038	2.61%	2.94%	1.91%
21	Ecclesiastes	12	222	5579	1.01%	0.71%	0.71%
22	Song of Solomon	8	117	2658	0.67%	0.38%	0.34%
23	Isaiah	66	1292	37036	5.55%	4.15%	4.70%
24	Jeremiah	52	1364	42654	4.37%	4.39%	5.41%
25	Lamentations	5	154	3411	0.42%	0.50%	0.43%
26	Ezekiel	48	1273	39401	4.04%	4.09%	5.00%
27	Daniel	12	357	11602	1.01%	1.15%	1.47%
28	Hosea	14	197	5174	1.18%	0.63%	0.66%
29	Joel	3	73	2033	0.25%	0.23%	0.26%
30	Amos	9	146	4216	0.76%	0.47%	0.53%
31	Obadiah	1	21	669	0.08%	0.07%	0.08%
32	Jonah	4	48	1320	0.34%	0.15%	0.17%
33	Micah	7	105	3152	0.59%	0.34%	0.40%
34	Nahum	3	47	1284	0.25%	0.15%	0.16%
35	Habakkuk	3	56	1475	0.25%	0.18%	0.19%
36	Zephaniah	3	53	1616	0.25%	0.17%	0.21%
37	Haggai	2	38	1130	0.17%	0.12%	0.14%
38	Zechariah	14	211	6443	1.18%	0.68%	0.82%
39	Malachi	4	55	1781	0.34%	0.18%	0.23%
Totals	39	929	23145	609269	78.13%	74.42%	77.29%
	59.09%
Book		Chap.	Verses	Words	%Ttl Ch	%Ttl Vs	%Ttl Wd
40	Matthew	28	1071	23343	2.35%	3.44%	2.96%
41	Mark	16	678	14949	1.35%	2.18%	1.90%
42	Luke	24	1151	25640	2.02%	3.70%	3.25%
43	John	21	879	18658	1.77%	2.83%	2.37%
44	Acts	28	1007	24229	2.35%	3.24%	3.07%
45	Romans	16	433	9422	1.35%	1.39%	1.20%
46	1 Corinthians	16	437	9462	1.35%	1.41%	1.20%
47	2 Corinthians	13	257	6046	1.09%	0.83%	0.77%
48	Galatians	6	149	3084	0.50%	0.48%	0.39%
49	Ephesians	6	155	3022	0.50%	0.50%	0.38%
50	Philippians	4	104	2183	0.34%	0.33%	0.28%
51	Colossians	4	95	1979	0.34%	0.31%	0.25%
52	1 Thessalonians	5	89	1837	0.42%	0.29%	0.23%
53	2 Thessalonians	3	47	1022	0.25%	0.15%	0.13%
54	1 Timothy	6	113	2244	0.50%	0.36%	0.28%
55	2 Timothy	4	83	1666	0.34%	0.27%	0.21%
56	Titus	3	46	896	0.25%	0.15%	0.11%
57	Philemon	1	25	430	0.08%	0.08%	0.05%
58	Hebrews	13	303	6897	1.09%	0.97%	0.87%
59	James	5	108	2304	0.42%	0.35%	0.29%
60	1 Peter	5	105	2476	0.42%	0.34%	0.31%
61	2 Peter	3	61	1553	0.25%	0.20%	0.20%
62	1 John	5	105	2517	0.42%	0.34%	0.32%
63	2 John	1	13	298	0.08%	0.04%	0.04%
64	3 John	1	14	294	0.08%	0.05%	0.04%
65	Jude	1	25	608	0.08%	0.08%	0.08%
66	Revelation	22	404	11952	1.85%	1.30%	1.52%
Totals	27	260	7957	179011	21.87%	25.58%	22.71%
Grand Totals	66	1189	31102	788280
	40.91%
Red Ltr	6	139	5190	118771	11.69%	16.69%	15.07%
	9.09%