The Bible is one of the most sold books ever, but how long does it take to finish it?
It can take anywhere from 30 hours up to 100 hours or more to read an English translation of the Bible. It depends a lot on your reading speed. Another factor to consider is which translation you use, so the results may vary.
I did a test, and I could read around 250 words per minute at a sustainable speed. The English translation of the Bible has about 750 000 words in it, meaning with my reading speed, it would take approximately 50 hours to finish the book.
Later in this post, we go through different reading speeds, the average reading speed, and how long it takes in days to finish the Bible.
How long does it take to finish the Bible?
It takes from 30 hours up to 100 hours or more to finish the Bible, depending a lot on your reading speed. On top of that, another factor to consider is the translation of the Bible you are reading. Some languages use more words to tell the same story.
Let’s take a look at the reading speeds first.
- A slow reader can read around 150 words per minute
- The average reader can read around 250 words per minute
- A fast reader can read 400 or more words per minute
If you don’t know how to measure your reading speed, here is a post that has instructions for measuring reading speed.
The English translation of the Bible has around 750 000 words in it, so let’s do the math here.
- A slow reader can read the Bible in 83 hours and 20 minutes
- The average reader can read the Bible in 50 hours
- A fast reader can read the Bible in 31 hours and 15 minutes
Next up, we will take a look at what that means in days, depending on how much you read daily.
How long does it take for a slow reader to finish the Bible?
Let’s take a look at the slow reader first. It will really help, if you know how fast you can read so you can measure your time more accurately.
As calculated before, it takes around 83 hours for a slow reader to finish the Bible. In days, that would mean:
- 2 hours of reading a day to finish the Bible in 42 days
- 1 hour of reading every day to finish the Bible in 83 days
- 30 minutes of reading a day to finish the Bible in 166 days
- 15 minutes of reading a day to finish the Bible in 332 days
Based on those calculations, it can take from a month up to a year to finish the Bible for a slow reader.
If you read more than 2 hours a day, you should be able to finish the entire Bible in just over a month. That’s a lot of reading daily, and not realistic for everybody. Here is a post about setting realistic reading goals.
On the other hand, if you don’t have that much time to spend reading, it might take closer to a year to finish the book.
Reading less than 15 minutes a day can have an impact on your reading speed. It might take a while for your mind to get into the mood for reading, and achieving your full reading speed potential.
How long does it take for the average reader to finish the Bible?
Most of us fall into the average reading speed category. Even if you have not read a lot of books, chances are, you can still read at the average reading speed.
As we calculated earlier, it takes around 50 hours to read the Bible with an average reading speed of 250 words per minute.
- 2 hours of reading a day to finish the Bible in 25 days
- 1 hour of reading every day to finish the Bible in 50 days
- 30 minutes of reading a day to finish the Bible in 100 days
- 15 minutes of reading a day to finish the Bible in 200 days
You could finish the entire Bible in less than a month, spending two hours every day reading.
On the lower end of the spectrum, it might take more like 200 days up to a year, if you read 10 to 15 minutes daily.
How long does it take for a fast reader to finish the Bible?
Depending on how fast of a reader you are, you might read a lot more than 400 words per minute.
However, in these calculations, we use 400 words per minute as fast. That is more than most people can do, especially without a lot of reading experience.
As we calculated earlier, it takes around 31 hours for a fast reader to finish the Bible with a fast reading speed of 400 words per minute.
That translated into:
- 2 hours of reading a day to finish the Bible in 16 days
- 1 hour of reading every day to finish the Bible in 31 days
- 30 minutes of reading a day to finish the Bible in 62 days
- 15 minutes of reading a day to finish the Bible in 124 days
Reading a bit more than 2 hours a day would allow you to finish the entire Bible in just two weeks. That is a lot of reading and not realistic for everybody.
Reading 15 minutes daily, it would take around 4 months for you to finish the Bible if you are a fast reader.
Other factors that you should consider when measuring your reading time of the Bible
There are other factors that play a role when it comes to your reading speed of the Bible.
For starters, as we mentioned earlier, the language you are reading with. Some languages do use a lot more words to tell the same story.
Where the English version of the Bible has around 750 000 words, which might be closer to a million in some languages and a lot less in others.
Another factor is whether you have read the Bible before. If you have already read the book, the text and the style of writing is much more familiar. That allows you to read faster since it doesn’t take that much time for you to digest the information.
How long is The Bible?
The Bible has around 1200 pages and 750 000 words. That means it has on average 625 words per page, which is quite a lot.
Books typically have around 250 to 500 words per page. If you have ever seen the pages of a bible, you can understand that the text is pretty small, and there are a lot of words per page.
That is because if it only had 250 words per page, it would be a 3000-page book. A book with 3000 pages would be really large.
Final thoughts
The Bible is one of the most sold books ever, if not the most sold one.
Even if you were not religious, you can learn a lot from the Bible. There are many lessons of life and human nature that you can learn from.
As I mentioned earlier, if you are not sure about your reading speed, here is a post on how to measure your words per minute.
Hopefully, this was helpful, have a wonderful day!
