How long does it take to read the Bible?
About 55 hours. The King James Bible is 790,325 words, which takes 55 hours 21 minutes at the average adult silent reading pace of 238 words a minute, or 71 hours 59 minutes read aloud at 183. To read it in a year, read 9 minutes a day, about 3.3 chapters. At 15 minutes a day you finish in 222 days.
Reading rates from Brysbaert (2019), a review of 190 studies of silent reading and 77 of reading aloud: adults read English non-fiction silently at 238 words a minute (most between 175 and 300) and aloud at 183.
Bible reading time calculator
Pick a book or section, your pace and how many minutes a day you can read.
The whole Bible: 790,325 words and 1,189 chapters in the King James Version.
Reading time by section
| Section | Chapters | Words (KJV) | Silent | Aloud |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| The whole Bible | 1,189 | 790,325 | 55 hours 21 minutes | 71 hours 59 minutes |
| Old Testament | 929 | 609,937 | 42 hours 43 minutes | 55 hours 33 minutes |
| New Testament | 260 | 180,388 | 12 hours 38 minutes | 16 hours 26 minutes |
| The five books of Moses (Genesis to Deuteronomy) | 187 | 156,837 | 10 hours 59 minutes | 14 hours 17 minutes |
| The four Gospels (Matthew to John) | 89 | 83,879 | 5 hours 52 minutes | 7 hours 38 minutes |
| Paul's letters (Romans to Philemon) | 87 | 43,321 | 3 hours 2 minutes | 3 hours 57 minutes |
How long each book takes to read
Minutes of silent reading at 238 words a minute, King James Version. Select a book for its chapters, verses and longest verse.
Reading the Bible: common questions
How long does it take to read the New Testament?
About 12 hours 38 minutes at 238 words a minute: 180,388 words in the KJV. The Old Testament takes about 42 hours 43 minutes.
How many chapters a day do you need to read the Bible in a year?
1,189 chapters over 365 days is 3.26 a day, so three chapters on most days and four on about one day in four. In time, that is about 9 minutes a day at an average pace.
How long does it take to read the Bible out loud?
About 71 hours 59 minutes at 183 words a minute, the average adult reading-aloud rate. Audio Bibles vary with the narrator's pace.
How long does it take to read the Gospels?
Matthew, Mark, Luke and John together are 83,879 words in the KJV, about 5 hours 52 minutes of reading. Mark, the shortest Gospel, takes about 1 hour 4 minutes.
See every book's chapters and verses on how many books are in the Bible, or the Bible by the numbers.
Counted by Bible Says About from the full public-domain text of the King James Version (1769 edition) and the World English Bible. Verse text only: headings and psalm titles are left out. A word is a run of letters: a hyphenated name like Beer-sheba counts as two, and an apostrophe stays inside its word (LORD'S is one). Matching ignores capital letters. Data compiled 2026-10-02.