Who Wrote Most of the New Testament?

 Is the claim correct that Paul wrote most of the New Testament?
  Critics make this claim to try and support their assertion that Paul somehow hijacked Christianity away from the Mosaic Law and into his own "grace theology." But the answer about who wrote most of the NT is easy enough to come to. All we have to do is the math.

  The information used below comes from the oldest sources we have: the Greek manuscripts of the New Testament. As you may know, the authors of the NT wrote in Koine Greek, which was the lingua franca of their day. The word numbers may vary slightly from source to source, but these are not going to change our final results.

  So who are our Top Three writers?

  The New Testament has a total of 138,020 Greek words in the Analytical Greek New Testament (AGNT). 

  Of those 138,020 words, the most prolific writers of the New Testament were:

  Author  Books                 # of Words      % of NT   

  Luke    Gospel of Luke        37,933          27% 
              Acts                               

  Paul     Romans                  32,407          23%
              1 Corinthians
              2 Corinthians
              Galatians
              Ephesians
              Philippians
              Colossians
              1 Thessalonians
              2 Thessalonians
              1 Timothy
              2 Timothy
              Titus
              Philemon

  John    Gospel of John         28,092           20%
              1 John
              2 John
              3 John
              Revelation

  While Paul may have written the most epistles, he did not produce as much volume as did Luke the evangelist.

Bible

  Other NT facts:
  
    Gospel of Matthew       18,345 words
    Gospel of Mark            11,304 words
    Gospel of Luke            19,482 words
    Gospel of John            15,635 words

               For a total of    64,766 words

  The four Gospels which tell us about the life and words of Jesus comprise almost 47% of the New Testament. 

  The next largest book after that is Luke's Book of the Acts of the Apostles, with 18,451 words, or 13% of the New Testament.

  After Acts comes the Book of Revelation, which contains what many Christians consider yet-to-be-fulfilled prophecy in the New Testament. Revelation has 9,852 words, or about 7% of the NT.

  The longest epistle is Paul's letter to the Romans, with 7,111 words, while the shortest is John's epistle of 3 John, with 219.


  References:

  The only website I found with a list of the number of words in the Greek New Testament was this one. The data is based on the Analytical Greek New Testament (AGNT):

  http://catholic-resources.org/Bible/NT-Statistics-Greek.htm


Comments

Anonymous said…
I am sure you have your established facts correct. However if you were to ask what percentage or amount of the teaching epistles did Paul write would you have those figures?

I do not disparage one iota of Acts or Gospels. Highly needed to know what Christ said. However those 5 books are history. They have lessons for sure among those 4 authors respecting how a believer would live after conversion. But the heavy lifting hard core teaching the believer how to walk with Christ and his/her position in Christ is done by Paul. And, he did illuminate what was in the gospels and Acts but he was in many cases the one who brought to us how to put the puzzle together and work towards finishing that divine puzzle. (mystery in Christ (Luke 8:10)(Eph.3:8-9)) Acts, unarguably the largest book was more history and in some circles used more for debate about doctrine of baptisms, etc.
So of all the very important instructional epistles written how does Paul figure in? Again minus Acts.
Grateful for you time and attention to rendering these stats. ":-Dx jep
REL said…
You forgot Hebrews? Paul 28%
Robert Weissman said…
I think it most likely that Paul also wrote Hebrews. No-one else was as well-qualified as he was. It closes with the same style as Paul’s writings. We need to remember that it was dangerous for Jewish believers in Jesus to be associated with Paul ,and this may be why the work was anonymous. It was definitely written before the fall of Jerusalem and loss of the Temple, because it speaks of sacrifice still taking place.That places its writing before AD70.
Grahame said…
Thanks. Can you do a total table for every author?

Maybe book by book as well. Then you could pie chart it. I can help with all that if you want it on your page.