1. The Bible was written in three languages

Those languages are Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek. Most of our Old Testament was written in Hebrew, which was the language the original readers spoke. A few bits of the Old Testament were written in Aramaic (Ezra & Daniel). The New Testament was written in Greek, the commonly spoken language of the time.

2. The Bible is about 611,000 words long

In those original languages, the Bible’s word count is about 611,000.

That word count is not going to line up with your Bible though, for a few reasons:

• When translating the Bible from its original languages to English, translators tend to use more words to get across the original author’s point.
• Different translations word passages differently, which results in a variation in word count.

But even so: it’s interesting to think that while the Bible is longer than Moby Dick, it’s nowhere near as long a read as the Harry Potter series.

3. The Bible was written by people from diverse occupational backgrounds

Parts of the Bible were written by kings. Half of the Psalms, a good chunk of Proverbs, and Ecclesiastes seem to be written by royalty.

But other parts of the Bible are written by farmers, fishermen, a tentmaker, homeless prophets, a doctor, a professional scribe, vocational musicians, pastors, etc.

4. There are at least 185 songs in the Bible

About 150 of these are in the book of Psalms. (I say “about” because there’s some debate as to whether a few of the separate Psalms were originally meant to be sung as one.) But throughout both the Old and New Testaments, people will sing songs about God or the events around them.

And 185 is a bare minimum—that’s only if you count the portions of Scripture that are specifically labelled as “song,” “psalm,” “dirge,” or “chant.”

5. The Bible was written on three continents

Most was written in what is modern-day Israel (Asia). But some passages of Jeremiah were written in Egypt (Africa) and several New Testament epistles were written from cities in Europe.

6. There are 21 dreams recorded in the Bible

And most of them are had by two different men named Joseph!