The long & short of it

The shortest book in the Bible is the Third Letter of John which is the third-to-last book of the New Testament. Believed to have been written by Saint John the Evangelist (Saint John the Apostle), it runs to just 219 words. Another of John’s epistles, The Second Letter of John, at just 245 words, is the Bible’s second-shortest book. The shortest book in the Old Testament is the Book of Obadiah which is attributed to the Minor Prophet of that name. It comprises 440 Hebrew words divided into 21 verses which form a single chapter. This book is the Christian Bible’s fourth shortest. (At 335 words, Paul’s Letter to Philemon, written from jail by the Apostle Paul, is the Bible’s third-shortest). At the other end of the scale, establishing The Bible’s longest book depends on which metric is used.The Book of Psalms in the Old Testament comprises 150 chapters – on chapter-count, twice as many as The Book of Jeremiah. But, measured by word-count, Jeremiah with 33,002 words dwarfs Psalms with just 30,147 words. In fact, the Book of Genesis (32,046 words) is The Bible’s second-longest book according to this metric. The longest New Testament book – and The Bible’s 12th longest – is the Gospel of Luke comprising 1,151 verses or 19,482 words.