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I have many times heard the claim that only very few people who identify themselves as Christians have actually read all or most of the Bible.

  • Have there been any studies to approximate the percentage of Christians who have read the Bible? I have found several numbers, but none of them cite any reliable sources.
  • Are there any significant differences between denominations?
hammar
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  • You might want to start with "how many people have read the Bible in its entirety?" Then you could try to figure out what percentage of those identify themselves as Christians. – styfle Dec 12 '11 at 04:34
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    Put me down has a yes, I've read the entire Bible. That's one. – Narnian Dec 12 '11 at 13:24
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    "Not enough" :) In all seriousness, is there a way to do a poll within the Christianity.SE framework? I mean, I'm a yes, and certainly this is a biased, self-selected group of Christian geeks, but even on this site, I think it would be interesting to find out the correlation of self-identified Christian and 100% Bible Reader. (Ideally, we'd also have a bronze badge for that fact too..) – Affable Geek Dec 12 '11 at 15:34
  • I've never read the whole Bible but I read everything but Jeremiah and Sirach, and then I listened to those on tape, does that count? – cwallenpoole Dec 12 '11 at 17:06
  • Do we get a point for each time we've read it? Or just one point whether we've read it one or many times? – thursdaysgeek Dec 12 '11 at 21:21
  • I don't know any hard numbers, but my experience within various protestant denominations has been that it is not nearly as many as would be hoped. Some portions of the Bible make for extremely dry reads that are rather hard to make it through even if you are determined to try and make it through. I would also put good money that the numbers would also be FAR higher for the New Testament versus the entire Bible. Personally, I've made it through all the way twice, but I'm also a big theology geek, as are most of the regulars on this site. – AJ Henderson Mar 18 '13 at 03:48
  • I just finished my 4th time last week. It takes me about three years each time. I always say there's no greater challenge to Christian faith than actually reading the Bible! :) That said, it's definitely worth doing. – Chris Sunami Jun 03 '14 at 17:50
  • I read the Bible straight through when I got saved in 1982 - took me 9 months. Been reading it straight through ever since. – Steve Jun 04 '14 at 02:44
  • The holybible made a corruption, every Christian read different version from other , you should ask how many differents version of HolyBible which exists , I answer you easly there are infinity many versions of them which need a huge of time to read it – zeraoulia rafik Apr 29 '20 at 17:25

2 Answers2

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Catholics who attend daily Mass for 3 years will have read through the entire Bible, or at least enough to disqualify themselves for St. Jerome to count them among the ignorant of Christ.

Ignorance of scripture is ignorance of Christ

St. Jerome (famous bible translator)

I won't attempt to extrapolate numbers that don't exist, but you might as well assume the number is non-negligible, but probably no more than 3% in North (of Mexico) America and Europe.

Personally, I don't go to Mass every day any more because of work, commute and family, but I did read the whole Bible when I was a telerelay operator and had the time.

Peter Turner
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  • Note: 1. This has only been true for the past 50 years. 2. If you compare all of the passages, you will notice that certain passages may be omitted and some are definitely omitted. Most of the time, however, this is because they are a literal word-for-word repeat of some other passage (I believe the requirements for a deacon only appear once while they appear twice in the New Testament). – cwallenpoole Dec 12 '11 at 16:52
  • @cwallenpool prior to translations in the vernacular, people probably read more of the bible since A.) Mass attendance was higher, in percentage at least and B.) AFAIK people often had their own copies of the Roman Missal that they'd read along with the Mass readings. But yeah, the readings are cut up in precise ways, mainly to join the OT message to the Gospel reading or to adapt the reading to the day's feast. – Peter Turner Dec 12 '11 at 17:07
  • The Roman Missale prior to VAII does not include all of the Gospels, let alone all of the Bible (and if you ever find a sedevacantist, this is one place where the new way far outshines the old in my opinion). As to Bible reading, that is doubtful as there is a strong history of prayer apart from study of the Bible (and considering literacy rates of the past 2000 years, that is far from shocking -- you don't need to read to be able to pray the Rosary). They may have had missales, but "reading the whole Bible" would have been practically unheard of. – cwallenpoole Dec 12 '11 at 17:22
  • Wow, that's totally true, still, I doubt they were any more ignorant then. And that's just Mass readings from the Lectionary, not including Liturgy of the Hours and the parts of Mass which are only becoming visible now given the new translation. – Peter Turner Dec 12 '11 at 17:40
  • I actually am a daily communicant and do the full office, but there are still things which I miss, even in a full three year cycle. Psalm 110:6, and 137:9 come to mind. (Sad but true) – cwallenpoole Dec 12 '11 at 19:33
  • This is not true. You will read from every book but not every verse of the Bible. For example, the first dozen chapters of First Chronicles (long lists of names) are not read and many other parts. See this answer: https://christianity.stackexchange.com/questions/30847/is-the-entire-bible-read-at-mass – raindog308 Nov 17 '19 at 21:14
  • @raindog, I think I hedged my answer well enough to not deserve that sort of critique – Peter Turner Nov 18 '19 at 04:46
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According to the Barna research group:

  • 20% of Americans (USA) claim to have read the whole Bible
  • 61% of Evangelical Americans (USA) claim to have read the whole Bible

To be honest this is a lot more than I expected!

(These numbers are based on a random sample with a probable maximum error of ±2.8%.)

curiousdannii
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  • That's actually pretty impressive. It's a long book. – Chris Sunami Jun 03 '14 at 17:51
  • Keyword being claim. I'm sorry, but I just don't believe those claims reflect reality, even with the margin of error. 1 out of every 5 people you meet on the street have read the whole bible? Over half the people you meet in any local church have read the whole bible? I think that poll just shows that people think they do more than they actually do. – LCIII Jun 04 '14 at 12:34
  • Sure, but flawed as they may be, these might be the best stats available. – curiousdannii Jun 04 '14 at 22:37