Bible Numbers and Statistics and Dr. Thomas Horne

About the work of Dr. Thomas Horne who devoted his life to statistics and numbers from the Bible.

Super Bible Statistics

Do you know how many verses, words, letters there are in the Old and New Testaments combined? Do you know the longest and the shortest verses in the Bible? Do you know how many times the word "Lord" appears in the Bible?

You might not know to this day except for the persistence and industry of an eccentric British Bible scholar and theologian named Dr. Thomas Hartwell Horne, who determined to find the answers to these questions for himself and for posterity. Born in London in October, 1780, educated at Christ's Hospital School, Dr. Horne became a barrister's clerk. He yearned to be an author, and at the age of 20 he published A Brief View of the Necessity and Truth of the Christian Revelation. More books followed, but to support himself, Dr. Horne took a position in the British Museum as assistant librarian of printed books. His main work was that of bibliographer. Although his body served the British Museum, his heart was elsewhere.

In a London filled with romantics and rebels like Byron, Keats, Coleridge, Dr. Horne gave his full devotion to the Holy Bible. Eager to popularize the good book, Dr. Horne decided to build on paper a tree filled with fascinating biblical lore. But to acquire the information he needed, the obsessed religious scholar realized that he would have to follow John's dictum--search the Scriptures--dissect the King James Version of the Bible as no man in history had done before him.

Quietly, Dr. Thomas Hartwell Horne set out on his long and lonely statistical journey. The Bible was his domain and for 17 years he combed every inch of it. For 3 of those years, toiling in his spare time night after night, Dr. Horne counted the words--and the letters in those words--of every verse in the Old Testament, the New Testament, the Apocrypha. The fruits of his monomania appeared in his book Introduction to the Study of the Scriptures, which was happily completed well before his death in January, 1862.

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