The Best-Selling Book in the World
In the world of eBooks and electronic readers, it is more difficult to keep up with the exact number of books printed/emailed, and read. The Holy Bible is purported to be the greatest selling book of all time, but is it? Here are a few examples:
100,000,000 copies Dreams of the Red Chamber (1791) Cao Xueqin
107,000,000 copies Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone (1997) JK Rowling
140,000,000 copies The Hobbit (1937) JRR Tolkien
150,000,000 copies The Lord of the Rings (1955) JRR Tolkien
6,001,500,000 copies Holy Bible (1500 BC-100 AD) 40 authors
There has never been a single-volume book that remotely approaches the Bible in sales.
We can level the playing field if we include the most successful Series of books:
Series of Books Sold:
65,000,000 copies Left Behind (1996-2007) LaHaye/Jenkins
130,000,000 copies Chicken Soup for the Soul (1997) Canfield/Hansen
450,000,000 copies Harry Potter (1997-) JK Rowling
6,001,500,000 copies Holy Bible (1500 BC-100 AD) 40 authors
There has never been a book series that remotely approaches the sales of the single-volume Bible.
Why is this?
How could there be more than 6 billion books of any nature sold? That’s nearly one Bible per person. There are reasons because the Bible is not an ordinary book.
Some interesting facts about the Bible (KJV):
There are 31,101 verses and 783,137 words.
The longest verse (78 words) is Esther 8:9.
The shortest verse is John 11:35 (2 words): Jesus wept.
The word God appears 3358 times.
Lord appears 7736 times.
The chapter system was introduced in 1238 AD.
The original KJV had 81 books instead of 66.
Some interesting facts about Psalms:
The middle verse in the Bible is Psalm 118:8.
The middle chapter is Psalm 117.
The shortest chapter is Psalm 117.
The longest chapter is Psalm 119.
The longest book in the Bible is Psalms.
According to Jeremiah. J. Johnston, President of Christian Thinkers Society:
Government-sponsored destruction of the Bible has occurred for two thousand years. Even in the English-speaking world, significant attempts have been made to usher the Bible into extinction. After John Wycliffe (1320–1384) and his followers created an uproar by translating the Latin Bible (Latin died as a language with the Roman Empire in ad 476) into English, it became a capital offense to translate, read, or possess an English Bible. In the fall of 1526, the Bishop of London, Cuthbert Tunstall, led a massive book burning behind St. Paul’s Cathedral, in an area known as St. Paul’s Cross. Thousands of Bibles were lost. What happened? History tells us the Bible grew in prominence and respect because the Bible is also the Holy Survivor.