Obviously, taken as a whole, the books of the New Testament were quite popular. They were Scripture, after all!
But how popular were they individually?
People today have favorite books in the Bible–ones they go to all the time, and ones they only rarely look at.
This is a phenomenon that affects both the books of the Old and the New Testament, and it’s possible to get a sense of how popular particular books were in particular time periods.
One way of doing that–before the Bible was bound as a single volume–is by seeing how many copies there are of individual books.
In Larry W. Hurtado’s outstanding study, The Earliest Christian Artifacts: Manuscripts and Christian Origins
This gives us an approximate idea (but only an approximate idea) of which books were more popular than others in this time period, because the Christians in these centuries had to have copies make of single books or a few books together, and the more popular they were, more copies would be made, and the more likely the manuscripts would be to survive to today.
Recently there have been rumors of a number of new early manuscripts being found, but these have not been verified as yet. If they are verified these might alter the following counts slightly, but they would not offer the overall picture much.
Here’s the count both by canonical frequency and order:
By Frequency:
- John (16)
- Matthew (12)
- Luke (7)
- Acts (7)
- Revelation (5)
- Romans (4)
- Hebrews (4)
- Ephesians (3)
- 1 Thessalonians (3)
- James (3)
- 1 Corinthians (2)
- Philippians (2)
- 2 Thessalonians (2)
- Jude (2)
- Mark (1)
- 2 Corinthians (1)
- Galatians (1)
- Colossians (1)
- Titus (1)
- Philemon (1)
- 1 Peter (1)
- 2 Peter (1)
- 1 John (1?)
- 2 John (1)
- 1 Timothy (0)
- 2 Timothy (0)
- 3 John (0)
By Canonical Order:
- Matthew (12)
- Mark (1)
- Luke (7)
- John (16)
- Acts (7)
- Romans (4)
- 1 Corinthians (2)
- 2 Corinthians (1)
- Galatians (1)
- Ephesians (3)
- Philippians (2)
- Colossians (1)
- 1 Thessalonians (3)
- 2 Thessalonians (2)
- 1 Timothy (0)
- 2 Timothy (0)
- Titus (1)
- Philemon (1)
- Hebrews (4)
- James (3)
- 1 Peter (1)
- 2 Peter (1)
- 1 John (1?)
- 2 John (1)
- 3 John (0)
- Jude (2)
- Revelation (5)
As you’d expect, the Gospels and Acts are the most popular books of all–with the exception of Mark, which was startlingly less popular (most likely because it’s short and does not contain much unique information; it’s virtually all found in Matthew and Luke; also, it’s literary style is lesser).
After the Gospels and Acts, Revelation is the next most popular (everybody wants to know about the Apocalypse!). This is interesting in part because the canonicity of Revelation was doubted by some for a time, but it’s subject matter is compelling.
After that we find Paul’s epistles, which tend to be more popular than the Catholic epistles, and the longer works tend to be more popular than the shorter ones (which you might predict since a shorter work is, by its nature, less informative than a longer one).
The fact that Hebrews has as many early manuscripts as Romans is surprising, partly because its canonicity was questioned by some. The high Christology it contains, however, might have boosted how popular it was (it also is a longer work).
James is also quite popular–moreso than the other Catholic epistles.
All of this has to be taken with some nuance, because what survived may not be fully representative of what was popular. Also, discovering even a few new manuscripts would change the rankings of some of these books.
But it’s still helpful for developing a general picture of what was popular.
And that picture significantly coincides with what most Christians today consider the most popular books.
So which of your favorites rank high–or don’t? Let me know in the comment box!