A guide to Bible versions

Why are there so many Bibles?

There are thousands of translations and a few different book lists. Set them beside each other, though, and what stands out is how much is the same.

Scribes and translators passing manuscripts across generations

A shared scriptural inheritance

Across Jewish and Christian traditions, the largest part of the scriptural library is shared. The 24 books of the Jewish Tanakh correspond broadly to the same corpus divided into 39 books in Protestant Old Testaments. Catholic and Orthodox Bibles receive additional ancient Jewish writings, while arranging some shared material differently. Most Christian traditions also share the familiar 27-book New Testament; the Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church preserves a broader New Testament canon. The differences matter, but they sit within a much larger inheritance held in common.

A parchment scroll beside an open leather-bound Bible. — A shared scriptural inheritance

New Testament books shared by most Christian traditions

24 / 39

The Tanakh's 24 books correspond broadly to 39 Protestant Old Testament books

59/66

books with the same chapter count in every edition on this site

1,189

chapters, the same total in 56 editions here, across 37 languages

The book lists, side by side

Each bar shows one broad family of canons. Matching dark segments represent shared scriptural corpora (not identical counting or ordering), and pale segments show books received in some Christian traditions beyond the Jewish canon.

Jewish Tanakh24 books

Tanakh · 24 books

Protestant66 books

Same core · 39 divisions

New Testament · 27

Catholic73 books

Shared core

New Testament · 27

Many Eastern Orthodox editionsabout 76 books

Shared core

+10

New Testament · 27

Shared scriptural core 27-book New Testament in most Christian traditions Additional books received by that tradition

Jewish tradition counts the same material as 24 books rather than 39, joining the twelve minor prophets into one and pairing books like 1 and 2 Samuel. Orthodox churches differ among themselves; the Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo canon is broader still, including additional books in both Testaments.

Books received in Catholic and Orthodox canons

Catholic Bibles include seven books not in the Jewish or Protestant canon: Tobit, Judith, Wisdom of Solomon, Sirach, Baruch, 1 and 2 Maccabees, along with further passages in Esther and Daniel. Orthodox collections vary and also include works such as 3 Maccabees, 1 Esdras, the Prayer of Manasseh and Psalm 151. The King James Bible of 1611 also printed an Apocrypha section containing the Catholic deuterocanonical books and several additional works, though not every book found in Orthodox canons. Most later KJV printings left that section out, which is why many readers have never seen it.

Explore related research

Why there are so many translations

Languages do not stand still. The King James translators wrote for readers of 1611, in their English, not ours. Every generation that finds the old words growing dim has done the same thing: put the text back into the language people actually speak.

Older copies keep turning up. Codex Sinaiticus, a fourth-century manuscript, came to light in 1844. The Dead Sea Scrolls were found from 1947, carrying Hebrew texts a thousand years older than any then known. Many closely resemble the later Masoretic tradition, while others preserve variants, evidence of both remarkable continuity and real textual diversity. Translators who come later simply have more evidence to consider.

There is more than one way to be faithful. A translator can follow the form and wording closely, or give more priority to conveying meaning in natural contemporary language. Every approach involves interpretation and trade-offs; literalness alone does not establish accuracy. Comparing translations and their notes can help readers see where choices differ.

Most new versions are not rivals. Of the sixty-four editions on this site, most are not competing English Bibles at all. They serve readers in languages such as Hausa, Tamil, Vietnamese and Amharic. Counted that way, the growing number of versions is not chiefly a story about division. It is a story about communities hearing a shared inheritance in their own language.

Manuscript pages, a reed pen, and an earthenware ink pot. — The craft of translation

And why the book lists differ

Long before any modern translation, Jewish scholars began translating the Torah into Greek in third-century BC Alexandria. Other books followed over several centuries, and these Greek scriptures circulated with writings and additions beyond the later Jewish canon. Greek-speaking Christians made extensive use of them, while early Christian writers did not all draw the canonical boundary in exactly the same place. Jerome, translating and revising the Latin Bible around 400, distinguished books found in the Hebrew canon from several others that remained in Christian use. At the Reformation, Protestants followed the Jewish canon for the Old Testament; the Council of Trent in 1546 formally affirmed the Catholic canon. Eastern churches preserved their own related traditions. These histories explain real differences without erasing the scriptures all of them continued to share.

When they appeared

c. 250 BC The Greek scripturesThe Torah is translated into Greek in Alexandria; other books follow over the next several centuries. Read here in Brenton's nineteenth-century English.
4th c. The familiar 27-book New Testament takes shapeAthanasius lists these 27 books in 367; regional councils at Hippo and Carthage list the same collection. Most Christian traditions share it, while the Ethiopian Orthodox canon is broader.
c. 400 Jerome's Latin VulgateThe Bible of the West for a thousand years.
1008 Leningrad CodexThe oldest complete Hebrew Bible manuscript, and the basis of the Tanakh text here.
c. 1230 Modern chapters spreadParis Bibles popularize the chapter divisions traditionally associated with Stephen Langton.
1551–55 Modern numbered versesRobert Estienne prints the familiar system in his 1551 Greek New Testament and his 1555 complete Bible, building on older Jewish divisions of the Hebrew text.
1599 Geneva BibleThe Bible of Shakespeare and the Pilgrims, first printed 1560.
1611 King James VersionOne of the most influential and widely memorized English Bibles.
1865 Van DyckAn enduring and widely used Arabic translation.
1876 Synodal translationRussian.
1890 DarbyEnglish, closely literal.
1899 Douay-RheimsThe classic English Catholic Bible, from the Vulgate; first issued 1582 and 1610.
1901 American Standard VersionAncestor of many twentieth-century English Bibles.
1909 Reina-ValeraSpanish, revising Casiodoro de Reina's translation of 1569.
1910 Louis Segond · Korean BibleFrench, still widely read across francophone Africa. And the Korean translation whose complete printing of 1911 opened the Bible to Korea, though the digital copy available today is missing some verses.
1912 LutherbibelGerman, revising Luther's translation of 1534.
1917 JPS TaNaKHThe classic English translation of the Hebrew Bible by Jewish scholars.
1919 Chinese Union VersionA historically influential Chinese Protestant translation that remains widely used.
1927 RivedutaItalian.
1934 Kinh ThánhVietnamese.
1949 Bible in Basic EnglishDeliberately small vocabulary, for readers new to English.
1965 Shinkaiyaku New TestamentJapanese.
1997–2020 World English BibleA public-domain modern update of the 1901 ASV; the project began in 1997 and reached a stable text in 2020.
2005 NET BibleModern English with extensive translators' notes.
2020 Berean Standard Bible · Literal Standard VersionThe Berean was dedicated to the public domain in 2023.
2020s Open translationsBengali, Urdu, Punjabi, Marathi, Telugu, Tamil, Malayalam, Kannada, Swahili, Hausa, Persian and more, given away by their publishers under licences with the conditions listed in the text credits. They are credited below.

How the chapters line up

Among editions on this site that contain them, 59 of the commonly shared 66 books have exactly the same number of chapters, and 56 editions contain precisely 1,189 chapters. The handful of differences usually reflect old traditions of arrangement rather than different underlying stories.

Book	Usually	Elsewhere	Why
Joel	3	4	Hebrew Bibles divide it into four
Malachi	4	3	Hebrew Bibles divide it into three
Psalms	150	151	The Septuagint carries one more psalm
Esther	10	16	The Greek additions printed as chapters
Daniel	12	14	Susanna and Bel printed as chapters
Ezra	10	23	The Septuagint joins Ezra and Nehemiah

Everything else matches, book for book and chapter for chapter. One oddity on this site is not a tradition at all, and worth naming plainly: the digital text of the Korean Bible of 1910 is incomplete. Roughly a hundred verses are missing from the ends of chapters, and 1 Peter 5 is absent entirely. Those verses are in every printed Korean Bible, including that one. They were lost when the old printing was transcribed, and the publisher's own record shows it: 259 New Testament chapters where there should be 260. It is kept here because it is the only Korean edition currently available to this project under terms that allow redistribution, and it is labelled in the version list so nobody is caught out by it.

The 66-book comparison set, and its chapters

These are reference counts for the 66-book comparison set used here, not a universal canon or numbering system.

Genesis 50

Exodus 40

Leviticus 27

Numbers 36

Deuteronomy 34

Joshua 24

Judges 21

Ruth 4

1 Samuel 31

2 Samuel 24

1 Kings 22

2 Kings 25

1 Chronicles 29

2 Chronicles 36

Ezra 10

Nehemiah 13

Esther 10

Job 42

Psalms 150

Proverbs 31

Ecclesiastes 12

Song of Solomon 8

Isaiah 66

Jeremiah 52

Lamentations 5

Ezekiel 48

Daniel 12

Hosea 14

Joel 3

Amos 9

Obadiah 1

Jonah 4

Micah 7

Nahum 3

Habakkuk 3

Zephaniah 3

Haggai 2

Zechariah 14

Malachi 4

Matthew 28

Mark 16

Luke 24

John 21

Acts 28

Romans 16

1 Corinthians 16

2 Corinthians 13

Galatians 6

Ephesians 6

Philippians 4

Colossians 4

1 Thessalonians 5

2 Thessalonians 3

1 Timothy 6

2 Timothy 4

Titus 3

Philemon 1

Hebrews 13

James 5

1 Peter 5

2 Peter 3

1 John 5

2 John 1

3 John 1

Jude 1

Revelation 22

A remarkably shared reference system

The familiar chapters spread through thirteenth-century Paris Bibles, and Robert Estienne's printed editions helped establish modern numbered verses in the sixteenth century. The system was adopted extraordinarily widely, though Hebrew, Greek, Catholic, Orthodox and Protestant editions sometimes number a passage, psalm or chapter differently.

Even with those exceptions, a reference such as John 3:16 usually brings readers using editions that contain the Gospel of John to the same passage. Tanakh-only editions do not contain the New Testament. The words may be translated differently and the surrounding book lists may vary, but the shared reference system makes it possible to read and learn together across those differences.

An open Bible with a ribbon marking a passage. — John 3:16

Questions people ask

Why are there so many versions of the Bible?

Languages change, translators make different choices about how closely to follow the form of the original, and manuscript discoveries give scholars more evidence to consider. Many versions also serve readers in different languages rather than competing with one another. Across those differences, translations draw from the same ancient scriptural traditions and share most of their contents.

Do Catholic, Protestant, Orthodox and Jewish Bibles contain different books?

They share far more than they differ, while counting and arranging some books differently. The 24-book Jewish Tanakh corresponds broadly to the same scriptural corpus divided into 39 books in Protestant Old Testaments. Catholic and Orthodox Old Testaments include additional deuterocanonical books, and Orthodox canons vary among churches. Most Christian traditions share the familiar 27-book New Testament; the Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church has a broader New Testament canon.

Do all Bible versions have the same chapters and verses?

Almost entirely. Among the editions on this site that contain them, 59 of the commonly shared 66 books have the same chapter count. Of the editions here, 56 contain exactly 1,189 chapters. Differences include the division of Joel and Malachi in some Hebrew traditions, Psalm 151 in Septuagint traditions, and different arrangements of the Greek additions to Esther and Daniel. The familiar chapter system spread through thirteenth-century Paris Bibles, and the modern numbered-verse system through sixteenth-century printed Bibles, but some traditions number particular passages differently.

Where these translations come from

This site uses public-domain texts and editions distributed under publisher permissions or licences. The credited editions below have differing conditions; attribution alone does not describe every permission. Consult the listed terms before reusing a text.

EnglishNew International Version Scripture quotations taken from The Holy Bible, New International Version® NIV® Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc.® Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide. Licensed through API.Bible · non-commercial · no derivatives

EnglishNew Living Translation Scripture quotations marked (NLT) are taken from the Holy Bible, New Living Translation, copyright © 1996, 2004, 2015 by Tyndale House Foundation. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers, Carol Stream, Illinois 60188. All rights reserved. Licensed through API.Bible · non-commercial · no derivatives

EnglishNew American Standard Bible 2020 Scripture quotations taken from the (NASB®) New American Standard Bible®, Copyright © 1960, 1971, 1977, 1995, 2020 by The Lockman Foundation. Used by permission. All rights reserved. lockman.org. Licensed through API.Bible · non-commercial · no derivatives

EnglishEnglish Standard Version Scripture quotations are from the ESV® Bible (The Holy Bible, English Standard Version®), © 2001 by Crossway, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers. ESV Text Edition: 2025. The ESV text may not be quoted in any publication made available to the public by a Creative Commons license. The ESV may not be translated in whole or in part into any other language. Used by permission. All rights reserved. Licensed through Crossway's ESV API · non-commercial · no derivatives · passages now, full reader coming soon

Most are Creative Commons: the Biblica and Bridge Connectivity Solutions editions, the Free Bible Version, the Literal Standard Version, the Tagalog ULB and Bíblia Livre. A few carry their own terms: the NET Bible is used by the publisher's permission, and the Amharic by permission of the Bible Society of Ethiopia. Some editions have non-commercial or no-derivatives restrictions. Each licence above was read at its publisher's own record rather than assumed, and every copyright line is quoted as it was found there.

Memorize a verse ›

Why are there so many Bibles?

A shared scriptural inheritance

The book lists, side by side

Books received in Catholic and Orthodox canons

Explore related research

Explore the Bible translation family tree

Compare Bible versions used by different denominations

See every book on its shelf, tradition by tradition

Why there are so many translations

And why the book lists differ

When they appeared

How the chapters line up

The 66-book comparison set, and its chapters

A remarkably shared reference system

Questions people ask

Where these translations come from