Most Popular Bible Speak

Most of us 'Christanese speaking people' have a favourite verse of the bible. It is the kind of thing we keep close at hand to remind ourselves in time of great need or better yet to remind others of in their time of their great need and/or failure (all the while advertising our own magnificent bible competence).

With all this bible speak going around - the obvious question becomes - what are the most popular verses?

Well it isn't scientific by any means but the ESV (English Standard Version Bible) kept a record of the most popular bible verse searches and discovered:

Here are the most popular verses (including complete chapter views - so if there was a search for Matthew 1 and then another search for Matthew 1:4, then Matthew 1:4 would have recorded two hits):

1. John 1:1, 1:13, 1:12, 1:14, 1:3, and the rest of John 1 dominate the list
2. 1 Corinthians 13:4, 13:13 and the rest of 1 Corinthians 13.
3. Genesis 1:26, Genesis 1:1, and the rest of Genesis 1
4. Romans 1:16 and the rest of Romans 1.
5. John 3:16

Here are the most popular verses excluding complete-chapter views, which should give a better sense of popular verses (so in this case the verse only records a hit if it was specifically searched for):

1. John 3:16
2. Proverbs 31:10 and following. We speculate that these verses appear because people often only look at part of this chapter.
3. Matthew 5:27-30. Verse 30 is the most popular of the four verses.
4. Romans 8:28
5. Romans 3:23
6. Genesis 24:27

What are the least-viewed verses? Not surprisingly, they’re pretty obscure. At the time of our analysis, no one had looked at the following verses except as part of their complete chapters. (We’re introducing statistical noise by linking to them here.)

1. Numbers 31:25
2. Joshua 15:24, 15:40, 15:42, 15:50
3. 1 Samuel 30:28
4. 1 Chronicles 8:37
5. Ezekiel 22:17