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Blog / What Are People Around the World Searching For in the Bible?

What Are People Around the World Searching For in the Bible?

In a previous post, we reported that visitors to BibleGateway.com come from 92% of the world: 242 countries or territories out of a possible 263, including Vatican City, Israel, Palestine, China, Vietnam, Cuba, and North Korea. These visitors spent more than 76 million hours last year searching, reading, studying, comparing, and sharing the Bible in their own languages.

[Read the Bible Gateway Blog post, Latest Bible-Related Research]

But what, exactly, were they looking for in the Bible? And do Bible readers in different parts of the world gravitate toward different sections of the Bible?

As a helpful visual resource, the strategic mission research and mapping agency GMI used data supplied by Bible Gateway to create the following Missiographic (click image to enlarge):

Missiographic: What Are People Searching For?

(Click for a PDF version.)

What conclusions can we draw from this? As the chart shows, people in the ten most populous countries in the world are reading Psalms, Genesis, the Gospels, and 1 Corinthians 13. Here’s a breakdown, taken from the Missiographic, of the most popular Bible passages in the ten most populous countries:

China

  1. Matthew 1
  2. John 1
  3. Psalm 23
  4. 1 Corinthians 13
  5. Genesis 2
India

  1. Psalm 23
  2. Genesis 1
  3. John 3:16
  4. Psalm 1
  5. Proverbs 1
USA

  1. Psalm 23
  2. 1 Corinthians 13
  3. Genesis 1
  4. John 3:16
  5. Jeremiah 29:11
Indonesia

  1. Genesis 1
  2. John 3:16
  3. 1 Corinthians 13
  4. Ecclesiastes 3
  5. Psalm 1
Brazil

  1. Genesis 1
  2. Psalm 23
  3. 1 Corinthians 13
  4. John 3:16
  5. John 1
Pakistan

  1. Psalm 23
  2. Psalm 91
  3. Genesis 1
  4. Proverbs 1
  5. Psalm 89
Bangladesh

  1. Psalm 91
  2. Psalm 89
  3. Genesis 1
  4. Psalm 23
  5. 1 Corinthians 13
Nigeria

  1. Psalm 23
  2. Psalm 51
  3. Psalm 121
  4. Genesis 1
  5. Psalm 27
Russia

  1. 1 Corinthians 13
  2. Matthew 1
  3. Psalm 23
  4. John 1
  5. Matthew 5
Japan

  1. Genesis 1
  2. Psalm 23
  3. John 1
  4. Psalm 91
  5. 1 Corinthians 13

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Filed under Infographics, Statistics