The Bible by Weight

Each stone is one book, with its name on it. The bigger the stone, the more words the book holds. Five columns, one for each part of the Bible, each as wide as its share of all the words.

• Torah
• Prophets
• Writings
• Apocrypha
• New Testament

The grass withereth, the flower fadeth; but the word of our God shall stand forever.Isaiah 40:8 (ASV)

How this picture was made

The text

The 1611 King James Bible with the Apocrypha: 80 books and 36,819 verses. The Apocrypha is the group of 14 books the King James printed between the Old and New Testaments.

What was counted

Every English word. A word is any run of letters between two spaces, so a joined name like Beth-el counts as one word. In all: 931,571 words.

How it was drawn

The area of each stone is its book's word count on a true scale: twice the words, twice the area. Inside each column the stones are laid largest first, so no stone is squeezed thin. Where a stone sits in its column means nothing more. Two shades of each colour keep neighbouring stones apart.

Each stone carries its book's name, as large as the stone allows. Twelve stones are too small for even the smallest letters and carry no name: Nahum, Obadiah, Lamentations, 1 and 2 Thessalonians, Philemon, 2 and 3 John, and four short books of the Apocrypha (Susanna, the Prayer of Azariah, Bel and the Dragon, and the Prayer of Manasses).

What it shows

• Torah: 156,736 words (16.8%). Prophets: 280,882 (30.2%). Writings: 172,707 (18.5%). Apocrypha: 140,678 (15.1%). New Testament: 180,568 (19.4%).
• The largest book is Psalms (43,760 words). The smallest is 3 John (294 words).

What it does not show

It counts English words, not the Hebrew and Greek words underneath. A big stone is not a more important book. It is only a longer one.