(I took this post down temporarily to correct an unintentional but serious factual error that I made originally: Because Moses wrote the Pentateuch, he, and not Luke, wrote far more of the Bible than any other writer of Scripture did.
I apologize for the inaccuracy of this post in its original form. Here is the corrected post.)
Analyzing in various ways the 66 books that the Holy Spirit inspired holy men of God to write reveals some striking and instructive facts about Scripture. After listing several of these facts, this post presents a key recommendation that stems from the profound distinction that Theophilus has among all people that have ever lived.
Noteworthy Facts about Scripture
1. The book of Psalms has the most chapters (150), verses (2,461), and words (43,738) of any single book of the Bible.1 Psalms is the only book of Scripture that we know with certainty was written by multiple authors.
We also know that many of the individual Psalms were written especially for specific people (the choir director, etc.). Moreover, we do not have any explicit indication that all the Psalms were specifically addressed initially to any one individual.
2. Moses wrote five books of the Bible, Genesis-Deuteronomy. These books combined comprise 5,852 verses and 156,736 words.
Moses authored far more verses and words of the Scripture than did any other author.2 Although his five books were for the children of Israel and were to be read to them, the books do not explicitly say that they were written for any specific individual.
3. Paul wrote 13 books of Scripture, far more than any other author of Scripture did. The Pauline Epistles comprise 2,033 verses and 43,487 words, which are both slightly less than the corresponding numbers for Psalms.
Paul addressed some of his epistles to individuals and others to groups of people, which means no single individual (or group) was the divinely intended initial recipient of all of Paul’s writings.
4. Although Luke wrote far fewer books than Paul and Moses did, and the combined size of his two books (Luke and Acts) is far less than the totals for the works of Moses, Luke’s writings are greater in both words (50,184 versus 43,487) and verses (2,158 versus 2,033) than the Pauline Epistles are when they are treated as a unit.
Compared to Psalms, although Luke-Acts has fewer verses (2,158) than the Psalms (2,461), it has more words than Psalms does (50,184 [Lk-Acts] versus 43,738 [Psalms]).
Although Luke wrote far fewer verses and words of Scripture than Moses did, he did write more of the New Testament than any other writer did.3
Luke wrote both of his books to the same man, Theophilus.
The following table helps us see further the significance of these facts:
The Profound Glory of Theophilus
The analysis of Scripture above underscores the biblical importance of Luke-Acts in comparison with the writings of other major contributors to Scripture. When we then also take into account that Scripture informs us explicitly that both Luke and Acts were written to the same person (Theophilus), we learn that God inspired far more Scripture to be written to Theophilus than He did to any other human being that has ever lived!
Moreover, Theophilus is the only person to whom we know with certainty God directed that two genres of Scripture be written (a Gospel; Acts). These facts show that the vast numbers of believers who have never thoroughly studied Luke-Acts as a unit should do so in order that they might be blessed in the same way that God blessed Theophilus by bestowing upon him the profound glory of being the initial recipient of Luke-Acts!
1All basic statistics in this post are for the books in English in the KJV and are based on the Detailed Stats available in the Search Statistics Window of BibleWorks 7.
2Moses also wrote Psalm 90, so the totals for the numbers of the verses and words that he wrote are actually greater than this but those additional verses and words do not affect the comparisons made in this post in any significant way.
3If Paul also wrote Hebrews, his writings would total 2,336 verses and 50,392 words. Paul would then have written more words of Scripture than Luke did, but he still would have written far less of Scripture than did Moses.
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