At a silent reading pace of 250 words a minute, all four Gospels take about 5.5 hours to read. That pace is an assumption, so your own time may differ. The ESV text bundled in Berean gives Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John 82,691 words together. If you listen at Berean's narration pace of 155 words a minute, the four books take about 8.9 hours. Mark is the quickest at about an hour. Luke is the longest at a little over an hour and a half.
In short
The four Gospels in the bundled ESV contain 82,691 words. At an assumed 250 words a minute, that comes to about 5.5 hours of reading.
Listening at 155 words a minute takes about 8.9 hours for all four books.
Mark is the shortest Gospel at 14,789 words, about 59 minutes of reading. Luke is the longest at 25,301 words, about 101 minutes.
These times cover the text only. Pauses, notes, and rereading add time, and that time is part of the reading.
How long does it take to read the Gospels, book by book?
Each time below comes from dividing a book's word count by a fixed pace. Reading assumes 250 words a minute. Listening uses 155 words a minute, the pace we measured from Berean's own narration.
| Gospel | Words | Reading at 250 a minute | Listening at 155 a minute |
|---|---|---|---|
| Matthew | 23,335 | about 93 minutes | about 2.5 hours |
| Mark | 14,789 | about 59 minutes | about 95 minutes |
| Luke | 25,301 | about 101 minutes | about 2 hours 43 minutes |
| John | 19,266 | about 77 minutes | about 2 hours 4 minutes |
| All four | 82,691 | about 5.5 hours | about 8.9 hours |
Word counts from the ESV text bundled in Berean, with times rounded
Luke is a long book. At 25,301 words it is the longest book in the New Testament, a little ahead of Acts and Matthew. If you plan to read Luke in one evening, give yourself close to two hours with a break in the middle.
John sits in the middle. It is shorter than Matthew or Luke, but many readers slow down in it. John has long stretches where Jesus talks and the narrator steps back, and you may want to read those passages twice. The opening is a good example, and John 1:1 in context shows how much a single verse can hold.
Why is Mark so much quicker?
Mark has about 8,500 fewer words than Matthew and about 10,500 fewer than Luke. That makes it the one Gospel most people can read in a single sitting. Mark has no birth story and no family line. It opens with one short line and then moves to John the Baptist in the wilderness.
1The beginning of the gospel of Jesus Christ, the Son of God.
The pace inside the book feels quick too. Mark often moves from one scene to the next with very little pause, and the word immediately appears again and again. Most scholars think Mark was the first Gospel to be written, and that Matthew and Luke drew on it. Not everyone agrees on the details, and you don't need to settle the question to read the book well.
If you have never read a whole Gospel, Mark is a fair place to start. An hour gives you the full arc, from the baptism of Jesus to the empty tomb. After that, the longer Gospels will feel familiar, because you will recognize many of the same scenes.
How much time should you add for pauses and rereading?
The table assumes you read without stopping. Real reading has stops. You go back to a sentence. You look up a name. You sit with a parable for a minute before you go on. That time doesn't count as falling behind. It is often the part of the reading you remember best.
You can make a rough allowance for it. Suppose you add one minute of pause for every five minutes of reading. Then the four Gospels take about 6.6 hours instead of 5.5. Treat that as an assumption too. Your own number depends on how often you stop.
Some passages slow almost everyone down. The teaching in Matthew 5 to 7 has a lot packed into it, and the guide to the Sermon on the Mount shows how much each part rewards a second look. The last supper discourse in John 13 to 17 is another place where people slow down. The parables in Luke 15 are short, but readers often stay with them for a long time.
Listening adds time in a different way. At 155 words a minute, narration is slower than most silent reading. But you can listen on a walk or during a drive, when you could not read a page. The guide to listening to the whole Bible runs the same math across all 66 books.
How can you fit the Gospels into a week or a month?
Once you know the totals, you can choose a pace that fits the time you have. Here are a few ways to divide the 82,691 words. Every option uses the same 250 and 155 figures.
- One Gospel per sitting. Set aside four sessions, from about an hour for Mark to close to two hours for Luke.
- All four in a week. That averages about 47 minutes of reading a day, or about 76 minutes of listening.
- All four in a month. Over 30 days, you read about 2,756 words a day. That is about 11 minutes of reading or about 18 minutes of listening.
- Mark in a week. At about 2,100 words a day, Mark takes about 8.5 minutes of reading each day.
A month is a gentle pace for most people. It leaves room for a question or a note each day without turning the reading into a race. If you are new to reading the Bible, the plan for your first 30 days gives you a daily starting point.
The order is up to you. Some readers go in canonical order, Matthew to John. Others start with Mark and finish with John. Some like to read the same scene in two or three Gospels side by side, and others prefer to read one book at a time to see each writer's shape. Christians use both approaches, and each one shows you something different.
Why read all four Gospels?
Each Gospel tells the story of Jesus from its own angle. Matthew often links events to the Hebrew Scriptures. Mark keeps the pace moving. Luke opens by saying he wrote an orderly record after looking into things carefully (Luke 1:1-4). John picks fewer scenes and stays with them longer. Near the end of his book, John names his reason for writing.
31but these are written so that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in his name.
In John 20:30-31, John says Jesus did many other signs that he did not write down. He chose what to include for a purpose. Matthew, Mark, and Luke also chose and arranged their material, each in its own way. If you read all four, you hear four voices describe the same person. Some details line up closely. Others differ, and those differences are worth noticing slowly rather than rushing past.
The Gospels make up a large part of the New Testament, and they are a natural place to begin it. To see how the rest of the New Testament adds up, read how long it takes to read the New Testament. Whatever pace you choose, the numbers here are only a starting estimate. Give the text the time it asks for.
