Bible Gateway Reveals the Most Popular Verse for 2014 and Our Bible Reading Habits

Bible Gateway is easily the most popular Bible concordance online.  It is used by pastors, the average believer, non believers as well as scholars to search verses, keywords and themes in the Bible.  Based on over 1.5 billion pageviews and over 150 million unique visitors to Bible Gateway from December 2013 through November 2014, this data provides a glimpse at how people engaged with the Bible in 2014. 

So, what's the most popular searched for Bible verses of 2014?  It doesn't surprise us that John 3:16 tops the list.  Here are the top 10 most searched for verses.

1. John 3:16

2. Jeremiah 29:11

3. Phil. 3;13

4. Romans 8:28

5. Ps. 23:4

6. Phil. 4:6

7. 1 Cor. 13:4

8. Prov. 3:5

9. 1 Cor. 13:7

10. Rom. 2:2

The website also reveals that the most searched for words include: 

1. love

2. faith

3. peace

4. hope

5. joy

6. grace

7. marriage

8. prayer

9. healing

10. holy spirit

Another interesting observation is that most people ted to read Genesis 1 on January the 1st and Revelation 22 on the last day of the year.  And Bible reading tend to be most intensive during Christmas and Easter times.

According to the Christian Post, Bible Gateway content manager Andy Rau stated in his analysis of the 2014 report that "there's a personal and devotional sense to many of these search terms which may echo the Bible in American Life Report's findings that most Bible readers look to Scripture to find answers to personal challenges and big questions in their lives, rather than for political or 'culture war' purposes."

Be that as it may, certain trends and events in 2014 have also clearly affected what people searched for in the Bible. The release of the Darren Aronofsky movie "Noah," for instance, led to a spike in searches for biblical passages about the Old Testament figure.

Bible Gateway tweeted after the film's opening weekend that "[visits] to the #Noah story in Genesis 6-9 ... saw a 223% increase," earning "Noah" a place in the website's 15 most searched-for keywords.

 

 

 

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