What to read next after John’s Gospel

I was wondering which OT (LXX) book would have the least unfamiliar vocabulary after reading John. Then I was wondering about GNT books as well.¹

The two sections in the post present the same data, but starting from different points. The first section shows the stats calculated on knowing teh vocabulary in John’s Gospel and the second sections presents them based on knowing the vocab in 1st John.

In the tables below a word is considered unknown if it does not show up in John/1st John (depending on the section). The tables also show the total number of lemmas and the word count for each book.

Starting after reading John’s Gospel

If we know the vocabulary in John’s Gospel, then 1st John ranking so highly is not surprising. Thus, 1st John would be the logical next step. Then reading 2nd John would probably be a good step because, even though the percentage unknown words may be higher than options higher in the table, the total number of unknown words is so small.

That Judges would have so few unfamiliar words percentage-wise surprises me. This means that it would fall at the 95% comprehensible mark thus making a good choice to read after John and 1st John.

After that I would probably skp to Revelation or Genesis despite Leviticus coming higher in the table because they are still above the 95% known vocabulary mark and they are largely narrative which I think is easier to follow.

Starting after reading 1st John

It’s interesting that Judges still ranks slightly higher than John’s Gospel. Percentage wise the difference is small, and Judges is about twice as long the Gospel which could account for this. Having twice as many words, it also has about twice as many total lemmas as well as unknown word. No wonder the percentages are similar

Conclusion

I find these numbers interesting. I hope they are useful to you as you decide what Biblical Text to read in Greek next.