Top Blogged Bibles
08/11/2006 01:32 Filed in: Faith & Reason
You may be familiar with the monthly ranking of Bible translations sold as reported by the Christian Booksellers Association. Here, for instance, is the listing for this month:
There are problems with these rankings, though. First, these sales probably do not adequately take into account Catholic Bibles sold in many stores that are not CBA members. Secondly, these rankings do not take into account sales of Bibles through non-religious stores in general such as Barnes & Noble, Wal-Mart, or even an online company like Amazon.com. I'm sure that if we could factor in sales from the large chains and a supplier like Amazon, the list might be significantly different. Too bad we can't see a ranking based on shipped items from each of the various Bible publishers instead of what's selling in a select number of stores.
Plus, a bought Bible is not necessarily a read Bible. To me, what's more interesting than the list of Bibles sold above might be a near-impossible-to-find list of Bibles that are used. As I was thinking about this, I wondered if we could get a listing of Bibles mentioned on the internet, specifically in blogs. So I did some searches for version abbreviations on Technorati and the results are very interesting.
A few notes before I show you the list. First, there was no reasonable way to determine the use of Eugene Peterson's the Message on the Internet because there's no standard abbreviation and the simple phrase "the message" might refer to many things beyond the Bible paraphrase. Similarly, there's no real way to search for the New American Bible because "nab" is also a word. Second, for similar reasons, I'm not including an searches for anything other than English translations. And third, a blog such as this one refers to many different translations, so none of these figures represent exclusive use of a translation. But even if I use the ESV for comparison's sake as opposed to a primary Bible, I'm still using that translation and such use bears some significance. Fourth, this survey does not include Bible references made in which no translation reference is made at all, and I assume there are a large number of these. Fifth, all of these numbers are inflated to some degree because these same abbreviations that I'm searching for are used in some blogs for other things. This issue was so significant, for instance, when I searched for "JPS" and "REB" that I chose not to include the results at all. In other words, these are not not scientific or exact measurements, but they are interesting measurements.
In the list below, I am listing translations in ranked order from highest to lowest. I am also including the "Mentions by Day" chart from Technorati for sake of comparison.
1. NIV: 74,723 hits
2. KJV: 29, 466 hits
3. ESV: 19,174 hits
4. NLT: 19,122 hits
5. RSV: 13,351 hits
6. NASB: 11,422 hits + 823 hits for the incorrectly designated "NASV" + 146 hits for NASB95= 12,391
7. NKJV: 11,906 hits
8. NRSV: 5,877 hits
9. TNIV: 2,855 hits
10. NCV: 2764 hits
11. HCSB: 1,206 hits + 81 hits for "Holman CSB" = 1,287 hits
12. NJB: 827 hits
A number of observations:
• The top two spots belonging to the NIV and KJV aren't surprising, but what is surprising is how the NIV dwarfs all the other translations by comparison. It has almost two and a half more hits than the closest runner-up, the KJV; and it accounts for 40% of all hits combined. The number is so high that I went back after compiling all the numbers and ran the search for "niv" again so that I could take a closer look at the results. I wondered if "niv" wasn't a common abbreviation for something else. But a cursory glance revealed that most of the references were to the Bible and that the numbers for the NIV didn't seem any more inflated than the other numbers.
• Note that the ESV is #3 for blog usage compared with #10 for CBA sales. It even beats out the NLT, though not by much.
• Note the significant number of hits for the RSV and NRSV even though neither show up on CBA sales charts at all. The RSV may be a bit more inflated because evidently there's also a RSV virus to which some of the entries were in reference.
• Although the HCSB is ranked #5 on the CBA chart, it's near the very very bottom of the Technorati search. Maybe lots of people are buying HCSB Bibles, but they sure aren't blogging about it. Even the TNIV has more than twice as many hits as the HCSB.
These are just some initial thoughts. What do you notice in looking at the numbers? Leave your thoughts in the comments.
There are problems with these rankings, though. First, these sales probably do not adequately take into account Catholic Bibles sold in many stores that are not CBA members. Secondly, these rankings do not take into account sales of Bibles through non-religious stores in general such as Barnes & Noble, Wal-Mart, or even an online company like Amazon.com. I'm sure that if we could factor in sales from the large chains and a supplier like Amazon, the list might be significantly different. Too bad we can't see a ranking based on shipped items from each of the various Bible publishers instead of what's selling in a select number of stores.
Plus, a bought Bible is not necessarily a read Bible. To me, what's more interesting than the list of Bibles sold above might be a near-impossible-to-find list of Bibles that are used. As I was thinking about this, I wondered if we could get a listing of Bibles mentioned on the internet, specifically in blogs. So I did some searches for version abbreviations on Technorati and the results are very interesting.
A few notes before I show you the list. First, there was no reasonable way to determine the use of Eugene Peterson's the Message on the Internet because there's no standard abbreviation and the simple phrase "the message" might refer to many things beyond the Bible paraphrase. Similarly, there's no real way to search for the New American Bible because "nab" is also a word. Second, for similar reasons, I'm not including an searches for anything other than English translations. And third, a blog such as this one refers to many different translations, so none of these figures represent exclusive use of a translation. But even if I use the ESV for comparison's sake as opposed to a primary Bible, I'm still using that translation and such use bears some significance. Fourth, this survey does not include Bible references made in which no translation reference is made at all, and I assume there are a large number of these. Fifth, all of these numbers are inflated to some degree because these same abbreviations that I'm searching for are used in some blogs for other things. This issue was so significant, for instance, when I searched for "JPS" and "REB" that I chose not to include the results at all. In other words, these are not not scientific or exact measurements, but they are interesting measurements.
In the list below, I am listing translations in ranked order from highest to lowest. I am also including the "Mentions by Day" chart from Technorati for sake of comparison.
1. NIV: 74,723 hits
2. KJV: 29, 466 hits
3. ESV: 19,174 hits
4. NLT: 19,122 hits
5. RSV: 13,351 hits
6. NASB: 11,422 hits + 823 hits for the incorrectly designated "NASV" + 146 hits for NASB95= 12,391
7. NKJV: 11,906 hits
8. NRSV: 5,877 hits
9. TNIV: 2,855 hits
10. NCV: 2764 hits
11. HCSB: 1,206 hits + 81 hits for "Holman CSB" = 1,287 hits
12. NJB: 827 hits
A number of observations:
• The top two spots belonging to the NIV and KJV aren't surprising, but what is surprising is how the NIV dwarfs all the other translations by comparison. It has almost two and a half more hits than the closest runner-up, the KJV; and it accounts for 40% of all hits combined. The number is so high that I went back after compiling all the numbers and ran the search for "niv" again so that I could take a closer look at the results. I wondered if "niv" wasn't a common abbreviation for something else. But a cursory glance revealed that most of the references were to the Bible and that the numbers for the NIV didn't seem any more inflated than the other numbers.
• Note that the ESV is #3 for blog usage compared with #10 for CBA sales. It even beats out the NLT, though not by much.
• Note the significant number of hits for the RSV and NRSV even though neither show up on CBA sales charts at all. The RSV may be a bit more inflated because evidently there's also a RSV virus to which some of the entries were in reference.
• Although the HCSB is ranked #5 on the CBA chart, it's near the very very bottom of the Technorati search. Maybe lots of people are buying HCSB Bibles, but they sure aren't blogging about it. Even the TNIV has more than twice as many hits as the HCSB.
These are just some initial thoughts. What do you notice in looking at the numbers? Leave your thoughts in the comments.