Trivia: Which verse has the least / most number of words?

[Stephen Hughes]

I realise that verse divisions are late, somewhat arbitrary and based on work on the Vulgate translation, but these questions are about the GNT and might be interesting questions anyway:

There are some easily accessible figures for chapters-per-books, verses-per-book and total-words-per-book on the Greek New Testament Statistics collated by Felix Just, but he doesn't venture to give figures for words-per-verse.

Does anyone have an idea (from their own reading or a resource) which New Testament verse has the the least (which has the most) number of words (in whatever favourite manuscript type they use)?

[I think that we could accept a range of answers depending on the several manuscripts traditions that various people might use. There doesn't have to be just one right answer, just accurate answers.]

[George F Somsel]

I could be wrong, but I suspect that the least number of words occurs in Jn 11.35 ἐδάκρυσεν ὁ Ἰησοῦς.

[Stephen Hughes]

I could be wrong, but I suspect that the least number of words occurs in Jn 11.35 ἐδάκρυσεν ὁ Ἰησοῦς.

That seems like a very easy verse to memorise then.

[Alan Patterson]

I Thess

16 παντοτε χαιρετε

# of letters: 14

Not sure this is the lowest, but if not, it's a close 2nd.

[Alan Patterson]

I could be wrong, but I suspect that the least number of words occurs in Jn 11.35 ἐδάκρυσεν ὁ Ἰησοῦς.

I think this is the shortest verse in the English Bible, but that's a guess.

BTW, I am thinking in terms of # of letters, not words. I may have misunderstood the question.

[cwconrad]

Not the shortest verse, but the shortest sentence, I think, is Mk 16:8 ἐφοβοῦντο γάρ. It has been argued this cannot be the end of the gospel for the reason that a sentence cannot end with γάρ, but that argument seems baseless to me, inasmuch as ἐφοβοῦντο comprises both a subject and a predicate and γάρ is a postpositive, i.e., cannot come first in its clause.

[Stephen Hughes]

I am thinking in terms of # of letters, not words. I may have misunderstood the question

It's great, perhaps we could say that my question was too narrow.

[Stephen Hughes]

Not the shortest verse, but the shortest sentence, I think, is Mk 16:8 ἐφοβοῦντο γάρ.

I understand that you mean that is the shortest sentence you can think of in the narrative part of the text. While one could say that an element of a dialogue like the Οὔ of

Ὁ προφήτης εἶ σύ; Καὶ ἀπεκρίθη, Οὔ.

is in fact a complete sentence, it is also very plain to see - as you have implied - that a single person (or group "authour") writing a narrative or presenting an arguement attempts to make sentences in a way that recorded dialogue does not. There have been many comments made on this forum about how composing Greek (such as I like to do) is different from spontaneously producing Greek (as other even teach by).

Consequently, there would be two shortest sentences - in those different groups - one for dialogue and one for composition.

[Stephen Carlson]

Not the shortest verse, but the shortest sentence, I think, is Mk 8:8 ἐφοβοῦντο γάρ. It has been argued this cannot be the end of the gospel for the reason that a sentence cannot end with γάρ, but that argument seems baseless to me, inasmuch as ἐφοβοῦντο comprises both a subject and a predicate and γάρ is a postpositive, i.e., cannot come first in its clause.

(I'm assuming Mark 16:8 is meant.) Has a scholar of any reupte actually claimed that a sentence cannot end with γάρ??? (I'm not talking about some bloke on the internet.) I find that incredible and prima facie incompetent. After all, John 13:13 ends a sentence with γάρ. I thought that the usual scholarly objection to the ending of Mark 16:8 there is that (a) such a construct is very rare, (b) it is even rarer to end a work with γάρ (though, IIRC, there are examples), and (c) that ἐφοβοῦντο can takes an object, which might indicate that the sentence could have been cut off by accident (though at a syntactically meaningful place).

[cwconrad]

Not the shortest verse, but the shortest sentence, I think, is Mk 8:8 ἐφοβοῦντο γάρ. It has been argued this cannot be the end of the gospel for the reason that a sentence cannot end with γάρ, but that argument seems baseless to me, inasmuch as ἐφοβοῦντο comprises both a subject and a predicate and γάρ is a postpositive, i.e., cannot come first in its clause.

(I'm assuming Mark 16:8 is meant.) Has a scholar of any reupte actually claimed that a sentence cannot end with γάρ??? (I'm not talking about some bloke on the internet.) I find that incredible and prima facie incompetent. After all, John 13:13 ends a sentence with γάρ. I thought that the usual scholarly objection to the ending of Mark 16:8 there is that (a) such a construct is very rare, (b) it is even rarer to end a work with γάρ (though, IIRC, there are examples), and (c) that ἐφοβοῦντο can takes an object, which might indicate that the sentence could have been cut off by accident (though at a syntactically meaningful place).

(I'm assuming you refer to a "scholar of repute.") Since I have disposed of almost all of my non-digital reference library, I don't remember where I saw that argument about the sentence ending in γάρ. I concur with the judgment of prima facie incompetence. It just seems to me that some are loath to acknowledge the real possibility that Mark's gospel may have been intended to end thus and so go grasping at straws.