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So You Want to Write a Kids’ Bible

Thursday, November 28th, 2013

The Christmas story illustrated from 1880 and 2013. The bottom illustration is copyright Lifechurch.tv.

Let’s say you want to write a children’s Bible. When the time arrives to collect the stories you want to include, you need to choose which of the hundreds of tales in the Bible will make the cut. You can approach this decision a variety of ways: thematically (stories involving children, for example), artistically (stories that are illustratable), or even mathematically.

And by “mathematically,” I just mean “counting”–gather a bunch of kids’ Bibles, look at the tables of contents, and count the number of times that each story appears. Google Books speeds up this process; they include dozens of children’s Bibles in their index, some from the nineteenth century. My assistant went through over thirty Bibles for kids, copied out the tables of contents, and aligned all the stories. The resulting spreadsheet reflects around 415 unique stories that have appeared in kids’ Bibles over the past 180 years; around 350 of them show up in more than one kids’ Bible.

Show the complete list of popular stories from kids’ Bibles.

Most-Popular Old and New Testament Stories in Kids’ Bibles

Old Testament Stories

  1. Noah’s flood (Genesis 6-8)
  2. Moses’ birth and being found by Pharaoh’s daughter (Exodus 2:1-10)
  3. Joseph’s coat, dreams, and sold by his brothers for twenty pieces of silver (Genesis 37)
  4. Ruth (Ruth 1-4)
    Creation of the world (Genesis 1:1-25)
  5. David and Goliath (1 Samuel 17)
  6. Capture of Jericho (Joshua 6)
    Crossing the Red Sea (Exodus 14)
    Daniel and the lions’ den (Daniel 6)
  7. Burning bush (Exodus 3:1-4:17)
    David chosen by God (1 Samuel 16:1-13)
    The Ten Commandments (Exodus 20:1-17)

New Testament Stories

  1. Jesus’ birth (Luke 2:7)
  2. Wise men visit Jesus (Matt 2:10-12)
  3. Jesus as a boy in the Temple (Luke 2:41-52)
    Jesus’ crucifixion (Mark 15:22-40)
  4. Feeding of the 5,000 (Mark 6:32-44)
  5. Jesus and the children (Luke 18:15-17)
    Jesus chooses his disciples (Matt 4:18-22)
    Jesus calms the storm (Mark 4:35-41)
    Jairus’ daughter (Luke 8:41-42, 49-56)
    The triumphal entry (Luke 19:28-44)
  6. Peter’s miraculous escape from prison (Acts 12:1-19)
    The Last Supper (Mark 14:18-26)
    Sermon on the Mount (Matt 5)
    Jesus’ ascension (Luke 24:51-53)

(Stories appearing under the same number in each column appear in an equal number of kids’ Bibles.)

Some stories fall in and out of favor over time–compare the following list of top stories from the 1800s to the top stories from the 2000s. After looking at the below list, one person I talked to suggested that the composition of Bibles for children has become more theological recently and less focused on character-building.

Most-Popular Old and New Testament Stories in Kids’ Bibles (1800s vs. 2000s)

Old Testament (1800s)

  1. Moses’ birth and being found by Pharaoh’s daughter (Exodus 2:1-10)
  2. Noah’s flood (Genesis 6-8)
    Joseph’s coat, dreams, and sold by his brothers for twenty pieces of silver (Genesis 37)
    Samson’s death (Judges 16:23-31)
    Ruth (Ruth 1-4)
  3. Birth of Jacob and Esau (Genesis 25:19-26)
    Cain and Abel (Genesis 4)
    Sodom and Gomorrah (Genesis 18:16-19:29)
    David chosen by God (1 Samuel 16:1-13)
    Samson’s birth (Judges 13)
    Samuel’s birth (1 Samuel 1)
    Samson’s marriage (Judges 14)

Old Testament (2000s)

  1. Noah’s flood (Genesis 6-8)
    Creation of the world (Genesis 1:1-25)
    Daniel and the lions’ den (Daniel 6)
  2. Burning bush (Exodus 3:1-4:17)
    Capture of Jericho (Joshua 6)
    Crossing the Red Sea (Exodus 14)
    David and Goliath (1 Samuel 17)
  3. Joseph’s coat, dreams, and sold by his brothers for twenty pieces of silver (Genesis 37)
    David chosen by God (1 Samuel 16:1-13)
    Egypt’s nine plagues (Exodus 7:14-10:29)
    The Ten Commandments (Exodus 20:1-17)
    Tower of Babel (Genesis 11:1-9)
    Moses’ birth and being found by Pharaoh’s daughter (Exodus 2:1-10)

New Testament (1800s)

  1. Jesus and the children (Luke 18:15-17)
    Peter’s miraculous escape from prison (Acts 12:1-19)
    Jesus’ birth (Luke 2:7)
    Jesus talks with the Samaritan Woman (John 4:4-42)
    Wise men visit Jesus (Matt 2:10-12)
    Jesus as a boy in the Temple (Luke 2:41-52)
    The triumphal entry (Luke 19:28-44)
  2. Bartimaeus sees (Mark 10:46-52)
    Jesus calms the storm (Mark 4:35-41)
    Jesus and the woman with bleeding (Luke 8:43-48)
    Parable of the good Samaritan (Luke 10:25-37)
    Parable of the prodigal son (Luke 15:11-32)
    Feeding of the 5,000 (Mark 6:32-44)
    The stoning of Stephen (Acts 7:54-60)
    Jairus’ daughter (Luke 8:41-42, 49-56)
    Jesus’ crucifixion (Mark 15:22-40)

New Testament (2000s)

  1. Jesus’ birth (Luke 2:7)
  2. Wise men visit Jesus (Matt 2:10-12)
    Jesus’ crucifixion (Mark 15:22-40)
  3. The Holy Spirit comes at Pentecost (Acts 2:1-13)
    Feeding of the 5,000 (Mark 6:32-44)
    The Last Supper (Mark 14:18-26)
    Sermon on the Mount (Matt 5)
  4. Jesus chooses his disciples (Matt 4:18-22)
    Jesus’ temptation in the wilderness (Luke 4:1-13)
    The faith of the centurion (Luke 7:1-10)
    Jesus and the miraculous catch of fish (John 21:1-25)
    Shepherds visit Jesus (Luke 2:15-18)
    Parable of the good Samaritan (Luke 10:25-37)
    Peter heals the crippled beggar (Acts 3:1-10)
    Parable of the prodigal son (Luke 15:11-32)
    Saul’s conversion (Acts 9:1-19)
    Jesus walks on water (Mark 6:48-53)
    Jesus changes water to wine (John 2:1-11)
    Zacchaeus (Luke 19:1-10)
    Jesus as a boy in the Temple (Luke 2:41-52)
    Jairus’ daughter (Luke 8:41-42, 49-56)
    The triumphal entry (Luke 19:28-44)
    Gethsemane (Mark 14:32-42)
    Raising of Lazarus (John 11:1-45)
    Jesus’ ascension (Luke 24:51-53)

The new Bible for Kids app from Lifechurch, out today, includes six stories: Creation, Fall, Jesus’ birth, Jesus heals a paralytic (the roof story), Jesus’ crucifixion, and Jesus’ resurrection. Aside from the story of the paralytic, all these stories are popular in recent Bibles for children.

Download the data

The raw data behind these lists is available as a Google Spreadsheet for you to download if you’re interested. For those books still in copyright, the contents of each book are copyright their respective authors.