How long would it take to memorize the entire Christian Bible?

General Memory Chat
1

More than likely you reading this have heard of Tansel Ali and how he memorized the Sydney Yellow Pages in 24 days which is comprised of two separate phone books of considerable thickness. With a memory system like his in play how long would it take to memorize the entire Christian Bible? I’m looking for a range of time (i.e. 6-12 months or 1-2 years).

I’m looking for answers based on theory, experience, or examples of other mnemonists memorizing works of approximately the same length and the amount of time required to do so recorded.

In advance, thank you for any solid input you may have.

2

I think that it would take many years to memorize the entire Bible (maybe shorter if only memorizing the New Testament). Numbers are easier than words, because there are systems designed for number memorization, like the Major System.

See also:

You could try memorizing a few of the shorter books to get an idea of how long it would take.

1 Like
3

Sydney Yellow probably prepared his memory palaces before he started memorizing. And making these palaces takes a considerable amount of time. Maybe more than the actual memorization.

Zoomy (Ben Pridmore, a WMC and a legend in memorizing) had to invest considerable time in expanding the amount of loci when he attempted to memorize the first 50.000 digits of pi. He used about 5000-5500 loci to memorize this. And he estimated it would take 6 months. I think that for memorizing the bible you would need more loci.

The bible has about 700.000 words. That is a lot to learn verbatim.

4

Hi @kzah1991, have you worked on memorizing the whole Bible since posting this? I’m interested to learn what progress you made any any tips you have.

5

I’ve thought about this considerably and am working on a system of my own. I’m pretty close to finishing my system and I currently think that if God let me work on it full time, it would take about 4 years to memorize the entire bible. This is assuming ~20-25 verses or a little less than a chapter a day. If you only want to memorize the New Testament, I think it would take about a year and a half. Of course, I’m not much of a memory athlete. It’s possible I’d get better and would be able to do it a bit faster, but it’s also possible that keeping up with what you’ve already memorized would take too long and it’d end up taking ten years.