People tend to read longer passages of Scripture online but share shorter passages on Facebook and Twitter—usually a single verse at a time. It makes intuitive sense: after reading the Bible, you want to share a verse or two that particularly meant something to you.

The below charts quantify the difference in behavior between sharing and reading the Bible.

When people share Bible passages on Facebook and Twitter, they share individual verses 74% of the time and chapters only 9% of the time (note the large orange circles at the bottom indicating single verses):

But when people read the Bible on Bible Gateway, they read complete chapters over 50% of the time and individual verses 20% of the time (note the large blue circles indicating full chapters):

Here’s what happens when you zoom out on the second chart:

Do you see the green horizontal line in the Old Testament at around sixty verses? To read the Old Testament in a year, you need to read about sixty verses per day: thus the horizontal line.

The purple spikes indicate book boundaries (with Psalms as the largest spike in the middle; it’s large enough to have a shadow spike at Psalm 100).

The red dots, indicating passages that span more than one Bible book, are dramatic but comprise fewer than 0.01% of passage accesses.

Do you see any other interesting trends in these visualizations?