Antiquities of the Jews vs Main currents in American thought
Both counted from their full texts, the same way, on the same day.
791words between them — 3 min of it
Antiquities of the Jews is longer — 541,368 words against 540,577 for Main currents in American thought, a difference of 791 words or about 3 min of extra reading. Antiquities of the Jews is the harder read, at grade 16 against 12.4.
SOURCE·Project Gutenberg full texts·both editions counted the same way·REVIEWED JUL 2026
Side by side
| Antiquities of the Jews | Main currents in American thought | |
|---|---|---|
| Author | Josephus, Flavius | Parrington, Vernon Louis |
| Words | 541,368 | 540,577 |
| Reading time at 250 wpm | 36h 05m | 36h 02m |
| Unique words | 13,369 | 27,385 |
| Sentences | 13,871 | 23,526 |
| Average sentence length | 39 words | 23 words |
| Reading grade | 16 | 12.4 |
| Reading ease | 49.6 | 47 |
| Long words | 9% | 16.6% |
Highlighted cells are the larger figure — except reading ease, where higher means easier.
SOURCE·Project Gutenberg full texts·both editions, same counting rule·REVIEWED JUL 2026
How this is worked out
- Both texts are counted the same way, from the same source, with Gutenberg's header and licence footer struck first.
- The gap is stated in words and then in time at 250 words a minute — the rate is printed because a duration without one cannot be checked.
- Difficulty is compared on Flesch–Kincaid grade, which reads sentence and word length only. It cannot see irony or dialect, so treat it as a measure of surface, not of effort.
gap = |541,368 − 540,577| = 791 words 791 ÷ 250 wpm = 3 min of extra reading
The second question
Which is longer, Antiquities of the Jews or Main currents in American thought?
Antiquities of the Jews is longer — 541,368 words against 540,577 for Main currents in American thought, a difference of 791 words or about 3 min of extra reading. Antiquities of the Jews is the harder read, at grade 16 against 12.4.
Colophon
Both figures computed from Project Gutenberg plain-text editions — ebook no. 2848 and no. 78025 — and from no other source. Neither book’s text is set on this site.
SOURCE·Project Gutenberg full texts·US public domain·REVIEWED JUL 2026
Word counts and reading levels are computed from a specific public-domain edition and will differ from other editions and from other counting methods — see the method page.
