Does the Bible really say “FEAR NOT” 365 times… one for each day of the year?
No, it does not. The two word combo “FEAR NOT” appears only 71 times in the King James Version of the Bible, a far cry from 365.
But what if we include variations of the phrase, such as “do not be afraid” or even “be courageous,” which is the positive way of telling us to not be afraid? It still gets us no where near 365 times. In fact, it won’t even get us to 200.
No matter how you try to count the word fear, or it’s synonyms, and associate it with a command not to do it, you cannot come up with anywhere close to 365 references in the Bible. And it doesn’t matter what Bible translation you use.
But there is one way to get there and that is to eliminate the “command” aspect of the equation and count all the time the word “FEAR” is used in the Bible. The only problem with this approach is that by using this method we overshoot the target of 365 because the word “FEAR” is found a whopping 501 times in the King James Version of the Bible. Other translations have far less uses of the word. For example, the word appears in the ESV only 437 times and in the NIV only 336 times. You may wonder, “Why the great discrepancy between English translations?” Because these modern translations use synonyms like “terrified” more frequently.
So now that the 365x myth is busted, does this mean that we now have reason to fear?
Not at all.
I am not going to take the time to research every command in the Bible and how often it is repeated, but I have a suspicion that if “FEAR NOT” is not the most frequently found command in the Bible, then it is certainly near the top of the list. Also, how many times does God have to say something for us to take it seriously? ONCE should be enough.
So, I hate to bust the bubble of all the people who love posting on social media how awesome it is that there is exactly one “FEAR NOT” command for every day of the year, but at least now they won’t have to worry about what to do on the final day of a leap year. 🙂
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