How many times does the Bible mention faith?

The count

• KJV: “faith” appears about 247 times.
• BSB: similar range.
• NIV: about 270 times.

The distribution is heavily skewed to the New Testament:

• Old Testament: about 20 occurrences of “faith” in most translations.
• New Testament: about 230 occurrences.

The OT’s relative scarcity of the word “faith” reflects a translation choice as much as a conceptual difference: the underlying Hebrew vocabulary is often rendered “faithfulness” rather than “faith.”

The Hebrew vocabulary

• emunah (אֱמוּנָה, “faithfulness, steadiness, trustworthiness”): about 49 occurrences. Habakkuk 2:4 — “the righteous shall live by his faith” (or “by his faithfulness”) — is the verse most quoted by NT writers (Romans 1:17; Galatians 3:11; Hebrews 10:38).
• aman (אָמַן, “to be firm, to trust”): about 100 occurrences in various forms. The verbal root behind “amen.” When God or a person is “trusted” or “believed,” this is the verb. Genesis 15:6 — “Abraham believed (he’emin) the LORD, and it was credited to him as righteousness” — is the foundational text for NT discussions of faith.
• batach (בָּטַח, “to trust, to rely on”): about 119 occurrences. A common verb in the Psalms.

The Greek vocabulary

• pistis (πίστις, noun: “faith, trust, faithfulness”): about 243 occurrences in the NT.
• pisteuō (πιστεύω, verb: “to believe, trust”): about 242 occurrences in the NT.
• pistos (πιστός, adjective: “faithful, trustworthy”): about 67 occurrences.

The Greek pistis covers a semantic range that includes:

• Belief — assent to a proposition or person.
• Trust — reliance on God’s character or promises.
• Faithfulness — loyal commitment to a relationship.

The Pauline use of pistis Christou (“faith of/in Christ”) has been the subject of long scholarly debate — does it mean “faith in Christ” (an objective genitive — Christ as the object of faith) or “the faithfulness of Christ” (a subjective genitive — Christ’s own faithfulness)? Both readings have substantial support.

Where faith concentrates

• Romans and Galatians: Paul’s densest treatment of faith as the means of justification.
• Hebrews 11: the “great cloud of witnesses” chapter — a sustained meditation on OT figures who acted by faith.
• James 2: the much-discussed counterweight to Paul, arguing that faith without works is dead.
• The Gospels: Jesus repeatedly commends individuals for their faith (the centurion, the Canaanite woman, the woman with the haemorrhage).

The OT-NT continuity

The relative scarcity of “faith” in the OT is largely a translation artefact. The underlying concept — trusting God, relying on God’s faithfulness, being faithful in return — is fully present in the OT but rendered with words like “faithfulness,” “trust,” “believing.” The NT writers found Habakkuk 2:4 (the righteous shall live by faith/faithfulness) and Genesis 15:6 (Abraham believed God) as the textual anchors connecting OT and NT vocabulary on this point.