You’ve probably never heard of Peter Dickson, but he did something a few years ago that you really should know about, especially if you work on Capitol Hill for a senator, representative, congressional committee or congressional agency.

As Cold-Case Christianity’s J. Warner Wallace explains in his fascinating new book, “Person of Interest,” Dickson, a CIA analyst, spent a great deal of time in a building located between the Senate and the House of Representatives on the Capitol campus:

“In 1999, Dickson used his considerable investigative skills to identify the historical figure who has been the subject of more books than any one else,” Wallace writes on page 112. “He decided to conduct his search at the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C. This is the world’s largest library, containing nearly 110 million volumes in every language and format.”

How big is the Library of Congress collection? “It houses 532 miles of bookshelves. You read that right – 532 miles,” Wallace explains. “It is the world’s most comprehensive record of human creativity and knowledge.”

Dickson did his analysis of 18 million volumes and found that twice as many books have been written about the figure in the top position, Jesus Christ, as the second place individual, William Shakespeare, the Great Bard, about whom 9,801 books had been issued at that time.

Cut the Bard’s total by half and you come to the third and fourth most-written about figures, Vladimir Lenin with 4,492 and Abraham Lincoln with 4,378. Holding on in fifth place was Napoleon Bonaparte at 4,007.

The rest of Dickson’s top 10 were Karl Marx (3,817), the Virgin Mary (3,595), Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (3,431), Plato (2,894) and Dante Alighieri (2,878). Buddha was 12th, Martin Luther 14th, Hitler 15th, Aristotle 17th.

But wait a minute, you might be thinking, the Library of Congress likely has a distinct bias toward Western Civilization and its history, thus giving Jesus an edge over non-Western giants. Wallace thought of that as well, and comments:

“I wondered the same thing as I investigated the fallout Jesus created in the Common Era. When I first started to research Jesus, the Internet was still in its infancy, but today we have the benefit of search engines. including Google Books, “the world’s most comprehensive index of full-text books.”

Wallace found in a search conducted Feb. 4, 2020, that there were some changes in the top slots, but one slot remained unchanged – Jesus Christ remains the most written-about figure in the history of mankind. Here’s the top 10 (with book totals rounded off):

1. Jesus Christ (109,000,000)
2. George Washington ( 58,400,000)
3. Plato (27, 800,000)
4. Aristotle (21,000,000)
5. John Milton (20,800,000)
6. 6. William Shakespeare (18,700,000)
7. Charles Dickens (16,200,000)
8. Buddha (13,300,000/Martin Luther (13,300,000)
9. Gandhi (12,600,000)
10. Abraham Lincoln (9,340,000)

Interestingly, some rather famous people fell in Wallace’s 2020 results, including the Virgin Mary, who dropped to 12th, Karl Marx (13th), Napoleon Bonaparte (16th), and Vladmir Lenin to 23rd.

“The earliest centuries of the Common Era were cluttered with documents describing Jesus, and He has been the consistent topic of literature ever since. Even today, the dissemination fallout of Jesus is filled with millions of books published about Jesus,” Wallace observes.

“But that’s only part of the literary fallout,” he adds. There is more, much, much more. But to find out what Wallace discovered in his further search, check out his book, “Person of Interest.” I found it be an amazing book and I am confident you will as well. And, no, I don’t get a penny (or any other consideration) for saying that.

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