Bible Trivia Questions about Scripture

Easy Doctrine — The Scriptures

In Matthew 5:17 Jesus says he did not come to abolish the Law and the Prophets. What did he say he came to do?

1. AFulfill themCorrect
2. BReplace them
3. CExplain them
4. DSuspend them

Answer: Fulfill them

Matthew 5:17 · ESV

Christ came to bring the Law and the Prophets to their intended goal in himself. His coming does not cancel the Old Testament; it completes what the Old Testament was always reaching toward.

Matthew 5:17–18, where Jesus adds that not the smallest stroke will pass from the Law until all is accomplished.

Why not this one. Replacement is exactly what Jesus denied. The old covenant is fulfilled and its shadows are answered in him, but the Scriptures that spoke of him are not discarded, and the church has always read the Old Testament as the word of God.

Medium Doctrine — The Scriptures

Hebrews 4:12 says the word of God is a 'discerner of the thoughts and intentions of' what?

1. AThe mind
2. BThe soul
3. CThe heartCorrect
4. DThe spirit

Answer: The heart

Hebrews 4:12 · ESV

In biblical usage the heart is not the seat of feeling as opposed to thinking. It is the whole inner person, the place where thought, desire, will and loyalty all live, which is why the word can be paired here with thoughts and intentions. Verse 13 completes the thought: nothing in the creature is concealed, and everything lies exposed before the One to whom we give account.

Hebrews 4:12-13

Why not this one. Mind is a natural guess because modern English files thoughts under the mind and feelings under the heart, and this clause is explicitly about thoughts. Scripture divides things differently. The heart is where reasoning happens as much as loving, so the writer can speak of the heart's thoughts without any strain at all.

Hard Doctrine — The Scriptures

At which council did the Roman Catholic Church dogmatically define the apocryphal books as canonical Scripture, in answer to the Reformers?

1. AThe Council of TrentCorrect
2. BThe Fourth Lateran Council
3. CThe Council of Constance
4. DThe First Vatican Council

Answer: The Council of Trent

Trent settled the Roman canon in 1546 and in the same session placed unwritten tradition beside Scripture as a source of doctrine. The definition came after the Reformation had begun, which is itself telling about how open the question had been.

Church history; against it the Reformers set the sufficiency of Scripture, taught in 2 Timothy 3:16–17.

Why not this one. Vatican I met in 1869 and 1870 and is remembered for defining papal infallibility. It reaffirmed earlier teaching but did not first define the apocryphal books as canonical.

Easy Doctrine — The Scriptures

When Jesus answered each of Satan's temptations in the wilderness with the words "It is written", from which book did he quote?

1. ADeuteronomyCorrect
2. BGenesis
3. CLeviticus
4. DIsaiah

Answer: Deuteronomy

Matthew 4:1–11 · ESV

Three times the Lord met the tempter with a written text rather than a new revelation, and all three came from Deuteronomy. The Son of God treated Scripture as sufficient and final in the sharpest test he had yet faced.

Matthew 4:4, 4:7 and 4:10 quote Deuteronomy 8:3, 6:16 and 6:13 in turn.

Why not this one. Jesus quotes Isaiah often elsewhere, reading from that scroll at Nazareth in Luke 4, but none of his three answers in the wilderness came from Isaiah. All three were drawn from Moses' words to Israel about its own testing in the wilderness.

Medium Doctrine — The Scriptures

Which of these books belongs to the Apocrypha, printed in Roman Catholic Bibles but not received into the Protestant canon?

1. ATobitCorrect
2. BNahum
3. CZephaniah
4. DHaggai

Answer: Tobit

Tobit is one of the books added to the Old Testament in Roman Catholic Bibles, along with Judith, Wisdom, Sirach, Baruch and the books of Maccabees. Protestants read them, if at all, as ancient Jewish writings rather than as Scripture.

The Protestant Old Testament follows the Hebrew canon received by Israel and used by Christ and the apostles, as Romans 3:2 and Luke 24:44 indicate.

Why not this one. Nahum is one of the twelve Minor Prophets and has always stood in the Hebrew canon. His book announces the fall of Nineveh, the city Jonah had been sent to a century earlier.

Hard Doctrine — The Scriptures

The Reformers taught that a believer's settled persuasion that the Bible is God's word comes not from the authority of the church but from what?

1. AThe inward witness of the Holy SpiritCorrect
2. BThe unanimous consent of the church fathers
3. CThe decrees of the ecumenical councils
4. DThe evidence of fulfilled prophecy alone

Answer: The inward witness of the Holy Spirit

1 Corinthians 2:12–14 · ESV

Arguments from prophecy, unity and preservation genuinely commend the Bible, but the Reformers held that full assurance is worked by the Spirit testifying with the word in the heart. Otherwise the church would have to authenticate the Scripture that authenticates the church.

1 Corinthians 2:12–14, where the things of the Spirit are said to be spiritually discerned.

Why not this one. Fulfilled prophecy is a real evidence and Scripture appeals to it, but the word alone overstates it. Evidence persuades the mind; the Spirit's witness produces the settled conviction.

Easy Doctrine — The Scriptures

The New Testament was originally written in which language?

1. AGreekCorrect
2. BHebrew
3. CLatin
4. DAramaic

Answer: Greek

John 19:20 · ESV

Every book of the New Testament was written in the common Greek of the first century, the language a merchant in Ephesus and a soldier in Rome could both read. God gave the gospel in the tongue that could carry it fastest across the empire.

John 19:20 notes that Pilate's inscription was posted in Hebrew, Latin and Greek, which shows the three languages current in Jerusalem at the time.

Why not this one. Latin was the language of Roman administration and later of Jerome's Vulgate, but no book of the New Testament was composed in it.

Medium Doctrine — The Scriptures

What is the name of the Greek translation of the Old Testament, begun some two centuries before Christ and widely used by Jews and Christians in the first century?

1. AThe SeptuagintCorrect
2. BThe Vulgate
3. CThe Peshitta
4. DThe Masoretic Text

Answer: The Septuagint

The Septuagint carried the Hebrew Scriptures into Greek for Jews scattered across the Mediterranean, and it was the version many New Testament writers had at hand. A number of Old Testament citations in the New Testament follow its wording.

Its use is visible wherever a New Testament quotation differs slightly from the Hebrew, as in Hebrews 10:5 quoting Psalm 40:6.

Why not this one. The Masoretic Text is the Hebrew text as preserved, counted and supplied with vowel points by Jewish scribes in the early Middle Ages. It is a Hebrew tradition, not a Greek translation.

Hard Doctrine — The Scriptures

The orthodox Reformed Baptist view of inspiration, affirmed by the BF&M 2000, is best described by which term — meaning that God's inspiration extends to every word of Scripture in all its parts?

1. ADynamic inspiration
2. BConceptual inspiration
3. CVerbal plenary inspirationCorrect
4. DPartial inspiration

Answer: Verbal plenary inspiration

BF&M 2000, Article I · ESV

The two words carry two claims. Verbal means the inspiration reaches the words themselves, not merely the ideas behind them. Plenary means it reaches all of Scripture, not just the parts touching salvation, so genealogies and historical narrative are as God-breathed as the Sermon on the Mount. Together they stand behind the confession that the Bible has truth without any mixture of error for its matter.

BF&M 2000, Article I; 2 Timothy 3:16

Why not this one. Dynamic inspiration sounds like a compliment and is often paired with words such as living and active, which makes it feel orthodox. In technical use it means something narrower: God supplied the concepts and the writers supplied the language. That gives away exactly what verbal inspiration protects.

Easy Doctrine — The Scriptures

How many books are in the Old Testament of the Protestant canon?

1. A36
2. B39Correct
3. C42
4. D46

Answer: 39

BF&M 2000, Article I · ESV

Thirty-nine is the Protestant way of counting the same books the Hebrew Bible arranges as twenty-four. The Jewish reckoning treats the Twelve Minor Prophets as one scroll and joins Samuel, Kings, Chronicles and Ezra-Nehemiah into one book each. Nothing is added or removed between the counts, only the divisions differ, which is why Jesus can call this identical collection the Law, the Prophets and the Psalms.

Luke 24:44; BF&M 2000, Article I

Why not this one. Forty-six is the Old Testament total in the Roman Catholic canon, which includes the deuterocanonical writings. Those books circulated among Greek-speaking Jews and were read with respect, so their presence in old codices is easy to misread as canonical status. The synagogue never received them as Scripture.

Medium Doctrine — The Scriptures

Which Latin translation of the Bible, produced largely by Jerome around AD 400, became the standard Bible of the medieval Western church?

1. AThe VulgateCorrect
2. BThe Peshitta
3. CThe Diatessaron
4. DThe Textus Receptus

Answer: The Vulgate

Jerome translated the Old Testament from the Hebrew rather than from the Greek, against considerable opposition, and his Latin Bible governed Western Christendom for a thousand years. The Reformers went behind it to the Hebrew and Greek.

Church history; the Reformation principle of returning to the original tongues is expressed in the confessions' insistence that the Hebrew and Greek are authentic.

Why not this one. The Peshitta is the standard Syriac version of the Bible used by churches of the East, not the Latin Bible of the medieval West.

Hard Doctrine — The Scriptures

Which sentence in Article I of the Baptist Faith and Message was added in the 2000 revision and does not appear in the 1963 statement?

1. ATherefore, all Scripture is totally true and trustworthy.Correct
2. BIt is a perfect treasure of divine instruction.
3. CThe Holy Bible was written by men divinely inspired.
4. DIt has God for its author, salvation for its end, and truth, without any mixture of error, for its matter.

Answer: Therefore, all Scripture is totally true and trustworthy.

BF&M 2000, Article I · ESV

The 2000 committee added this sentence to state inerrancy in plain words rather than leaving it implied by the older phrase about truth without any mixture of error. The same revision changed the description of the Bible from the record of God's revelation to God's revelation itself.

BF&M 2000, Article I, compared with the 1963 statement.

Why not this one. That sentence is the oldest part of the article, standing already in the 1925 and 1963 statements and borrowed in substance from the New Hampshire Confession of 1833.