Bible Trivia: Archaeology and the Bible

Every question, with the answer and the reason

The interactive module above runs in a sandbox of its own, which means its text is not part of this page. So here is the whole thing in full: all 12 questions, the options as they appear, the answer, and why that answer and not the one beside it. Nothing is held back to make you play first.

Easy

These turn on something stated outright in the text. If you have read the book, you have met the answer.

1. Which Assyrian king's prism describes shutting Hezekiah up in Jerusalem 'like a bird in a cage'?

   • Tiglath-pileser III
   • Ashurbanipal
   • Shalmaneser III
   • Sennacherib — correct

   Answer: Sennacherib

   Sennacherib, in his account of the third campaign, 701 BCE. The passage names Hezekiah, counts forty-six fortified cities taken, and lists tribute — and never claims the city itself was captured.

2. The Cyrus Cylinder records a Persian policy of doing what?

   • Returning displaced peoples and restoring their sanctuaries — correct
   • Abolishing local priesthoods
   • Imposing a single imperial language
   • Destroying the temples of conquered peoples

   Answer: Returning displaced peoples and restoring their sanctuaries

   It records restoration and repatriation as royal policy. It does not mention Judah or Jerusalem, so citing it as confirmation of the decree in Ezra overstates it: it corroborates the kind of policy, not the specific document.

3. In which museum are the Lachish reliefs held?

   • The Louvre
   • The British Museum — correct
   • The Israel Museum
   • The Pergamon Museum

   Answer: The British Museum

   The British Museum. They came from Sennacherib's palace at Nineveh and show the siege and capture of Lachish — the same city where 2 Kings 18:14 has Hezekiah send his submission.

4. What kind of object is the Black Obelisk of Shalmaneser III?

   • A clay tablet
   • A carved stone monument with relief registers — correct
   • A papyrus roll
   • A bronze door panel

   Answer: A carved stone monument with relief registers

   A four-sided black limestone obelisk from Nimrud, about two metres tall, with five registers of relief. Its second register carries the epigraph naming the tribute of Jehu.

Medium

These need a detail held in place — a name, a sequence, a number that only means something next to another number.

1. Which inscription contains the earliest known mention by name of a king of Israel?

   • The Mesha Stele
   • The Tel Dan inscription
   • The Kurkh Monolith of Shalmaneser III — correct
   • The Merneptah Stele

   Answer: The Kurkh Monolith of Shalmaneser III

   The Kurkh Monolith names Ahab the Israelite in the coalition that fought Assyria at Qarqar in 853 BCE. Worth noticing in the other direction: that battle is not mentioned in the Bible at all.

2. The Tel Dan inscription is significant because it refers to what?

   • The temple in Jerusalem
   • The house of David as a dynastic name — correct
   • The exodus from Egypt
   • The fall of Samaria

   Answer: The house of David as a dynastic name

   It refers to the house of David, which is the earliest extra-biblical reference to David of any kind. It attests a dynasty bearing the name; it says nothing about the events narrated of David himself.

3. Which Babylonian tablet dates the capture of Jerusalem precisely enough to give a month and a day?

   • The Weidner ration tablets
   • The Cyrus Cylinder
   • The Jerusalem Chronicle — correct
   • The Babylonian Map of the World

   Answer: The Jerusalem Chronicle

   The Jerusalem Chronicle, BM 21946, in its entry for the seventh year of Nebuchadnezzar. Converted to the Julian calendar the entry falls in March 597 BCE, and the conversion rests on an astronomically anchored chronology, not on the Bible.

4. At Lachish, what physical evidence of the Assyrian assault survives in the ground?

   • A ration list naming the garrison
   • The city gate inscription of Hezekiah
   • A Judahite royal seal archive
   • A siege ramp and a destruction layer — correct

   Answer: A siege ramp and a destruction layer

   The Assyrian siege ramp and the destruction layer are both excavated. That makes Lachish one of very few episodes where a royal inscription, a monumental relief and a dug site can be laid beside a biblical narrative.

Hard

These turn on what the evidence actually supports, which is not always what the story is remembered as saying.

1. Why do the tribute figures in 2 Kings 18:14 and Sennacherib's prism only partly agree?

   • Both give the same silver but different gold
   • They agree on neither figure
   • They agree on both figures exactly
   • Both give the same gold but different silver — correct

   Answer: Both give the same gold but different silver

   Thirty talents of gold in both; three hundred talents of silver in 2 Kings against eight hundred on the prism. The gold agreement is hard to explain except by a real transaction; the silver divergence has several plausible explanations and none is established.

2. What does the Assyrian phrase 'house of Omri' designate in later inscriptions?

   • The city of Samaria only
   • The kingdom of Israel, after the dynasty had ended — correct
   • The temple of Baal
   • The royal palace at Jezreel

   Answer: The kingdom of Israel, after the dynasty had ended

   It became a standing Assyrian name for the kingdom of Israel and outlived the dynasty it names. That is why the Black Obelisk can describe Jehu, who overthrew the Omrides, by that formula.

3. Which of these New Testament sites has never been systematically excavated?

   • Colossae — correct
   • Ephesus
   • Philippi
   • Corinth

   Answer: Colossae

   Colossae. The mound is identified and surveyed but not dug, which means the town named in the letter contributes almost nothing archaeologically — unusual among significant New Testament sites.

4. What did an inscription from Thessalonica confirm about the account in Acts 17?

   • That 'politarch' was the correct local title for the magistrates — correct
   • The date of Paul's visit
   • The name of the synagogue
   • The location of the marketplace

   Answer: That 'politarch' was the correct local title for the magistrates

   Politarch is not the usual Greek term for civic officials and was once cited as an error in Acts; inscriptions have since attested it repeatedly for Macedonian cities. It shows the writer used the right local word — which is evidence of familiarity with the setting, not evidence that the episode happened.

What this quiz draws on

Books in play: 2 Chronicles, 2 Kings, Ezra, Isaiah. Each of those leads to what the book contains, who has been proposed as its author, and how it is dated.

Themes: Kings and empires, People and places.

Answers here are drawn from the biblical text and, where an external record bears on the question, from the artefact or publication that carries it. How this site reads a text and how this site is written set out the rules, so you can check the reasoning rather than take the answer on trust.