Every claim about biblical prophecy depends on when the text was written, and almost nobody explains how that is decided. Twelve questions across three levels, every answer explained.
Before you start
Dating is where this subject is won or lost, and it is the part most treatments skip. These questions are about method rather than about any single conclusion.
Related: the method notes on how a text is dated and prophecy after the event.
Open “Bible Trivia: How a Text Is Dated” on its own page — if the module does not load.
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.
What is the most direct physical evidence for how old a text is?
- Its position in the canon
- The name in the title
- The story it tells
- A surviving manuscript — correct
Answer: A surviving manuscript
A manuscript gives a date by which the text certainly existed. It is a floor under the text's age, and it is the only limit that does not depend on an argument.
Where were the oldest known manuscripts of most Hebrew Bible books found?
- Rome
- Egypt
- Nineveh
- Qumran, by the Dead Sea — correct
Answer: Qumran, by the Dead Sea
The Qumran caves, from the last centuries BCE and the first century CE. Before their discovery the oldest complete Hebrew manuscripts were a thousand years younger.
If a text describes an event as already past, what does that establish?
- That the event is fictional
- That it was written after that event — correct
- That it was written before that event
- Nothing
Answer: That it was written after that event
An earliest limit. A passage that argues from a city having already fallen cannot have been composed before the city fell.
What is a terminus ante quem?
- The latest date by which something must already have existed — correct
- A Latin manuscript
- The author's birthplace
- The earliest possible date
Answer: The latest date by which something must already have existed
The point before which the text must already exist — normally set by a manuscript, or by another datable text quoting it.
Medium
These need a detail held in place — a name, a sequence, a number that only means something next to another number.
Nahum's earliest possible date is set externally. By what?
- The death of Josiah
- The sack of Thebes in 663 — correct
- The fall of Nineveh in 612
- The Babylonian exile
Answer: The sack of Thebes in 663
Nahum 3:8–10 speaks of the fall of Thebes as already accomplished, and Thebes was sacked in 663 BCE. That limit holds regardless of any view about prophecy.
Why is dating Nahum before 612 BCE partly circular?
- Because the reason given is that the poem announces the fall as still to come — correct
- Because Nahum is not a real name
- The manuscripts are lost
- Because 612 is disputed
Answer: Because the reason given is that the poem announces the fall as still to come
A text written after an event and cast as an announcement would read the same way. Using the poem's future tense to date it before the event, and then citing the event as fulfilment, assumes the conclusion.
2 Kings cannot be earlier than the mid-sixth century BCE. Why?
- It ends with the release of Jehoiachin in about 561 BCE — correct
- It mentions Rome
- Its language
- It quotes Ezra
Answer: It ends with the release of Jehoiachin in about 561 BCE
The book's final episode is an event of about 561 BCE, so the book in its received form is no earlier. That is an internal limit and it is unusually firm.
What is vaticinium ex eventu?
- A dating method
- A type of psalm
- A Latin manuscript tradition
- A prophecy written after the event it appears to predict — correct
Answer: A prophecy written after the event it appears to predict
Prophecy after the event: a text composed after something happened and presented as an announcement of it. It is a known ancient genre, which is why the dating question cannot simply be waved away.
Which book is the standard example in scholarly discussion of prophecy after the event?
- Daniel — correct
- Esther
- Ruth
- Jonah
Answer: Daniel
Daniel, whose detailed account of Hellenistic history breaks down at a particular point — an observation that forms the core of the majority dating argument, and one that its defenders answer rather than ignore.
Hard
These turn on what the evidence actually supports, which is not always what the story is remembered as saying.
Why does a broad scholarly consensus not settle a dating question on its own?
- Because votes are not evidence of anything
- Consensus is always wrong
- Scholars are unreliable
- Because a consensus can rest on the same argument the case is testing — correct
Answer: Because a consensus can rest on the same argument the case is testing
A majority holding a date for good reasons is real evidence about the state of the field. But where the reasoning behind the majority is the same reasoning under examination, citing the majority does not dissolve the circle — it restates it.
A book that survives in two editions of different lengths poses which problem for dating?
- That it cannot be translated
- That 'when was it written' may not have one answer — correct
- None
- That the shorter one is a forgery
Answer: That 'when was it written' may not have one answer
Jeremiah survives in two editions of different lengths, and a book with an early core and later editing may not have a single composition date. A verdict that assumes it does is answering a question the text may not pose.
What does this site treat as the honest latest limit for a prophetic text?
- The earliest surviving manuscript witness — correct
- The event it describes
- The traditional author's death
- The close of the canon
Answer: The earliest surviving manuscript witness
The manuscript, because it is the latest date that can be set without assuming the conclusion. For most books that is centuries after either candidate date, which means the manuscripts often cannot arbitrate — and saying so is more useful than pretending otherwise.
What this quiz draws on
Books in play: Daniel, Isaiah, Jeremiah, Nahum. Each of those leads to what the book contains, who has been proposed as its author, and how it is dated.
Themes: Authorship, Dating.
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.