Bible Trivia: The General Letters — printable

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 of these is NOT one of the general letters?

   • James
   • 1 Peter
   • Jude
   • Galatians — correct

   Answer: Galatians

   Galatians is one of Paul's letters. The general letters are Hebrews, James, 1 and 2 Peter, 1, 2 and 3 John, and Jude — grouped by not being addressed to a single named congregation by Paul.

2. Which is the shortest book in the Bible?

   • Jude
   • 3 John — correct
   • 2 John
   • Philemon

   Answer: 3 John

   3 John, at fifteen verses. It is a letter about a man who refused to receive the writer's envoys — church politics with no doctrine attached, which is exactly what makes it useful.

3. Which letter argues that faith without works is dead?

   • 1 Peter
   • Hebrews
   • 2 Peter
   • James — correct

   Answer: James

   James 2. Whether this contradicts Paul depends on what each writer means by 'works' and by 'faith', and the two are not using the words in the same sense — which is the first thing to establish before adjudicating.

4. Which letter is anonymous, with its traditional attribution coming from later tradition rather than the text?

   • Jude
   • James
   • 2 Peter
   • Hebrews — correct

   Answer: Hebrews

   Hebrews names no author. The attribution to Paul is ancient but was doubted in antiquity too, and the style, vocabulary and argument are unlike his.

Medium

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

1. 1 Peter is addressed to congregations in which region?

   • Egypt and Cyrenaica
   • Greece and Macedonia
   • Syria and Cilicia
   • Northern Asia Minor — correct

   Answer: Northern Asia Minor

   Five Roman provinces in Asia Minor, including Bithynia and Pontus. That matters because those are the provinces from which Pliny the Younger later wrote to Trajan asking how to deal with Christians.

2. What is the most common explanation for 'Babylon' in the closing greeting of 1 Peter?

   • A codeword for Rome — correct
   • A literal city in Mesopotamia
   • The Egyptian fortress of that name
   • A copyist's error

   Answer: A codeword for Rome

   A codeword for Rome, a usage attested in Jewish texts after 70 CE. If that reading is right it is a small argument for a later date, since the codeword works best once Rome had destroyed a temple as Babylon had.

3. Which letter reuses much of the material found in Jude?

   • 1 John
   • Hebrews
   • James
   • 2 Peter — correct

   Answer: 2 Peter

   2 Peter 2 runs closely parallel to Jude. Most scholars conclude 2 Peter used Jude, largely because the borrowing removes exactly what later became awkward — Jude's explicit citations of books outside the canon.

4. Which letter refers to Paul's letters as a known collection alongside 'the other scriptures'?

   • 1 Peter
   • Hebrews
   • 2 Peter — correct
   • 1 John

   Answer: 2 Peter

   2 Peter 3:16. That presupposes a stage of collection and status that is hard to place in Peter's lifetime, and it is one of the stronger arguments in the near-consensus that the letter is pseudonymous.

Hard

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

1. Which New Testament book entered the canon latest and most hesitantly, with its authorship openly disputed in antiquity?

   • Jude
   • 2 Peter — correct
   • 3 John
   • James

   Answer: 2 Peter

   2 Peter. Eusebius records the dispute in the fourth century and Origen notes it in the third. It is a rare case where the tradition preserves its own doubt rather than suppressing it.

2. In 3 John, what is the substance of the conflict with Diotrephes?

   • A dispute about circumcision
   • A dispute about the resurrection
   • A refusal to receive the writer's envoys — correct
   • A disagreement over food laws

   Answer: A refusal to receive the writer's envoys

   Hospitality and authority — no doctrinal charge is made against him at all. Travelling teachers depended on being received, so hospitality was the practical mechanism by which a network spread or refused a teaching.

3. Which letter's central themes are argued in spirals rather than in a progression, frustrating attempts to outline it?

   • James
   • Hebrews
   • 1 John — correct
   • Jude

   Answer: 1 John

   1 John returns to light, love and the reality of the incarnation in shifting combinations rather than advancing an argument. That is a genuine feature of the text, not a failure of analysis.

4. Verse 9 of Jude, on the dispute over the body of Moses, is generally taken to depend on which work?

   • The Book of Jubilees
   • The Testament of Moses' successor
   • The Assumption of Moses — correct
   • 4 Ezra

   Answer: The Assumption of Moses

   The Assumption of Moses, another work outside the canon. Together with the explicit Enoch citation it shows that the boundaries of scripture were not fixed when the New Testament was being written.

What this quiz draws on

Books in play: 1 John, 1 Peter, 2 John, 2 Peter, 3 John, Hebrews, James, Jude. Each of those leads to what the book contains, who has been proposed as its author, and how it is dated.

Themes: Authorship, Manuscripts, The early church.

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.