Twelve books on one scroll, and most readers could not name half of them. Twelve questions across three levels on the Minor Prophets — every answer worked through, with the passage or the record that settles it.
Open “Bible Trivia: The Minor Prophets” 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.
How many books make up the Minor Prophets?
- Twelve — correct
- Ten
- Fifteen
- Seven
Answer: Twelve
Twelve, which is why the collection is called the Book of the Twelve in Jewish tradition. They are 'minor' by length, not by importance — in antiquity they were copied on a single scroll, which is why the Qumran finds preserve several of them together.
Which prophet was swallowed by a great fish?
- Amos
- Hosea
- Jonah — correct
- Joel
Answer: Jonah
Jonah 1:17. The book is unusual among the Twelve in being a narrative about a prophet rather than a collection of his oracles — Jonah speaks one sentence of prophecy in the whole book.
Which minor prophet announces the destruction of Nineveh?
- Nahum — correct
- Micah
- Obadiah
- Haggai
Answer: Nahum
Nahum, in three chapters devoted entirely to the fall of the Assyrian capital. Nineveh did fall, in 612 BCE, and the Babylonian chronicle that records it is one of the best-attested events in the world of the Hebrew Bible.
Which is the shortest book in the Hebrew Bible?
- Haggai
- Malachi
- Obadiah — correct
- Zephaniah
Answer: Obadiah
Obadiah, at twenty-one verses in a single chapter. It is one sustained accusation against Edom for standing by while Jerusalem was sacked.
Medium
These need a detail held in place — a name, a sequence, a number that only means something next to another number.
Which prophet is told to marry an unfaithful woman as a living illustration?
- Zechariah
- Habakkuk
- Hosea — correct
- Amos
Answer: Hosea
Hosea 1 and 3. The marriage is presented as a sign-act, a recognised prophetic genre in which the prophet's own life is made to carry the message. How much of it is biography and how much is literary construction is argued.
Amos describes himself, before his call, as which of these?
- A herdsman and tender of sycamore figs — correct
- A priest at Bethel
- A scribe in the royal court
- A Levite musician
Answer: A herdsman and tender of sycamore figs
Amos 7:14. The point of the disclaimer is professional: he is denying membership of the guild of prophets, not describing a hobby. It is one of the few places where a prophet says what he did for a living.
Which prophet complains to God that the wicked prosper and is answered with news of a worse power rising?
- Joel
- Micah
- Habakkuk — correct
- Zephaniah
Answer: Habakkuk
Habakkuk 1. The book is built as a dialogue, and it is the only prophetic book that preserves the prophet's objection to the answer he receives rather than resolving it away.
Haggai's oracles are dated to the reign of which king?
- Cyrus
- Darius — correct
- Artaxerxes
- Nebuchadnezzar
Answer: Darius
Darius I. Haggai is the most precisely dated book in the Hebrew Bible: five oracles, each stamped with day, month and regnal year, all falling within four months of Darius's second year, 520 BCE. The reign is independently documented by Persian records.
Hard
These turn on what the evidence actually supports, which is not always what the story is remembered as saying.
Nahum 3:8 compares Nineveh to a city that had already fallen. Which city?
- No-Amon, that is Thebes — correct
- Babylon
- Tyre
- Samaria
Answer: No-Amon, that is Thebes
Thebes in Upper Egypt, sacked by Ashurbanipal in 663 BCE. Because the poem treats that fall as past, it supplies the earliest limit for the composition of Nahum — the one dating limit in the book that does not depend on assuming the conclusion.
Which minor prophet's book divides sharply at chapter 9, with most scholars treating the halves as separate compositions?
- Hosea
- Micah
- Amos
- Zechariah — correct
Answer: Zechariah
Zechariah. Chapters 1–8 carry dated night visions from 520–518 BCE; chapters 9–14 have no dates, no angelic interpreter and a different outlook, and their date is argued across several centuries. Citing 'Zechariah' without saying which half is a quiet but consequential error.
Which book of the Twelve gives no king, no empire and no datable event, leaving its date argued across roughly six centuries?
- Obadiah
- Zephaniah
- Joel — correct
- Malachi
Answer: Joel
Joel. Proposals run from the ninth century BCE to the fourth. It is the clearest case in the Hebrew Bible of a text that gives an examiner nothing external to work with — which makes it a useful control on any method that produces confident dates for everything.
Which prophet's book was found at Qumran with a verse-by-verse commentary applying it to the commentators' own community?
- Micah
- Malachi
- Habakkuk — correct
- Amos
Answer: Habakkuk
The Habakkuk pesher, one of the first scrolls found, from the first century BCE. It is a documented, datable example of an ancient community reading a prophetic text as being about their own present — the mechanism itself is visible in it.
What this quiz draws on
Books in play: Amos, Habakkuk, Haggai, Hosea, Joel, Jonah, Malachi, Micah, Nahum, Obadiah, Zechariah, Zephaniah. Each of those leads to what the book contains, who has been proposed as its author, and how it is dated.
Themes: Dating, Judgment of the nations.
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.