Bible book trivia, with the verse on hand.

Which book of the Bible is the only one named after a non-Israelite woman?

1. Esther
2. Ruth
3. Judith
4. Mary

"Where you go I will go, and where you lodge I will lodge. Your people shall be my people, and your God my God."Ruth 1:16

Ruth is a Moabite who joins the Israelite family of Boaz and becomes the great-grandmother of King David — and so an ancestor of Jesus. The book is named for her, the only Old Testament book named after a Gentile woman. Esther is named after a Jewish queen of Persia, not a foreigner; Judith belongs to the deuterocanon, not the Protestant canon.

How many books are in the Protestant Old Testament?

1. 27
2. 36
3. 39
4. 46

"All Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness."2 Timothy 3:16

The Protestant canon counts 39 Old Testament books, organized into Law, History, Wisdom, and Prophets. The Hebrew Bible contains the same content arranged differently and counted as 24 books. Catholic and Orthodox Bibles include additional deuterocanonical books such as Tobit, Judith, and the Maccabees.

Which is the first of the four Gospels in the New Testament canonical order?

1. Matthew
2. Mark
3. Luke
4. John

"The book of the genealogy of Jesus Christ, the son of David, the son of Abraham."Matthew 1:1

Matthew opens the New Testament because of its Jewish framing — beginning with a genealogy that anchors Jesus in the Davidic line. Most scholars now consider Mark the earliest written Gospel, but the canonical order is theological, not chronological, placing Matthew as the natural bridge from the Old Testament to the New.

Which is the longest book of the Bible by chapter count?

1. Genesis
2. Isaiah
3. Psalms
4. Jeremiah

"Blessed are those whose way is blameless, who walk in the law of the LORD!"Psalm 119:1

Psalms has 150 chapters, more than any other book — though by word count Jeremiah is the longest, with denser prose. Psalm 119 alone, the longest single chapter in the Bible, is an alphabetical acrostic of 176 verses meditating on God's law. The book served as Israel's, and then the church's, prayer book and hymnal.

Which book is the shortest in the Old Testament, with only a single chapter?

1. Haggai
2. Malachi
3. Obadiah
4. Joel

"The vision of Obadiah. Thus says the Lord GOD concerning Edom."Obadiah 1:1

Obadiah's twenty-one verses make it the shortest Old Testament book. It is an oracle against Edom — the nation descended from Esau — for gloating over Judah's fall. The book closes with a vision of restoration: "the kingdom shall be the LORD's" (v. 21), a small but emphatic claim of God's final sovereignty over the nations.

How many books did Paul write that are included in the New Testament, by traditional reckoning?

1. 7
2. 10
3. 12
4. 13

"Paul, an apostle of Christ Jesus by the will of God, To the saints who are in Ephesus."Ephesians 1:1

The traditional Pauline corpus contains thirteen letters: Romans, 1–2 Corinthians, Galatians, Ephesians, Philippians, Colossians, 1–2 Thessalonians, 1–2 Timothy, Titus, and Philemon. Hebrews was historically attributed to Paul in some traditions but the book itself is anonymous; modern scholarship rarely defends Pauline authorship. Counting Hebrews would raise the total to fourteen.

Which Old Testament book contains the line "vanity of vanities! All is vanity"?

1. Job
2. Proverbs
3. Ecclesiastes
4. Lamentations

"Vanity of vanities, says the Preacher, vanity of vanities! All is vanity."Ecclesiastes 1:2

Ecclesiastes is the Preacher's (Qoheleth's) extended meditation on the futility of life "under the sun" — apart from God. The Hebrew word hevel ("vanity") means breath or vapor: not nothing, but fleeting. The book is one of the wisdom corpus's most honest engagements with the limits of human striving, and it ends with the call to "fear God and keep his commandments."

Which five Old Testament books are traditionally called "the Pentateuch" or "the Torah"?

1. Joshua, Judges, Ruth, Samuel, Kings
2. Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy
3. Job, Psalms, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, Song of Songs
4. Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, Daniel, Hosea

"This Book of the Law shall not depart from your mouth, but you shall meditate on it day and night."Joshua 1:8

The Pentateuch ("five scrolls") is traditionally attributed to Moses and forms the foundation of the Hebrew Bible. It moves from creation through covenant at Sinai to the threshold of the Promised Land — without ever entering it. Jewish liturgy reads the Torah through annually on a fixed cycle, treating these five books as the canonical center around which everything else hangs.

Which letter is the shortest book in the New Testament, with just a single chapter of 25 verses?

1. 2 John
2. 3 John
3. Jude
4. Philemon

"The elder to the beloved Gaius, whom I love in truth."3 John 1:1

By word count, 3 John (219 Greek words) is the shortest book in the New Testament — just barely shorter than 2 John (245). Both are personal pastoral notes from "the elder," traditionally identified as the apostle John, on a single sheet of papyrus. The brevity is structural: these are letters, not treatises.

What is the traditional Jewish three-part division of the Hebrew Bible called?

1. Mishnah
2. Tanakh
3. Talmud
4. Septuagint

"These are my words that I spoke to you while I was still with you, that everything written about me in the Law of Moses and the Prophets and the Psalms must be fulfilled."Luke 24:44

Tanakh is an acronym from Torah (Law), Nevi'im (Prophets), and Ketuvim (Writings). Jesus' three-part description in Luke 24:44 — "Law, Prophets, and Psalms" — reflects this same structure, with Psalms as the leading book of the Writings. The Christian Old Testament reorders and counts these books differently, but the content is essentially the same.