Bible Trivia Quiz | New Testament Details You Missed | Digging Deeper

Question 1. The book of Hebrews never names its own author anywhere in the text, unlike most of Paul’s letters. What has this anonymity led scholars to debate for centuries, and what does the earliest tradition typically claim?

Answer: Scholars have long debated it. Who wrote the book of Hebrews? The proposed candidates include Paul, Barnabas, Apollos, and even Priscilla. But there is no full agreement. Early church tradition, particularly in the Eastern church, often attributed it to Paul, though the writing style differs noticeably from his other letters.

Context & Exhortation: Every genuine letter in the New Testament opens by naming Paul directly. Hebrews does the opposite. It opens straight into theology, with no greeting and no named sender at all: “God, who at sundry times and in divers manners spake in time past unto the fathers by the prophets, hath in these last days spoken unto us by his Son” (1:1–2).

Even in the early centuries of the church, this absence created real disagreement. 

Origen, one of the earliest and most careful scholars to examine the question, famously concluded, “who wrote the epistle, in truth, God knows.” The Eastern church tended to accept Pauline authorship more readily than the Western church, which was often more skeptical.

Modern scholarship has proposed alternatives beyond Paul, including Paul’s companion Barnabas, the eloquent teacher Apollos (Acts 18:24), and even, in some more speculative arguments, Priscilla. The vocabulary, sentence structure, and argument style all differ noticeably from Paul’s clearly identified letters.

What’s remarkable is that the church still recognized Hebrews as authoritative Scripture without ever settling this question. Its authority was never actually resting on certainty about whose name belonged at the top of the page. 

What does this tell us? Sometimes a message can be true even when we don't know exactly who said it.

Question 2. When the other disciples told Thomas they had seen the risen Jesus, he refused to believe based on secondhand testimony. What specific physical proof did he say he required before he would believe?

Answer: He demanded to see the nail prints in Jesus’ hands and put his finger into them, and to put his hand into the wound in Jesus ’ side (John 20:25).

Context & Exhortation: Thomas wasn’t present the first time Jesus appeared to the disciples after the resurrection, and when the others tell him excitedly, “We have seen the Lord” (20:25), his response is unusually specific rather than simply skeptical: “Except I shall see in his hands the print of the nails, and put my finger into the print of the nails, and thrust my hand into his side, I will not believe” (20:25).

He’s not asking for a vague reassurance. He’s naming the exact wounds and the exact physical actions that would convince him, as though he’d already thought through precisely what evidence would satisfy him.

A week later, Jesus appears again, Thomas present this time, and addresses him directly, almost quoting Thomas’ own words back to him: “Reach hither thy finger, and behold my hands; and reach hither thy hand, and thrust it into my side: and be not faithless, but believing” (20:27). Jesus doesn’t rebuke the specific demand. He simply meets it.

Thomas’ response is one of the highest declarations of Jesus’ identity in the entire Gospel: “My Lord and my God” (20:28). Jesus adds a gentle note afterward about those who’ll believe without ever getting Thomas’ exact kind of proof (20:29). But He never embarrassed Thomas for needing it in the first place.

Question 3. When Paul preached in Berea, Luke specifically praises the people there for a habit that set them apart from an earlier city he’d visited. What were they doing daily, and what were they compared to?

Answer: They searched the Scriptures daily to verify whether what Paul taught them was actually true (Acts 17:11). Luke calls them “more noble” than the Thessalonians for doing this.

Context & Exhortation: Paul had just come from Thessalonica, where his preaching caused enough uproar that he and Silas had to be sent away secretly at night for their own safety (17:10). 

Berea’s synagogue receives him very differently: “these were more noble than those in Thessalonica, in that they received the word with all readiness of mind, and searched the scriptures daily, whether those things were so” (17:11).

Notice what’s actually being praised. It’s not blind acceptance of an apostle’s authority, and it’s not skepticism either. It’s a specific combination: real openness to the message, coupled with the discipline to verify it personally against Scripture. And they did this every single day, rather than taking Paul’s word for it simply because he said it with confidence.

The result of that habit is striking: “therefore many of them believed” (17:12). Their careful checking didn’t produce doubt or delay. It produced genuine, well-tested faith, precisely because they had done the work of confirming it themselves rather than borrowing someone else’s conclusion secondhand.

Even an apostle personally commissioned by the risen Christ was still expected to have his teaching checked against Scripture, not simply trusted on reputation. That’s a fairly high compliment for people simply doing their own reading and taking notes.

Question 4. At the Last Supper, Jesus took on a task normally reserved for the lowest household servant. What did He do, and how did Peter initially react?

Answer: Jesus washed His disciples’ feet (John 13:4–5). Peter initially refused outright: “Thou shalt never wash my feet” (13:8), until Jesus told him that refusing meant Peter would have no part with Him. At that point Peter swung to the opposite extreme, asking for his hands and head to be washed as well.

Context & Exhortation: Foot washing was ordinary hospitality in that culture. People walked everywhere in sandals on dusty roads, so feet needed washing.

However, it was specifically a servant’s job, not a host’s job and certainly not a teacher’s job. 

John frames what happens next with a striking amount of buildup: Jesus, “knowing that the Father had given all things into his hands… riseth from supper, and laid aside his garments; and took a towel, and girded himself” (13:3–4).

The one holding “all things” in His hands kneels with a basin and starts washing feet, one disciple at a time, working His way eventually to Peter. Peter’s refusal is emphatic: “Thou shalt never wash my feet” (13:8). It feels backward to him, the wrong person kneeling.

Jesus’ response reframes the entire moment: “If I wash thee not, thou hast no part with me” (13:8). Peter immediately overreacts, asking for his hands and head to be washed as well (13:9). He totally missed the point in the opposite direction just as quickly as he’d missed it the first time.

Jesus explicitly tells them afterward that this was meant as a pattern to repeat: “ye also ought to wash one another’s feet” (13:14). 

The most powerful person in the room chose the lowest task in the room, specifically so the disciples would remember what real authority was supposed to look like among them.

Question 5. Revelation describes the New Jerusalem using extremely specific measurements. What shape is the city, and how large are its dimensions?

Answer: The city is laid out as a perfect cube. Its length, breadth, and height are all equal, at twelve thousand furlongs each, roughly 1,400 miles per side (Revelation 21:16).

Context & Exhortation: John explicitly tells us an angel measured the city with a golden reed specifically to record this detail: “the city lieth foursquare, and the length is as large as the breadth… the length and the breadth and the height of it are equal” (21:16). 

Twelve thousand furlongs works out to roughly 1,400 to 1,500 miles, depending on which ancient measurement conversion is used. This was a structure whose height matches its width and length just as precisely.

The number twelve saturates the whole description deliberately. Twelve gates, named for the twelve tribes of Israel (21:12). Twelve foundations, named for the twelve apostles (21:14). A wall measuring 144 cubits — twelve times twelve (21:17). 

Twelve represented completeness throughout Scripture, and Revelation stacks it repeatedly rather than using it just once.

Old Testament Israel’s temple included a cube-shaped room as well: the Most Holy Place, the single space where God’s presence dwelled most intensely, entered only once a year by the high priest alone (1 Kings 6:20; Hebrews 9:7). 

Revelation’s entire city, not just one restricted inner room, is now built to that same cube shape.

What used to be a small, sealed-off space that only one specially prepared person could enter once a year becomes, in the end, the shape of an entire city that everyone gets to live inside permanently.

Question 6. Revelation describes a specific number of people sealed from the twelve tribes of Israel before a scene of judgment unfolds. What is that number, and how is it calculated?

Answer: 144,000 — twelve thousand sealed from each of the twelve tribes of Israel, listed by name (Revelation 7:4–8).

Context & Exhortation: Before four angels are permitted to release destruction on the earth, they’re told to hold back “till we have sealed the servants of our God in their foreheads” (7:3). This was a specific, numbered group marked for protection before judgment unfolds. 

John then hears the number directly: “an hundred and forty and four thousand of all the tribes of the children of Israel” (7:4), followed immediately by a tribe-by-tribe list, twelve thousand from each one.

The list itself contains a detail careful readers often catch: it doesn’t perfectly match any other tribal list elsewhere in Scripture. 

Dan is missing entirely, and Levi — usually excluded from land-inheritance lists because of its priestly role, as covered earlier in this series — is included here instead (7:5–8). 

Scholars have offered various explanations, but the text itself doesn’t explain the substitution.

Immediately after this numbered, sealed group, John describes a completely different scene: “a great multitude, which no man could number, of all nations, and kindreds, and people, and tongues” (7:9), standing before the throne in white robes. A specific, countable number appears right alongside an explicitly uncountable one, in the very same chapter.

Whatever the exact makeup of the 144,000 turns out to mean, Revelation seems to deliberately pair a precise number with a multitude too vast to count at all. It was as if to say God’s people were never going to be limited to whichever number we can actually get our heads around.

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