Last semester I posted here on the blog the pop quiz I gave on the first day of the semester to my class on Jesus in Scholarship and Film.   As you may have noticed in my post yesterday, I also give a quiz to begin my New Testament class, which I started teaching yesterday.   If you were on the blog five months ago, and have a very good memory, the quiz will look very familiar.  About half the questions are the same.

I give a quiz on the first day – before I’ve taught the students anything – both in order to break the ice while having some fun together and in order to teach a few things, as I give the answers after they have taken a stab at them.   I’ll say a few things about what I try to accomplish with that in my next post.

I told the students yesterday that if anyone got at least nine of the eleven answers correct, I would buy them dinner at the Armadillo Grill.   It turns out that out of a class of 240, I will have to buy 7 dinners this semester.    (To get an answer correct, if there were multiple parts, every part had to be correct: no partial credit!) (and no partial dinners!)   I think 7 is a pretty good total – although I should point out that I asked the whole class how many of them had studied the Bible in any context: school, church, Sunday school, Bible study, whatever.   Virtually everyone had.   Well, whatever they were studying, it wasn’t the basic facts about the NT….

In any event, I won’t be buying *you* dinner if you get nine right!   Still, for the heckuvit, here’s the NT quiz:

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Quiz on the NT

  1. How many books are in the NT?
  2. In what language were they written?
  3. In what century were they written?
  4. Name the Gospels of the NT.
  5. According to the Gospels, who baptized Jesus?  Who carried his cross?  Who discovered his empty tomb?
  6. Which author of the NT wrote the most books?
  7. Who wrote the NT book of 1 Peter?  2 Timothy?  1 Andrew?
  8. What was the Apostle Paul’s last name?
  9. In about what year did Jesus die?  Alexander the Great?
  10. Rank the following persons in order, according to the date of their deaths: the Apostle Paul, the Emperor Constantine, Jesus, Moses, the prophet Isaiah, Alexander the Great, Caesar Augustus.
  11. Which of the following were Jews?  John the Baptist, Alexander the Great, Jesus, Simon Peter, Tacitus, the Apostle Paul.