1 Corinthians Trivia
0Loading crowd target
0Loading crowd target
7correct to beat the crowd
89 free 1 Corinthians trivia questions with answers — trivia quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
Paul's earliest surviving letter to Corinth is the most practical book in the New Testament. A young church in a rich, cosmopolitan port had split into factions, tolerated a scandal, sued each other, argued about marriage and food offered to idols, and turned a shared meal into a display of class. Paul answers every item in turn, and along the way writes the most read passage on love in Western literature and the earliest account of the resurrection. These 89 questions follow the letter from the opening greeting to the closing collection: the quarrels, the cross as foolishness, the church as a building and a field, discipline and lawsuits, marriage and celibacy, food offered to idols, the rights of an apostle, warnings from the wilderness, head coverings and the Lord's meal, gifts and the body, the hymn to love, the resurrection chapter and the final greetings. A few step outside the text to Corinth itself, the oldest manuscripts and the letter's afterlife in music, film and public life. It suits a Bible study, a church quiz night or anyone preparing a Sunday-school lesson: play on your phone with instant explanations, or print it and read it aloud. Every answer is cited to the chapter text or to a reference page.
30 of 89 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Which prime minister read 1 Corinthians 13 at the Westminster Abbey funeral of Diana, Princess of Wales?
Tony Blair
Tony Blair read it in 1997, though Paul wrote this wedding favourite to correct a church where showy gifts such as speaking in tongues had become marks of status.
Q 02Which event gets its earliest written account in 1 Corinthians 11, with the words 'do this in remembrance of me'?
The Last Supper
The Last Supper's oldest written account comes from Paul, who was not at the meal and says he 'received from the Lord' what he passed on.
Q 03Which 1741 oratorio sets lines from 1 Corinthians 15, including 'Behold, I tell you a mystery', in its final part?
Handel's Messiah
Handel's Messiah takes most of its final part from this chapter, chosen by librettist Charles Jennens, a devout Anglican out to answer deists who denied divine intervention.
Q 04Which word does the King James Version use throughout 1 Corinthians 13 where most translations say 'love'?
Charity
Charity comes from the Vulgate's Latin caritas, probably picked over amor to avoid a sense of earthly passion, though English 'charity' has since narrowed toward almsgiving.
Q 05Whom does 1 Corinthians 15 name first among the people the risen Christ appeared to?
Peter
Peter, whom Paul calls Cephas, heads the list, while Mary Magdalene, the first to see the risen Jesus in John's Gospel, goes unmentioned.
Q 06Which Greek comic playwright does Paul quote in 1 Corinthians 15 with the line 'Bad company corrupts good character'?
Menander
Menander's lost comedy Thais probably supplied the line, though the historian Socrates Scholasticus took it as proof that Paul knew the tragedies of Euripides.
Q 07Which church still performs 'baptism for the dead', a practice 1 Corinthians 15:29 mentions without explaining?
The Latter-day Saints
The Latter-day Saints perform it in temples, with living proxies, citing this verse, yet some commentators note Paul speaks of 'those' who do it, as if keeping his distance.
Q 08Where does Paul say in 1 Corinthians 15 that he 'fought wild beasts', a line read literally or as a metaphor?
Ephesus
Ephesus is where Paul wrote the letter, and many commentators take the beasts as a metaphor, since his Roman citizenship would have spared him the arena.
Q 09In 1 Corinthians 13:12, 'for now we see only a reflection' in what, 'then we shall see face to face'?
A mirror
A mirror is the image, rendered 'through a glass, darkly' in the King James Version, the phrase that gave Ingmar Bergman's Oscar-winning 1961 film its English title.
Q 101 Corinthians 5 condemns a man 'sleeping with' whom, a sin 'of a kind that even pagans do not tolerate'?
His father's wife
His father's wife, presumably a stepmother, and Paul's anger is as much at the church's pride in tolerating it as at the man, whom he orders put out of the fellowship.
Q 11Which co-sender of 1 Corinthians shares his name with the synagogue leader beaten in Corinth in Acts 18?
Sosthenes
Sosthenes may be the same man, beaten while the proconsul Gallio 'showed no concern whatever', though commentators have long disagreed.
Q 12Which two men are the only Corinthians Paul says he personally baptized, apart from one household, in 1 Corinthians 1?
Crispus and Gaius
Crispus and Gaius are named so that 'no one can say that you were baptized in my name'; Acts 18 calls Crispus the synagogue leader, and Romans 16 calls Gaius host to 'the whole church'.
Q 13Whose 'household' informed Paul of the quarrels at Corinth, according to 1 Corinthians 1:11?
Chloe
Q 21Which animal must not be muzzled 'while it is treading out the grain', a law 1 Corinthians 9 applies to preachers?
An ox
An ox is the subject of the rule from Deuteronomy 25, and Paul asks 'Is it about oxen that God is concerned?' to argue that 'those who preach the gospel should receive their living from the gospel'.
Q 22Which festival beside Corinth, held for Poseidon every two years, crowned its winners with pine?
The Isthmian Games
The Isthmian Games drew athletes from all Greece to the sanctuary of Poseidon on the isthmus, and the 'crown that will not last' of 1 Corinthians 9 would have been a familiar sight to Paul's readers.
Q 23What does 1 Corinthians 10 say 'accompanied' Israel in the wilderness and 'was Christ'?
Chloe's people reported that the church had split into parties each claiming a favourite preacher, and Paul answers with 'Is Christ divided? Was Paul crucified for you?'
Q 14Which couple, expelled from Rome under Claudius, greet the Corinthians 'warmly in the Lord' in 1 Corinthians 16?
Aquila and Priscilla
Aquila and Priscilla took Paul in at Corinth because, like him, they were tentmakers, and by this letter a church was meeting in their house.
Q 15In 1 Corinthians 5, 'a little' of what works through 'the whole batch of dough', Paul's image for tolerated sin?
Yeast
Yeast is the image, and Paul ties it to Passover — 'Christ, our Passover lamb, has been sacrificed' — so the church should be 'a new unleavened batch'.
Q 16What does 1 Corinthians 6 say believers who sue each other 'before the ungodly' have already been 'completely'?
Defeated
Defeated is the verdict, and Paul's alternative is startling: 'Why not rather be wronged? Why not rather be cheated?'
Q 17What does 1 Corinthians 11 say 'the very nature of things' teaches is 'a disgrace' for a man?
Long hair
Long hair on a man is the disgrace, yet Acts 18 seems to have Paul himself cut his hair 'because of a vow', perhaps one that meant letting it grow first.
Q 18What does 1 Corinthians 6:19 call the believer's body, just before reminding readers that 'you are not your own'?
The Spirit's temple
The Spirit's temple is the image, 'your bodies are temples of the Holy Spirit', and Paul's reason to honour God with the body is that 'you were bought at a price'.
Q 19What does 1 Corinthians 7 say it is 'better to marry than to' do, advising those who 'cannot control themselves'?
Burn with passion
Burn with passion is the NIV's reading of the King James 'to burn', and Paul's case for marriage is blunt: 'since sexual immorality is occurring', each man should have his own wife.
Q 20What status does Paul say he wishes 'all of you' shared, in 1 Corinthians 7's advice on marriage?
Unmarried
Unmarried 'as I do' is Paul's own state, and his reason is that an unmarried man 'is concerned about the Lord's affairs', while a married man's 'interests are divided'.
A spiritual rock
A spiritual rock, Paul says, perhaps echoing a Jewish legend that the rock Moses struck followed Israel through the desert, and he reads that rock as Christ.
Q 24Which letter from Rome, written about AD 96, rebuked the Corinthians for deposing their presbyters?
First Clement
First Clement already tells the Corinthians to 'take up the epistle of the blessed Paul', which makes it one of the earliest witnesses that Paul's letter was being kept and read.
Q 25Which preacher does 1 Corinthians 3 say 'watered' what Paul had 'planted' in Corinth?
Apollos
Apollos watered, yet when Paul later 'strongly urged' him to go back to Corinth, he 'was quite unwilling to go now'.
Q 26Where does 1 Corinthians 10 say believers may eat 'anything' without 'raising questions of conscience'?
The meat market
The meat market is safe because 'the earth is the Lord's', Paul says, but if someone points out that meat was offered in sacrifice, he says not to eat it, for that person's sake.
Q 27Why, puzzlingly, does 1 Corinthians 11:10 say a woman 'ought to have authority over her own head'?
Because of the angels
Because of the angels is all Paul offers, and John Chrysostom used the verse to argue that the covering should be worn continually, not only at prayer.
Q 28What does 1 Corinthians 11 complain happens at the Corinthians' shared meals while 'one person remains hungry'?
Another gets drunk
Another gets drunk, because each went ahead with their own food while those who had nothing went hungry, which is why Paul says their meetings 'do more harm than good'.
Q 29What does 1 Corinthians blame for many in Corinth being 'weak and sick' and some having 'fallen asleep'?
Taking communion unworthily
Taking communion unworthily, 'without discerning the body', had left some dead, since 'fallen asleep' means died, so Paul says everyone 'ought to examine themselves' first.
Q 30In 1 Corinthians 12's body metaphor, which part says 'Because I am not a hand, I do not belong to the body'?
The foot
The foot speaks first, then the ear complains it is not an eye, and Paul's answer is that God 'has placed the parts in the body, every one of them, just as he wanted them to be'.