Abraham Trivia
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98 free Abraham trivia questions with answers — history quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
This Abraham trivia quiz follows the patriarch from Ur of the Chaldees to the cave of Machpelah, drawing on the Genesis narrative and on how Judaism, Christianity and Islam remember him. The easy questions are ones anyone with a Sunday-school or Quran-class memory can attempt: his original name, his wife, his two famous sons and their mothers, his nephew who fled Sodom, and the mountain-top test involving a knife and a ram. From there it moves through the whole cycle: the call to leave Haran, Sarai and Pharaoh, the war of the kings and the 318 servants, Melchizedek's bread and wine, the covenant of the pieces, the three visitors, the haggling over Sodom, Abimelech, Beersheba and Keturah's six sons. The harder end is for people who know the text and the traditions: Abraham's ages at each milestone, what his new name is said to mean, Ephron the Hittite and the price of the cave, why the site is fenced by Herod's walls, the Talmud's name for his mother, Nimrod's furnace, Ibrahim as Khalilullah and reformer of the Kaaba, the Zamzam well, Eid al-Adha, Kierkegaard's Fear and Trembling, Rublev's Trinity and even a Bob Dylan song. Every answer was checked against encyclopaedia entries on Abraham, his family and the traditions about him before publishing, and the supporting sentence is stored with each question. If you enjoy this one, try our Bible, Old Testament and world religions quizzes next.
30 of 98 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Jewish tradition places Abraham's near-sacrifice of his son on the spot now covered by which Jerusalem shrine?
The Dome of the Rock
The Dome of the Rock shelters the Foundation Stone, which Jewish tradition identifies with Abraham's altar; for Muslims the same rock is where Muhammad's Night Journey to heaven began.
Q 02Abraham is regarded as the forefather of the Jewish people through Isaac and of which other people through Ishmael?
The Arabs
The Arabs: Genesis gives Ishmael twelve sons who became tribal chiefs, and Islamic tradition traces the prophet Muhammad's own family back to one of them.
Q 03In Genesis, who is named as Abraham's father?
Terah
Terah is the name Genesis gives; the Quran calls Abraham's father Azar instead, and Muslim scholars have long debated whether the two are the same man.
Q 04According to Genesis, in which city did Abraham's family originally live?
Ur
Ur is usually identified with a Sumerian city in southern Iraq, thousands of years older than the Chaldeans whose name Genesis attaches to it.
Q 05God's call to Abram promised that through him all the families of the earth would be what?
Blessed
Blessed: Genesis sets the promise at the very start of Abram's story, when he was 75 and his wife had no children, so he set out for a new land with no heir to inherit any of it.
Q 06Abram's father set out for Canaan but settled and died in which city along the way?
Haran
Haran: the family stopped here, far short of Canaan, and some relatives never left. Two generations later one of Abraham's descendants fled back to Haran and found his wives among them.
Q 07What did Abram tell Sarai to say to the Egyptians when famine drove them to Egypt?
That she was his sister
That she was his sister: Abram feared the Egyptians would kill him to take his beautiful wife. Pharaoh took her into his palace, was struck with plagues, and sent the couple away when he learned the truth.
Q 08After parting from Lot, who chose the well-watered Jordan valley, where did Abram settle?
The plain of Mamre near Hebron
The plain of Mamre near Hebron: to end a quarrel between their herdsmen, Abram had offered his nephew first choice of the land and took what was left. He built an altar at his new home.
Q 09How did Abram's 318 men defeat the army that had seized Lot?
Night raid
Night raid: Abram split his men into groups, struck in the dark and chased the invaders far to the north. He then refused to keep any of the recovered loot, so that no king could claim to have made him rich.
Q 10Which king of Salem, a priest of El Elyon, brought out bread and wine to Abram?
Melchizedek
Melchizedek, to whom Abram is traditionally read as giving a tenth of the spoils. The Letter to the Hebrews argues from that gift that his priesthood outranks that of Abraham's own descendants, the Levites.
Q 11Childless Abram expected his servant Eliezer to be his heir, until God led him outside and told him to count what?
The stars
The stars: 'so shall your offspring be,' God told him. Abram believed it, and Genesis says that trust was counted to him as righteousness, a line the New Testament quotes again and again.
Q 12Genesis identifies the Vale of Siddim, where the kings of Sodom and Gomorrah were defeated, with which sea?
The Dead Sea
The Dead Sea: Genesis adds that the valley was full of tar pits, and that some of the fleeing men of Sodom and Gomorrah fell into them while the rest ran for the hills.
Q 13Sarai offered Abram which of her servants so that he might have a son?
Hagar
Q 21Which king of Gerar took Sarah into his household until God warned him in a dream?
Abimelech
Abimelech, who protested his innocence and sent her back with sheep, oxen, servants and a thousand pieces of silver. Abraham then prayed for him, and the women of his household could bear children again.
Q 22What place name arose from Abraham's oath with the king of Gerar over a well, sealed with seven ewes?
Beersheba
Beersheba: the king's men had seized a well Abraham dug, and the seven lambs were his proof that it was his. The Hebrew name can be read as 'well of the oath' or 'well of seven'.
Q 23How old was Abraham when Isaac was born?
100
100: only a year earlier Abraham had doubted that a man of that age could father a child at all, and had pleaded with God, 'Oh that Ishmael might live before you!'
Hagar, an Egyptian: once pregnant she looked down on her mistress, Sarai treated her harshly in return, and Hagar ran away into the desert until an angel told her to go back.
Q 14An angel chose the name Ishmael, meaning what?
God hears
God hears: the angel told his runaway mother that the Lord had heard her misery in the desert. She answered by naming God 'the God who sees', and went back to have the child.
Q 15What did God command Abraham to do as the sign of their covenant?
Circumcise the males of his household
Circumcise the males of his household: Abraham did it that same day, to himself and to 13-year-old Ishmael. The rule that boys be circumcised at eight days old is still kept in Judaism as the brit milah.
Q 16According to Genesis, what does the name Abraham mean?
Father of a multitude
Father of a multitude is the meaning Genesis gives when God renames Abram. Some scholars think the name originally meant 'the father is exalted', which would make the Bible's own gloss a folk etymology.
Q 17Abraham's servant chose Isaac's bride at a well because she offered to draw water for him and for which animals?
His camels
His camels: the servant had prayed that the right woman would make exactly that offer, and Genesis says she arrived before he had finished praying. She then drew water until the whole caravan had drunk.
Q 18What did Sarah do when she overheard that she would bear a son in her old age?
She laughed
She laughed, quietly to herself, then grew frightened and denied it, only to be told, 'No, but you did laugh.' The boy was duly named Isaac, which means 'he laughs'.
Q 19Abraham haggled with God over Sodom until God agreed to spare the city for how few righteous people?
Ten
Ten: Abraham opened at fifty and talked God down step by step, apologising for his nerve as he went. Not even ten were found, and the next morning he watched smoke rise from the plain like the smoke of a furnace.
Q 20What happened to Lot's wife when she looked back at the burning cities?
She turned into a pillar of salt
She turned into a pillar of salt: the family had been warned to run for the hills without looking behind them. Jesus later made her a three-word warning, 'Remember Lot's wife.'
Q 24God renamed Abraham's wife Sarai as Sarah, a Hebrew name usually translated as what?
Princess
Princess: the new name came with a promise that she would be a mother of nations and that kings would descend from her. Abraham's first response was to ask whether a woman of ninety could bear a child.
Q 25Before sending his servant to find Isaac a wife, Abraham made him swear an oath with his hand placed where?
Under Abraham's thigh
Under Abraham's thigh: the servant swore not to choose a Canaanite wife and never to take Isaac back to Mesopotamia. Jacob later demanded the same oath of his son Joseph on his deathbed.
Q 26What skill did Ishmael become known for while living in the wilderness of Paran?
Archery
Archery: he grew up in the desert and became an archer. Earlier, when the water ran out after the pair were sent away, his mother had sat down 'a bowshot away' so as not to watch him die.
Q 27In which land did God tell Abraham to offer Isaac as a sacrifice?
Moriah
Moriah, three days' journey from Abraham's camp. Second Chronicles later places Solomon's Temple on Mount Moriah, which is why tradition sets the near-sacrifice on what is now Jerusalem's Temple Mount.
Q 28What did Abraham sacrifice in place of Isaac?
A ram caught in a thicket
A ram caught in a thicket by its horns. On the way up Isaac had asked where the lamb was and been told that God would provide one, so Abraham named the place 'The Lord will provide'.
Q 29What is the Hebrew name for the story of the binding of Isaac, read at Rosh Hashanah?
The Akedah
The Akedah, 'the binding', is read in synagogues on the second day of the festival. One rabbinic reading makes Isaac no child but a grown man of 37, who must therefore have agreed to be bound.
Q 30Which philosopher explored Abraham's anguish over the sacrifice of Isaac in Fear and Trembling?
Søren Kierkegaard
Søren Kierkegaard, writing as 'Johannes de silentio'. He argued that ordinary ethics cannot justify Abraham: his 'knight of faith' trusts, against all reason, that he will receive Isaac back.