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50 free Gospel of John trivia questions with answers — trivia quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
The fourth Gospel reads nothing like the other three. It opens in eternity rather than in a stable, gives Jesus long discourses in place of short sayings, and builds its first half around seven signs, from wine at a wedding to a friend called out of his tomb after four days. These 50 questions walk through John in order: the prologue and the Word, the first disciples, Nicodemus by night, the Samaritan at the well, the healings at Bethesda and at the pool, the I AM sayings, the supper of John 13 with its towel and basin, the farewell discourse, the arrest, the trial, the cross, the empty tomb and the breakfast on the shore. Expect to be asked what only John records and where John parts company with Matthew, Mark and Luke. It suits a Bible study, a church quiz night or a Sunday-school staff room: play on your phone with instant explanations, or print it and read it aloud.
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Q 01Which term from Greek philosophy does John's prologue apply to Christ, rendered 'the Word' in English Bibles?
Logos
Logos, which also carries the senses 'discourse' and 'reason', is presented in John 1 as pre-existent: with God from the beginning, and itself God.
Q 02Which word completes John 1:14 in the NIV: 'The Word became ___ and made his dwelling among us'?
Flesh
Flesh completes the verse, which the King James Bible renders 'the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us', going on to speak of 'the only begotten of the Father'.
Q 03Which title did John the Baptist give Jesus at the Jordan, adding 'who takes away the sin of the world'?
The Lamb of God
The Lamb of God was said the day after priests and Levites had questioned the Baptist, and its Latin form, Agnus Dei, became a fixed part of the Catholic Mass.
Q 04In which Galilean village did Jesus perform his first sign, at a wedding where the wine ran out?
Cana
Cana is where the master of the banquet, tasting the new wine without knowing where it came from, told the bridegroom he had saved the best till now.
Q 05Which verse, the shortest in the King James Bible, comes as Christ nears a dead friend's tomb in John 11?
Jesus wept
Jesus wept is John 11:35, and the onlookers read the tears two ways: 'See how he loved him!' and why had a healer of the blind not prevented the death.
Q 06What three things does Jesus call himself in John 14:6, just before 'No one comes to the Father except through me'?
The way, truth and life
The way, truth and life is how Jesus answers a disciple who had just admitted the Twelve did not know where he was going.
Q 07Which title does Jesus take in John 10, contrasting himself with a hired hand who runs from the wolf?
The good shepherd
The good shepherd calls his own sheep by name, and Jesus adds that he has 'other sheep that are not of this sheep pen' still to bring in.
Q 08Which apostle, absent when the risen Jesus first appeared, said he would not believe without touching the nail marks?
Thomas
Thomas, also called Didymus, cried 'My Lord and my God!' a week later, and Jesus replied that those who believe without seeing are blessed.
Q 09How many husbands did Jesus say the Samaritan woman at the well had had, the current man not being one?
Five
Five husbands, and her reply, 'Sir, I can see that you are a prophet', turned the talk to whether God should be worshipped on Mount Gerizim or in Jerusalem.
Q 10What did Jesus do for his disciples during the supper in John 13, after wrapping a towel around his waist?
Washed their feet
Washed their feet, a job for the lowest servant, and then told them 'no servant is greater than his master' and to do the same for each other.
Q 11Which friend of Jesus, dead four days and smelling in the tomb, did he call out alive in John 11?
Lazarus
Lazarus came out still bound in strips of linen with a cloth over his face, and the chief priests then plotted to kill him too, because so many believed on his account.
Q 12Which verse, waved on stadium signs worldwide, comes from Jesus's night-time talk with the Pharisee Nicodemus?
John 3:16
John 3:16, 'For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son', has been called 'the gospel in a nutshell', and Nicodemus returns at the burial bearing spices.
Q 13Which disciple, first a follower of the Baptist, went to find his brother Simon saying 'We have found the Messiah'?
Andrew
Q 21How many years had the invalid at Bethesda been ill before Jesus told him to pick up his mat and walk?
38
38 years, and the healing came on a Sabbath, so the Jewish leaders objected to the cured man carrying his mat and began to persecute Jesus.
Q 22In which pool did Jesus tell a man blind from birth to wash, after putting mud made with saliva on his eyes?
Siloam
Siloam, which John glosses as 'Sent', and the Pharisees then interrogated the man and his parents because the cure had been worked on a Sabbath.
Q 23What did Jesus call himself in Capernaum after feeding the 5,000, saying whoever comes to him will never go hungry?
The bread of life
Andrew was one of two Baptist followers who trailed Jesus at the Jordan and asked where he was staying; the reply was 'Come, and you will see'.
Q 14Which disciple asked whether anything good could come from Nazareth, then heard Jesus had seen him under a fig tree?
Nathanael
Nathanael, whom Jesus greeted as 'an Israelite in whom there is no deceit', is usually identified with the Bartholomew of the synoptic apostle lists.
Q 15What new name did Jesus give Simon son of John at their first meeting, a name the text itself then translates?
Cephas
Cephas is Aramaic for rock; its Greek equivalent, Petros, gives the name Peter by which Simon is known through the rest of the Gospel.
Q 16Which lakeside town does John 1 name as the home of Philip, who then fetched a friend to meet Jesus?
Bethsaida
Bethsaida was also the home of Simon Peter and his brother, and John 12 repeats Philip's hometown when Greeks at the festival ask him, 'Sir, we would like to see Jesus'.
Q 17How many stone jars, each holding twenty to thirty gallons, did Jesus have filled at the wedding in John 2?
Six
Six jars of the kind kept for Jewish ceremonial washing were filled 'to the brim', so the miracle produced well over a hundred gallons of wine.
Q 18What did Jesus make from cords before driving sheep, cattle and traders from the temple, a detail only John gives?
A whip
A whip out of cords appears in none of the synoptic versions, and John sets the whole scene near the opening of the ministry rather than in Holy Week.
Q 19How many years, his hearers protested, had the temple taken to build when Jesus spoke of raising it in three days?
46
46 years, and John explains that the temple Jesus meant was his body, a saying his disciples only understood after he was raised from the dead.
Q 20What does Jesus call himself in John 15, adding that his Father prunes every fruitful branch and cuts off the barren?
The true vine
The true vine image ends 'apart from me you can do nothing', and the disciples are told to 'remain in me' and bear much fruit.
The bread of life discourse cost Jesus followers — John says many of his disciples 'no longer followed him' — once his talk of eating and drinking him proved too hard a teaching.
Q 24Who, John alone says, supplied the barley loaves and two small fish with which Jesus fed the 5,000?
A boy
A boy carrying barley loaves, the poor man's grain, and afterwards Jesus withdrew to a mountain because the crowd meant to make him king by force.
Q 25What must a person be to see the kingdom of God, Jesus told Nicodemus, a phrase that now labels evangelicals?
Born again
Born again — or 'born from above', as the Greek can equally mean — baffled Nicodemus, who asked whether a man could enter his mother's womb a second time.
Q 26Which object from Moses's wilderness years did Jesus compare to the lifted-up Son of Man when talking to Nicodemus?
The bronze snake
The bronze snake of Numbers 21 healed Israelites who looked at it, and John 3:14 makes it the picture of the crucifixion, just ahead of the Gospel's most quoted verse.
Q 27Which miracle did the disciples see on the lake the night after the feeding of the 5,000 in John 6?
Walking on water
Walking on water, in John's telling, ends with the boat 'immediately' reaching the shore, and unlike Matthew's version there is no Peter stepping out to join him.
Q 28Which episode, missing from the oldest manuscripts of John, ends with 'Go now and leave your life of sin'?
The woman caught in adultery
The woman caught in adultery, with its 'let any one of you who is without sin' challenge, is widely judged a later insertion, and many Bibles now bracket it.
Q 29Which Jewish festival, named nowhere else in the New Testament, finds Jesus in Solomon's Colonnade one winter?
Hanukkah
Hanukkah, the Festival of Dedication, marks the Maccabees' rededication of the temple, and there the crowd demands that Jesus say plainly whether he is the Messiah.
Q 30How did the crowd react when Jesus said 'Before Abraham was, I am' in John 8, taking the divine name for himself?
They picked up stones
They picked up stones to stone him, but Jesus hid himself and slipped away from the temple grounds.