Gospel of Luke Trivia
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99 free Gospel of Luke trivia questions with answers — trivia quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
Luke is the Gospel of the stories everyone knows and nobody can find in Matthew, Mark or John: the prodigal son, the good neighbour on the Jericho road, the tax collector up a tree, two friends walking to Emmaus. It is also the only Gospel with a dedication, a stated method and a sequel. These 99 questions follow the book from its first sentence to its last: the angel in the temple and the angel in Nazareth, the census and the manger, the songs of Luke 1 and 2, the boy in the temple, the open-air sermon with its blessings and woes, the parables of chapters 10 to 19, the women who funded the mission, the trial with its extra hearing, the words from the cross and the road out of Jerusalem on Easter evening. Expect to be asked what only Luke records and where he parts company with the other three. 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.
30 of 99 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Which 'most excellent' addressee, named again at the start of Acts, did Luke write his 'orderly account' for?
Theophilus
Theophilus may have been a man of real rank, since Acts gives the same 'most excellent' title to the Roman governors Felix and Festus.
Q 02Who passed by before the Good Samaritan stopped for the beaten man, in Luke 10?
A priest and a Levite
A priest and a Levite, both temple men, walked past before the Samaritan poured oil and wine on the wounds and paid the innkeeper two denarii, promising to cover any extra cost.
Q 03In Luke's parable of the prodigal son, what job did the starving younger son take in the 'distant country'?
Feeding pigs
Feeding pigs, unclean animals to a Jewish audience, was the low point: he 'longed to fill his stomach with the pods that the pigs were eating, but no one gave him anything'.
Q 04Which chief tax collector of Jericho, too short to see over the crowd, climbed a sycamore-fig tree in Luke 19?
Zacchaeus
Zacchaeus came down to host Jesus and promised half his possessions to the poor and fourfold repayment to anyone he had cheated, earning the verdict 'Today salvation has come to this house'.
Q 05Whose census decree, recorded only by Luke, brought Mary and her betrothed from Nazareth to Bethlehem?
Caesar Augustus
Caesar Augustus ordered 'a census of the entire Roman world', and the family went to Bethlehem because Mary's husband belonged to the house and line of David.
Q 06Who were the first to visit the newborn Jesus in Luke 2, where Matthew's Magi never appear?
Shepherds
Shepherds heard the news from an angel and 'a great company of the heavenly host', then spread the word about the child, and all who heard it were amazed.
Q 07What was the risen Jesus doing at the table when the two Emmaus disciples' 'eyes were opened' in Luke 24?
Breaking bread
Breaking bread, with thanks given first, is when they knew him, and he vanished at once; only afterwards did they admit their hearts had been 'burning within us' on the road.
Q 08By which Latin name is Mary's song in Luke 1, sung at Vespers and Anglican Evensong, known?
Magnificat
Magnificat is the opening word of the Latin 'My soul glorifies the Lord', a song Mary sings on visiting her pregnant relative in the hill country that echoes Hannah's prayer in 1 Samuel.
Q 09Which profession does Colossians give 'our dear friend Luke', the traditional author of the third Gospel?
A doctor
A doctor is what Colossians 4:14 calls him, which is why Luke became a patron saint of physicians, and a later tradition made him the first painter of icons of the Virgin.
Q 10Where did Jesus promise the repentant criminal crucified beside him they would be together 'today', in Luke 23?
In paradise
In paradise is a promise only Luke records, made to a man who had just rebuked the other criminal: 'We are punished justly... but this man has done nothing wrong.'
Q 11Which saying from the cross, found only in Luke 23, comes as the soldiers divide his clothes by lot?
Father, forgive them
Father, forgive them is missing from some early manuscripts, and in Acts the dying Stephen echoes it, crying out, 'Lord, do not hold this sin against them.'
Q 12What was the twelve-year-old Jesus doing when found in the temple, in Luke 2?
Asking the teachers questions
Asking the teachers questions, the boy left everyone 'amazed at his understanding and his answers', yet his own parents 'did not understand' his reply.
Q 13Which angel told Mary she would bear a son, 'in the sixth month' of her relative's pregnancy, in Luke 1?
Gabriel
Q 21Which supporter of Jesus 'out of their own means' in Luke 8 was the wife of Chuza, the manager of Herod's household?
Joanna
Joanna is named again among the women who found the tomb empty, and the apostles did not believe them because their words 'seemed to them like nonsense'.
Q 22What did the tax collector of Luke 18, who 'would not even look up to heaven', do as he prayed for mercy?
Beat his breast
Beat his breast as he prayed 'God, have mercy on me, a sinner', and it was he, not the Pharisee boasting of fasting twice a week, who went home justified.
Q 23What did the rich farmer in Luke 12 plan to do with his surplus grain before God demanded his life that night?
Build bigger barns
Gabriel, who tells Zechariah he stands 'in the presence of God', delivers both birth announcements in Luke, and Mary's reply is simply 'I am the Lord's servant'.
Q 14Whose unborn baby 'leaped for joy' when the pregnant Mary arrived at her home in the hill country, in Luke 1?
Elizabeth
Elizabeth, 'a descendant of Aaron' and childless until old age, then cried 'Blessed are you among women', words that found their way into the Hail Mary.
Q 15What happened to Zechariah the moment he wrote 'His name is John', months after doubting an angel in the temple?
His speech returned
His speech returned at once, 'his mouth was opened and his tongue set free', and he began 'praising God' with a prophecy over his newborn son.
Q 16At which town's gate did Jesus touch a bier and raise 'the only son of his mother', a miracle only Luke tells?
Nain
Nain is where the crowd, seeing the dead man sit up and talk, decided 'A great prophet has appeared among us', an echo of Elijah raising a boy at Zarephath.
Q 17What is the woman searching for in the parable Luke 15 tells between the lost sheep and the prodigal son?
A coin
A coin, one of her ten silver coins, sends her sweeping the house, and when she finds it she calls her friends to rejoice, like heaven's joy over one repentant sinner.
Q 18What did Jesus call the one cleansed leper who came back to praise God, in Luke 17?
This foreigner
This foreigner was a Samaritan, the only one of the ten to return, and Jesus asked, 'Were not all ten cleansed? Where are the other nine?'
Q 19Near which village was the risen Jesus 'taken up into heaven' while blessing the disciples, in Luke 24?
Bethany
Bethany, on the far slope of the Mount of Olives, is where Luke's Gospel ends; Acts retells the same farewell with a forty-day gap and a cloud, and the disciples went back 'with great joy'.
Q 20Which of the two Emmaus disciples, who asked 'Were not our hearts burning within us?', does Luke 24 name?
Cleopas
Cleopas is the one who asks the stranger whether he is 'the only one visiting Jerusalem' who has not heard the news; his companion is never named at all.
Build bigger barns, then 'eat, drink and be merry', was his plan, and God's 'You fool!' ends a parable Jesus told after a man asked him to split an inheritance.
Q 24What was the third guest's excuse in Luke 14's great banquet, after a new field and new oxen?
I just got married
I just got married, so I can't come, is the third refusal, and the angry host fills the hall instead with 'the poor, the crippled, the blind and the lame' from the streets.
Q 25Where does Jesus stand in Luke 6 to bless 'you who are poor', the verses Matthew sets on a mountainside?
On a level place
On a level place gives the passage its name, the Sermon on the Plain, and Luke's four blessings are followed by four woes, starting 'woe to you who are rich', that Matthew lacks.
Q 26How did Jesus send out the seventy-two others he appointed in Luke 10?
Two by two
Two by two, the seventy-two (seventy in some manuscripts) went ahead of him, and they came back with joy, saying, 'even the demons submit to us in your name'.
Q 27To which ancestor does Luke 3 trace the line of Jesus backwards, going further than Matthew's genealogy?
Adam
Adam, 'the son of God', closes a list that Luke puts after the baptism rather than at the start of his book, and its chain differs from Matthew's almost from the first generation back.
Q 28What did Herod do to Jesus before sending him back to Pilate, in a scene only Luke 23 records?
Put an elegant robe on him
Put an elegant robe on him is the mockery of a ruler who had 'plied him with many questions' and got no answer, and that day Herod and Pilate, until then enemies, became friends.
Q 29What does Luke alone say fell 'like drops of blood' as Jesus prayed in anguish on the Mount of Olives?
His sweat
His sweat is the detail, paired with an angel who 'appeared to him and strengthened him', in two verses that some early manuscripts omit and that no other Gospel has.
Q 30Which Syrian governor's census does Luke 2 link to the birth of Jesus?
Quirinius
Quirinius held a census of Judea in AD 6, after Rome deposed Herod's son Archelaus, yet Luke's story opens 'in the time of Herod king of Judea'.