King James Bible
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50 free King James Bible trivia questions with answers — trivia quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
The King James Bible is one of the most quoted books in the English language. Commissioned by a king who wanted a single translation for the whole church, it was produced by teams of scholars over several years and first printed in 1611. Many of its phrases are still in daily use among people who have never opened it. This quiz covers both the book and its story. Some questions ask about the wording itself: well-known verses, old words whose meanings have shifted, and expressions that passed into ordinary speech. Others cover the history: the king and the conference behind the project, the translators and their source texts, the earlier English Bibles they built on, and the printing slips that made certain editions notorious. It is written for churchgoers, Bible study groups, history readers and anyone who enjoys the language of the 1611 text. Each answer comes with a short explanation, so there is something to learn whether or not you get it right.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01The 1631 'Wicked Bible', a King James printing, left the word 'not' out of the commandment against what?
Adultery
Adultery became an order rather than a sin, and the printers were hauled before the Star Chamber, fined £300 and stripped of their licence.
Q 02Which legendary creature is named in the King James Old Testament where modern translations say 'wild ox'?
Unicorn
Unicorn was the translators' choice because the older Greek and Latin Bibles used words meaning one-horned; the animal meant was probably the aurochs, a huge wild bull.
Q 03A long-running legend claims which playwright hid his name in the King James translation of Psalm 46?
William Shakespeare
William Shakespeare is the name the legend finds in the psalm's words 'shake' and 'spear', though scholars doubt it because committees agreed the wording.
Q 04Which NASA mission's crew read the King James opening of Genesis from lunar orbit on Christmas Eve 1968?
Apollo 8
Apollo 8 carried the first humans to orbit the Moon, and Bill Anders, Jim Lovell and Frank Borman took turns reading the first ten verses during a television broadcast.
Q 05In A Charlie Brown Christmas, which Peanuts character recites the King James account of the first Christmas from Luke?
Linus
Linus drops his security blanket mid-speech, and creator Charles Schulz insisted on keeping the Bible reading despite his producers' worries about religion on television.
Q 06Which Christian festival does the King James Bible name at Acts 12:4, where newer versions say 'Passover'?
Easter
Easter is the feast King Herod waits out in this verse before bringing the imprisoned Peter before the people; the commentator Albert Barnes called the word choice absurd.
Q 07The shortest verse in the King James Bible is two words long and describes Jesus doing what?
Weeping
Weeping is all the verse records, on the way to the tomb of his friend Lazarus, a few lines before Jesus calls the dead man out of the grave.
Q 08Which word does the King James Bible use in 1 Corinthians 13 where most modern translations say 'love'?
Charity
Charity is named the greatest of three lasting virtues at the chapter's close, ranked above both faith and hope.
Q 09King James, who ordered the 1611 Bible, had already ruled which country since infancy before taking the English throne?
Scotland
Scotland made him James VI at just thirteen months old, after his mother was forced to abdicate, so he had worn a crown for decades before England's passed to him in 1603.
Q 10In the King James Book of Job, Job says he has escaped with the skin of which body part?
Teeth
Teeth give the verse its lasting idiom: Job, his bones clinging to his skin, says he has got away with almost nothing, and the phrase now means a narrow escape.
Q 11King James, sponsor of the 1611 Bible, inherited the English throne from which childless Tudor cousin?
Elizabeth I
Elizabeth I died in March 1603 with no heir of her own, and within a year her successor had called the church conference that launched the new translation.
Q 12Which president's 1861 inauguration Bible, a King James edition, was later used by Barack Obama to take the oath?
Abraham Lincoln
Abraham Lincoln never owned the book: it belonged to a Supreme Court clerk, went back to him after the ceremony, and reached the Library of Congress in 1928.
Q 13In the King James Isaiah 40:15, the nations are compared to a single drop of what household container?
Bucket
Q 21In the King James phrase 'the quick and the dead', used of those Christ will judge, what does 'quick' mean?
Alive
Alive is the old sense, and it survives in quicksand, which moves, in quicksilver, and in being 'cut to the quick', down to the sensitive tissue.
Q 22Which word for someone who takes the blame comes from a Day of Atonement ritual in the King James Leviticus 16?
Scapegoat
Scapegoat names the second of two goats in the ritual: one was sacrificed, while the other was sent off into the wilderness carrying the sins of the people.
Q 23At which royal palace beside the Thames did King James agree in January 1604 to a new translation of the Bible?
Hampton Court
Bucket is the word, and the full 1611 phrase is 'a drop of a bucket': the same verse goes on to weigh whole nations as the small dust on a set of scales.
Q 14In the King James Jeremiah 13:23, which animal cannot change its spots, just as wrongdoers cannot change their ways?
Leopard
Leopard shares the verse with an Ethiopian who cannot change his skin, the prophet's twin pictures of people too accustomed to doing evil to start doing good.
Q 15Which dead insects spoil the apothecary's ointment in a King James verse that gave English a phrase for a small flaw?
Flies
Flies make the perfumer's ointment stink in the verse, just as a little folly taints a reputation for wisdom, and 'a fly in the ointment' now means any hidden drawback.
Q 16According to the King James wording of 1 Timothy 6:10, the love of what is the root of all evil?
Money
Money itself is not condemned: the verse blames the love of it, and adds that those who coveted riches pierced themselves through with many sorrows.
Q 17The King James Psalm 23, known for its valley of the shadow of death, opens by calling the Lord a what?
Shepherd
Shepherd sets up the whole psalm, and the image returns in the dark valley, where a rod and a staff are what comfort the walker.
Q 18In the King James Proverbs 16:18, what 'goeth before destruction', while a haughty spirit comes before a fall?
Pride
Pride leads to destruction in the actual verse; the popular saying squeezes two lines into one and has it going before a fall instead.
Q 19The King James Book of Jonah never says 'whale': it says the prophet was swallowed by a great what?
Fish
Fish is the word in Jonah 1:17, where the prophet spends three days and three nights in its belly; the whale comes from the King James wording of Matthew 12:40.
Q 20Which verse, often written on signs by evangelists, says in King James wording that God 'gave his only begotten Son'?
John 3:16
John 3:16 became the most popular online search term for more than a day after quarterback Tim Tebow wore the reference on his eye black in a 2009 college title game.
Hampton Court got the conference by accident: it had been planned for November 1603, until an outbreak of plague forced a delay and a change of venue.
Q 24Which English translation, made by Protestant exiles and loved by Puritans, did King James dislike for its notes?
Geneva Bible
Geneva Bible notes struck the king as partial, untrue and seditious, so his own translators were told to keep commentary out of the margins.
Q 25The King James translators worked in six companies based at Westminster, Oxford and which other English city?
Cambridge
Cambridge was home to two of the six companies, and its university went on to print its own editions of the text in 1629 and 1638.
Q 26What name is given to the section of books that the 1611 King James Bible printed between its two Testaments?
Apocrypha
Apocrypha books numbered fourteen in 1611, lifting the first edition to 80 books in all; most King James Bibles printed today leave the section out.
Q 27By what other name, the usual one in Britain, is the King James Bible widely known?
Authorized Version
Authorized Version is a title without paperwork: the Privy Council records for 1600 to 1613, which probably held the order, were destroyed by fire.
Q 28From which ancient language did the King James translators render most of the Old Testament, using the Masoretic Text?
Hebrew
Hebrew scholars handled the Old Testament, while the New Testament companies worked from printed Greek editions and the books in between came from Greek and Latin.
Q 29A 1613 King James printing became notorious for naming which disciple in place of Jesus at Matthew 26:36?
Judas
Judas, not Jesus, tells the others to sit while he goes away to pray in that edition, and one surviving copy has a slip of paper glued over the mistake.
Q 30A 1717 Oxford King James Bible misprinted 'vineyard' in a heading as which word, giving the edition its nickname?
Vinegar
Vinegar replaced the vineyard in the heading over Luke 20, and the printer John Baskett made so many other slips that a reviewer called the edition a Baskett full of errors.