Resurrection Trivia
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100 free Resurrection trivia questions with answers — literature quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
The Resurrection is the central claim of Christianity, and this quiz covers it from the Gospel accounts to the arguments still going on about it. It begins with the texts: who went to the tomb, what they found, how Mark's Gospel originally ended, why Paul's creed in First Corinthians is older than the Gospels, the appearance to five hundred at once, the walk to Emmaus, Thomas and the wounds, the breakfast by the lake and the Ascension after forty days. From there it goes to places and objects: Constantine's church over the tomb, the Muslim families who hold its keys, the Garden Tomb that Protestants prefer, the radiocarbon dating of the Shroud of Turin, and the swoon, stolen-body and vision theories from Reimarus to The Passover Plot. It also covers resurrection more broadly, with the raising of Lazarus after four days, the widow's son and Jairus's daughter, Peter raising Tabitha, the Sadducees who denied it, Daniel and the Maccabees, the Harrowing of Hell, and how Easter's date was fixed at Nicaea. It ends in art, from the wreathed Chi Rho to Piero della Francesca's fresco that a British officer refused to shell. Easy questions suit anyone who knows the Easter story; the expert tier is for theology students and church historians. Every answer was checked against Wikipedia's articles on the resurrection, the empty tomb, the appearances and the related sites and theories, and the supporting sentence is attached to each question.
30 of 100 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01According to Christian belief, God raised Jesus from the dead on which day after his crucifixion?
The third day
The third day counts both ends: the Gospels put the crucifixion on a Friday, the eve of the Sabbath, and the empty tomb at dawn on Sunday, and part of a day was reckoned as a whole one.
Q 02In the oldest manuscripts, Mark's Gospel ends abruptly with the women at the tomb doing what?
Fleeing and telling no one
Fleeing and telling no one: the oldest copies stop at 'for they were afraid', with no appearance of the risen Jesus at all, and the twelve further verses printed in most Bibles are absent from them.
Q 03How does Mark's Gospel describe the empty tomb's messenger, whom it never calls an angel?
A young man in white
A young man in white, sitting on the right inside the tomb, is all Mark describes; Matthew has an angel descend and roll back the stone, while Luke has two men in dazzling clothes.
Q 04Which New Testament letter preserves one of the earliest creeds, listing those who saw the risen Jesus?
First Corinthians
First Corinthians: Paul says he is handing on what he himself received, and scholars date the formula to within a few years of the crucifixion.
Q 05In the early creed Paul quotes, the risen Jesus appeared at one time to more than how many followers?
Five hundred
Five hundred: Paul adds that most of them were still alive when he wrote, a remark often read as an invitation to go and ask them, before closing the list with himself.
Q 06The Greek term prototokos, applied to the risen Jesus, means what?
Firstborn
Firstborn: the Greek joins 'first' to a root meaning to give birth, and Colossians calls Jesus 'firstborn from the dead' so that he might hold first place in everything.
Q 07In Luke, Jesus appears to two followers walking to which village, who recognise him at the breaking of bread?
Emmaus
Emmaus: the pair walk and talk with the stranger for miles without knowing him, and the instant he breaks the bread and they see who he is, he vanishes from their sight.
Q 08Which Dutch master painted the risen Jesus breaking bread with two disciples in a quiet 1648 panel now in the Louvre?
Rembrandt
Rembrandt returned to this supper several times; the 1648 panel drops the theatre of his early work for a still room and a soft glow around Jesus at the moment the pair realise who he is.
Q 09Which apostle refused to believe Jesus had risen until he could see and touch the wounds?
Thomas
Thomas had missed the first appearance and demanded to touch the wounds; when Jesus offered them a week later, John never says he did, only that he answered 'My Lord and my God'.
Q 10The Latin phrase Noli me tangere, said by Jesus to Mary Magdalene in John 20:17, means what?
Touch me not
Touch me not is the Latin Bible's wording; many modern translations read 'do not cling to me', and he gives his reason at once: he has not yet ascended to his Father.
Q 11Which pope, later called 'the Great', fixed Mary Magdalene's image as a repentant prostitute in a 591 sermon?
Gregory I
Gregory I merged her with the unnamed sinner who anoints Jesus's feet in Luke, though no Gospel calls her a prostitute, and the Eastern Church always kept the two women apart.
Q 12According to Luke, Jesus had cast how many demons out of Mary Magdalene?
Seven
Seven: Luke lists her among the healed women who then paid for the group's travels out of their own means, alongside Joanna, the wife of Herod's steward.
Q 13According to Acts, for how many days did the risen Jesus appear to the apostles before ascending?
Forty
Forty: that is why churches mark the Ascension on the fortieth day of Easter, which always lands on a Thursday.
Q 21Jerusalem's Garden Tomb, a rival to the Holy Sepulchre as Jesus's burial place, is favoured mainly by pilgrims of which tradition?
Protestant
Protestant pilgrims prize its quiet garden, but archaeologists date the rock-cut tomb, found in 1867, to centuries before Jesus, far too old to be the Gospels' new tomb.
Q 22The Garden Tomb sits beside a rocky outcrop with what name, proposed in the 19th century as Golgotha?
Skull Hill
Skull Hill's eroded cliff face looks like a skull, and General Charles Gordon championed it after an 1883 visit, so the spot was long known as Gordon's Calvary.
Q 23Which technique, applied by three laboratories in 1988, dated the Shroud of Turin's linen to the Middle Ages?
Radiocarbon dating
Q 14Luke's Gospel places the Ascension at Bethany, a village on which hill?
The Mount of Olives
The Mount of Olives: a small domed chapel on its summit, now inside a mosque compound, shows a slab of rock said to bear Jesus's last footprint.
Q 15The risen Jesus's instruction to make disciples of all nations is traditionally called what?
The Great Commission
The Great Commission closes Matthew's Gospel: on a mountain in Galilee the eleven disciples bow before the risen Jesus, though the text admits that some doubted.
Q 16Greek Orthodox Christians call the Church of the Holy Sepulchre by which Greek name, meaning Resurrection?
Anastasis
Anastasis: the fourth-century builders gave the name to the rotunda raised over the tomb itself, and Greek Orthodox Christians still use it for the whole church.
Q 17Which Roman emperor ordered the pagan temple over the tomb site replaced by a church around 326?
Constantine
Constantine had Hadrian's pagan temple torn down, and tradition credits his mother, Helena, with finding the True Cross on the same site.
Q 18Under a 1757 decree freezing the rival churches' rights, which object above the Holy Sepulchre's entrance may nobody move?
A wooden ladder
A wooden ladder: it already appears in an engraving dated 1728, and because it stood on the ledge when the rules were fixed, nobody may take it down.
Q 19For centuries, families of which faith have kept the key and opened the door of Jerusalem's Church of the Holy Sepulchre?
Muslim
Muslim: the Joudeh family guards the old iron key and the Nuseibeh family unlocks the door each morning, a neutral arrangement that spares the rival churches a fight over it.
Q 20Which name, Latin for 'little house', is given to the shrine enclosing the tomb in the Church of the Holy Sepulchre?
The Aedicule
The Aedicule was restored in 2016, when the marble over the burial shelf was lifted and the tomb itself was opened for the first time in centuries.
Radiocarbon dating put the linen between 1260 and 1390, a close match for the 1350s, when the shroud first turns up in the records at Lirey in France.
Q 24The first photograph of the Shroud of Turin, taken in 1898, caused a sensation because the image looked far clearer as what?
A negative
A negative: while developing his pictures, amateur photographer Secondo Pia saw a lifelike face emerge, because the light and dark on the cloth itself are reversed.
Q 25In 1532, what left the symmetrical marks that flank the Shroud of Turin's image?
A fire
A fire in its chapel at Chambery in France charred the folded cloth, which is why the burn marks repeat down both sides; the shroud only reached Turin in 1578.
Q 26In Matthew's Gospel, whom did the chief priests bribe to say the body had been stolen?
The tomb guards
The tomb guards were paid to say the disciples came by night while they slept, and Matthew adds that the story was still going round in his own day.
Q 27The Ahmadiyya movement teaches that Jesus survived the cross and ended his days in which land?
India
India: the movement's founder taught that Jesus went east after the crucifixion to preach to the lost tribes of Israel and died an old man in Kashmir.
Q 28Which 1965 Hugh Schonfield book argued Jesus choreographed his own crucifixion to survive it?
The Passover Plot
The Passover Plot has Jesus staging his own crucifixion to fulfil the prophecies, drugged to seem dead, until a soldier's spear thrust wrecked the plan.
Q 29Which US president took a razor to the Gospels, making a private Bible that leaves out the miracles and the resurrection?
Jefferson
Jefferson kept the book private, but from 1904 Congress had it printed and gave copies to new lawmakers, a custom that lasted into the 1950s.
Q 30Which Scottish philosopher argued in 1748 that no testimony can establish a miracle such as a dead man's return to life?
David Hume
David Hume's test was to ask which is likelier: that a dead man really rose, or that the witnesses deceive or are deceived.