The Crucifixion Trivia
0Loading crowd target
0Loading crowd target
7correct to beat the crowd
49 free The Crucifixion trivia questions with answers — history quiz, new questions added Sep 2026.
This Crucifixion trivia quiz covers the central event of the Christian story from three directions: what the four gospels say, what historians know about Roman crucifixion as a punishment, and how artists and churches have remembered it. The easy questions handle Pilate, Golgotha, Simon of Cyrene, the meaning of INRI and the apostle crucified upside down. From there it moves into the gospel details: the hour Mark gives, the drink offered, the seamless robe, the darkness at noon and the soldier with the spear. The harder end is for Bible readers, church historians and art lovers: the psalm behind the cry of abandonment, the years scholars argue over, the Testimonium Flavianum, the nailed heel bone dug up in 1968, the emperor who abolished the punishment, Grünewald's altarpiece for a hospital, and why Dalí left out the nails. Every answer was checked against encyclopaedia entries on the crucifixion of Jesus, Roman crucifixion, Good Friday, the relevant places, people and artworks, and the supporting sentence is stored with each question. If you enjoy this one, our Easter, Bible and Roman Empire quizzes are natural next stops.
30 of 49 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Which prisoner did the crowd ask the Roman governor to release instead of Jesus?
Barabbas
Barabbas was in prison over a deadly uprising, Mark says. The gospels describe a Passover custom of freeing one prisoner of the crowd's choosing, and the crowd shouted for him.
Q 02What is the name of the site outside Jerusalem's walls where the gospels say Jesus was crucified?
Golgotha
Golgotha is never called a hill in the four gospels: the 'Mount Calvary' of English hymns comes from later Christian tradition.
Q 03The name of the crucifixion site, in both its Aramaic and Latin forms, means what?
Place of a skull
Place of a skull is the gospels' own translation, and nobody is sure why. One old legend said Adam's skull lay buried on the spot, which is why many crucifixes show a skull at the foot of the cross.
Q 04Which man was compelled by the Roman soldiers to carry Jesus's cross?
Simon of Cyrene
Simon of Cyrene was a passer-by coming in from the country, Mark says. The gospel also names his sons, Alexander and Rufus, which scholars take as a sign that its first readers knew the family.
Q 05Three gospels say which object in the Jerusalem Temple was torn in two at the crucifixion?
The sanctuary curtain
The sanctuary curtain closed off the Holy of Holies, which only the high priest entered, once a year. Two gospels have it rip from top to bottom, and Christians came to read the tear as the way to God thrown open.
Q 06Mark's gospel, which has Jesus die at about three in the afternoon, says he was crucified at what time?
9 a.m.
9 a.m. is Mark's 'third hour', counted from sunrise, and no other gospel times the nailing. John's clock even disagrees: he has the governor still passing sentence at about the sixth hour, around noon.
Q 07What was Jesus offered to drink before being crucified, according to the gospels?
Wine mixed with myrrh or gall
Wine mixed with myrrh or gall blends two gospels' wordings of one cup. It is usually read as a merciful Jerusalem custom, a drugged draught to dull the pain of the condemned, and Jesus refused it.
Q 08According to John's gospel, the soldiers cast lots for which item of Jesus's clothing?
His seamless robe
His seamless robe was woven in one piece from top to bottom, so the four soldiers, who had split his other clothes into a share each, agreed to gamble for it rather than tear it.
Q 09INRI on crucifixes abbreviates a Latin phrase meaning what?
Jesus the Nazarene, King of the Jews
Jesus the Nazarene, King of the Jews is the charge John says was fixed above the cross. The other three gospels quote shorter wordings, so only his supplies all four Latin initials.
Q 10In John's gospel, how did Pilate answer the chief priests' final complaint?
What I have written, I have written
'What I have written, I have written' ended the argument: the priests wanted the sign on the cross reworded to say Jesus had only claimed the title, and the governor would not alter it.
Q 11In which gospel does one crucified thief rebuke the other and ask Jesus to remember him?
Luke
Luke alone tells it: the man is promised paradise that very day, whereas two of the other gospels say both men crucified beside Jesus joined in the mockery.
Q 12What name did later Christian tradition give to the penitent thief crucified beside Jesus?
Dismas
Dismas is the name the apocryphal Gospel of Nicodemus gave him. An Arabic infancy gospel instead calls him Titus, a robber who decades earlier paid his partner forty drachmas to let the Holy Family pass unharmed.
Q 13Which saying does John's gospel give as Jesus's last words from the cross?
It is finished
Q 21Which man asked Pilate for Jesus's body and laid it in a tomb, in all four gospels?
Joseph of Arimathea
Joseph of Arimathea sat on the council that had condemned Jesus, though one gospel says he had not agreed to the verdict. Another says the tomb was a new one he had cut in the rock for himself.
Q 22Jesus was crucified during the reign of which Roman emperor?
Tiberius
Tiberius was emperor from AD 14 to 37, and a Roman historian places the execution in his reign. One gospel dates the start of John the Baptist's preaching to his fifteenth year, which is how scholars anchor the dates.
Q 23Which Roman historian, writing around AD 116, recorded that Pilate had executed Christ?
Tacitus
It is finished is a single word in John's Greek, tetelestai. Another gospel ends instead on 'into your hands I commit my spirit', and tradition stitched the four accounts into seven last sayings.
Q 14The cry 'My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?' quotes which Old Testament book?
Psalms
Psalms: the cry opens Psalm 22, a lament whose speaker is mocked by onlookers while his clothes are divided by lot, details the gospel writers echo in their own accounts.
Q 15Bystanders hearing Jesus cry 'Eli, Eli' thought he was calling on which prophet?
Elijah
Elijah had been swept up to heaven alive in the Hebrew Bible, and his return was awaited. By Mark's account one bystander said, 'Let's see whether Elijah comes to take him down.'
Q 16For about three hours during the crucifixion, the synoptic gospels say what came over the whole land?
Darkness
Darkness of that kind cannot have been an ordinary solar eclipse, as a Christian writer was already arguing in the 3rd century: Passover falls at full moon, when the moon is on the opposite side of the Earth from the sun.
Q 17Which gospel alone mentions an earthquake and the raising of saints at the moment of Jesus's death?
Matthew
Matthew alone reports the quake, which splits rocks and opens tombs. He is also the only evangelist to post a guard at Jesus's tomb, set there, he says, in case the disciples stole the body.
Q 18Why did Roman soldiers break the legs of the two men crucified beside Jesus?
To hasten death
To hasten death, John says: the bodies had to come down before the Sabbath began. Finding Jesus already dead, the soldiers left his legs unbroken.
Q 19Extra-biblical tradition gives what name to the soldier who pierced Jesus's side with a spear?
Longinus
Longinus appears nowhere in the Bible: the name comes from apocryphal writings. Medieval legend then turned the executioner into a convert who gave up soldiering, lived as a monk and died a martyr.
Q 20Legend later claimed the spear-bearing soldier had what affliction, cured by the blood that touched him?
Blindness
Blindness entered the story centuries after the gospels. In the medieval Golden Legend, blood runs down the spear onto his hands, he touches his eyes and sees clearly, then leaves the army for a monk's life.
Tacitus mentions the execution in passing in his Annals, while describing how Nero blamed Rome's Christians for the great fire. He had no love for the new faith, calling it a 'most mischievous superstition'.
Q 24Which first-century writer is behind the disputed passage about Jesus known as the Testimonium Flavianum?
Josephus
Josephus, in full Flavius Josephus, gives the passage its name. As it stands it flatly calls Jesus the Christ, so most scholars think Christian copyists touched up an authentic core.
Q 25Which holy book says Jesus was not crucified, though it was made to appear so?
Quran
The Quran says it in verse 4:157, and the next verse adds that God raised Jesus up to himself. Mainstream Islamic teaching therefore holds that he was taken up alive rather than dying on the cross.
Q 26A crucified man's bones found in Jerusalem in 1968 still had an iron nail through which part?
Heel
The heel kept its nail because the tip had bent, apparently on a knot in the wood, and could not be pulled out. His bone box named him Jehohanan, the first crucifixion victim archaeologists had ever identified.
Q 27Which Roman emperor abolished crucifixion across the empire?
Constantine
Constantine had used the cross himself early in his reign, against slaves who informed on their masters. He later abolished it, ancient writers say, in honour of the death of Jesus.
Q 28After crushing Spartacus's revolt in 71 BC, Crassus lined which Roman road with 6,000 crucified rebels?
Appian Way
The Appian Way linked Rome with Capua, the city whose gladiator school the revolt had burst out of. An ancient historian says the captives were crucified along the whole road between the two.
Q 29Alexander is said to have crucified 2,000 survivors after besieging which Phoenician city in 332 BC?
Tyre
Tyre stood on an island and held out for seven months, until Alexander built a causeway out to its walls. An ancient historian puts the men of fighting age crucified afterwards at no fewer than 2,000.
Q 30Which English word for unbearable pain comes from the Latin word for cross?
Excruciating
Excruciating comes from the Latin excruciare, 'to torture', built on cruciare, 'to crucify', and crux, 'cross': Rome's word for extreme torment was taken from its own method of execution.