Q 01/05

Whose Civil Rights Memorial in Montgomery carries Amos 5:24, 'until justice rolls down like waters'?

A) Maya Lin

B) Frank Gehry

C) I. M. Pei

D) Richard Serra

Answer · why

A) Maya Lin

Maya Lin drew on King's use of the verse in his 'I Have a Dream' speech, so water flows over a black granite table carved with the names of the moveme...

Q 02/05

Besides herding, which crop did Amos say he gathered when he denied being a prophet's son at Bethel?

A) Black mulberries

B) Sycamore figs

C) Pomegranates

D) Carob pods

Answer · why

B) Sycamore figs

Sycamore figs made Amos a working farmer, not a prophet by birth or guild: the LORD, he said, took him 'as I followed the flock' and sent him to Israe...

Q 03/05

Amos 1:1 dates his prophecy to 'two years before' which event, traced in an excavation layer in Jerusalem?

A) A great fire

B) A flood

C) An earthquake

D) A siege

Answer · why

C) An earthquake

An earthquake: long after, Zechariah 14:5 still told people to flee 'like as ye fled from before the earthquake', so deep was the memory it left.

Q 04/05

Amos 8:9's sun going down at noon may echo a 763 BC eclipse recorded by which empire?

A) Egypt

B) Assyria

C) Babylonia

D) Persia

Answer · why

B) Assyria

Assyria's eponym list notes an eclipse of the sun in the year of Bur-Sagale, dated to 15 June 763 BC, a fixed point that helps date the ancient Near E...

Q 05/05

Beds of which luxury material, later excavated by the hundred at Samaria's palace, did Amos denounce?

A) Ivory

B) Cedar

C) Marble

D) Silver

Answer · why

A) Ivory

Ivory inlays in Phoenician style turned up at Samaria, recalling the 'ivory house' that 1 Kings says Ahab made, and Amos warned that 'the houses of iv...