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40 free 1 Corinthians trivia questions with answers — trivia quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
Paul's earliest surviving letter to Corinth is the most practical book in the New Testament. A young church in a rich, cosmopolitan port had split into factions, tolerated a scandal, sued each other, argued about marriage and food offered to idols, and turned a shared meal into a display of class. Paul answers every item in turn, and along the way writes the most read passage on love in Western literature and the earliest account of the resurrection. These 40 questions follow the letter from the opening greeting to the closing collection: the quarrels, the cross as foolishness, the church as a building and a field, discipline and lawsuits, marriage and celibacy, food offered to idols, the rights of an apostle, warnings from the wilderness, head coverings and the Lord's meal, gifts and the body, the hymn to love, the resurrection chapter and the final greetings. A few step outside the text to Corinth itself, the oldest manuscripts and the letter's afterlife in music, film and public life. It suits a Bible study, a church quiz night or anyone preparing a Sunday-school lesson: play on your phone with instant explanations, or print it and read it aloud. Every answer is cited to the chapter text or to a reference page.
30 of 40 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Which prime minister read 1 Corinthians 13 at the Westminster Abbey funeral of Diana, Princess of Wales?
Tony Blair
Tony Blair read the chapter's close, 'and now abideth faith, hope, love', at the 1997 service, and the Church of England calls the same chapter the most popular reading at its weddings.
Q 02Which event gets its earliest written account in 1 Corinthians 11, with the words 'do this in remembrance of me'?
The Last Supper
The Last Supper is described here in the early 50s AD, before any Gospel was written, and Paul says he 'received from the Lord' the account of the bread and the cup.
Q 03Which 1741 oratorio sets lines from 1 Corinthians 15, including 'Behold, I tell you a mystery', in its final part?
Handel's Messiah
Handel's Messiah draws the text of its final part largely from this chapter, compiled by Charles Jennens, and Brahms later set the same passage in his German Requiem.
Q 04Which word does the King James Version use throughout 1 Corinthians 13 where most translations say 'love'?
Charity
Charity translates the Greek agape, and the choice lives on in the 1662 Prayer Book collect built on the chapter: 'all our doings without charity are nothing worth'.
Q 051 Corinthians 15 says the risen Christ appeared to more than how many 'brothers and sisters at the same time'?
Five hundred
Five hundred witnesses, 'most of whom are still living', is Paul's invitation to go and check, and the appearance has no parallel in any Gospel.
Q 06Which Greek comic playwright does Paul quote in 1 Corinthians 15 with the line 'Bad company corrupts good character'?
Menander
Menander's line comes from his lost play Thais, and the historian Socrates Scholasticus claimed the playwright had himself borrowed it from Euripides.
Q 07Which church still performs 'baptism for the dead', a practice 1 Corinthians 15:29 mentions without explaining?
The Latter-day Saints
The Latter-day Saints perform it only in dedicated temples, with living proxies standing in for ancestors, while scholars still argue over what the Corinthians themselves were doing.
Q 08Where does Paul say in 1 Corinthians 15 that he 'fought wild beasts', a line read literally or as a metaphor?
Ephesus
Ephesus is also where the letter was written: in the last chapter Paul says he will 'stay on' there 'until Pentecost' because 'a great door for effective work has opened'.
Q 09In 1 Corinthians 13:12, 'for now we see only a reflection' in what, 'then we shall see face to face'?
A mirror
A mirror in Paul's day was polished bronze, and Corinth was famous for producing them, so the point is the indirectness of a reflection rather than its poor quality.
Q 101 Corinthians 5 condemns a man 'sleeping with' whom, a sin 'of a kind that even pagans do not tolerate'?
His father's wife
His father's wife, presumably a stepmother, and Paul's anger is as much at the church's pride in tolerating it as at the man, whom he orders put out of the fellowship.
Q 11Who is named with Paul as co-sender in the opening verse of 1 Corinthians, described only as 'our brother'?
Sosthenes
Sosthenes shares his name with a Corinthian synagogue leader beaten in front of the proconsul in Acts 18, and since Eusebius many have taken the two to be the same convert.
Q 12Which two men are the only Corinthians Paul says he personally baptized, apart from one household, in 1 Corinthians 1?
Crispus and Gaius
Crispus and Gaius are named so that 'no one can say that you were baptized in my name'; Acts 18 calls Crispus the synagogue leader, and Romans 16 calls Gaius host to 'the whole church'.
Q 13Whose 'household' informed Paul of the quarrels at Corinth, according to 1 Corinthians 1:11?
Chloe
Q 21Which animal must not be muzzled 'while it is treading out the grain', a law 1 Corinthians 9 applies to preachers?
An ox
An ox is the subject of the rule from Deuteronomy 25, and Paul asks 'Is it about oxen that God is concerned?' to argue that 'those who preach the gospel should receive their living from the gospel'.
Q 22Which festival beside Corinth, held for Poseidon every two years, crowned winners with celery and later pine?
The Isthmian Games
The Isthmian Games drew athletes from all Greece to the sanctuary of Poseidon on the isthmus, and the 'crown that will not last' of 1 Corinthians 9 would have been a familiar sight to Paul's readers.
Q 23What does 1 Corinthians 10 say 'accompanied' Israel in the wilderness and 'was Christ'?
Chloe's people reported that the church had split into parties each claiming a favourite preacher, and Paul answers with 'Is Christ divided? Was Paul crucified for you?'
Q 14Which couple, expelled from Rome under Claudius, greet the Corinthians 'warmly in the Lord' in 1 Corinthians 16?
Aquila and Priscilla
Aquila and Priscilla had hosted Paul in Corinth after Claudius expelled the Jews from Rome, and by this letter they were with him again, along with 'the church that meets at their house'.
Q 15In 1 Corinthians 5, 'a little' of what works through 'the whole batch of dough', Paul's image for tolerated sin?
Yeast
Yeast is the image, and Paul ties it to Passover — 'Christ, our Passover lamb, has been sacrificed' — so the church should be 'a new unleavened batch'.
Q 16What does 1 Corinthians 6 say believers who sue each other 'before the ungodly' have already been 'completely'?
Defeated
Defeated is the verdict, and Paul's alternative is startling: 'Why not rather be wronged? Why not rather be cheated?'
Q 17What does 1 Corinthians 11 say 'the very nature of things' teaches is 'a disgrace' for a man?
Long hair
Long hair on a man is the disgrace, while on a woman it 'is her glory', given 'as a covering', in an argument about head coverings that still divides churches.
Q 18What does 1 Corinthians 6:19 call the believer's body, just before reminding readers that 'you are not your own'?
The Spirit's temple
The Spirit's temple is Paul's phrase — 'your bodies are temples of the Holy Spirit' — and earlier in the letter he had already called the congregation as a whole 'God's temple'.
Q 19What does 1 Corinthians 7 say it is 'better to marry than to' do, advising those who 'cannot control themselves'?
Burn with passion
Burn with passion is the NIV's rendering of a phrase older versions gave simply as 'to burn', and Paul frames the whole discussion as 'a concession, not a command'.
Q 20What status does Paul say he wishes 'all of you' shared, in 1 Corinthians 7's advice on marriage?
Unmarried
Unmarried 'as I do' is Paul's own state, and he adds that each person 'has your own gift from God', a line later tradition read as a gift of celibacy.
A spiritual rock
A spiritual rock, Paul says, from which they 'drank the same spiritual drink', reading the water-giving rock of Exodus 17 and Numbers 20 as Christ himself.
Q 24Which letter from Rome, written about AD 96, told the Corinthians to reinstate the presbyters they had deposed?
First Clement
First Clement already tells the Corinthians to 'take up the epistle of the blessed Paul', which makes it one of the earliest witnesses that Paul's letter was being kept and read.
Q 25Given the earlier letter it mentions in 5:9, where does 1 Corinthians fall among Paul's known letters to Corinth?
The second of four
The second of four is the scholars' count: a lost 'previous letter', this one, a lost 'severe' letter referred to in 2 Corinthians, and 2 Corinthians itself.
Q 26Where does 1 Corinthians 10 say believers may eat 'anything sold' without 'raising questions of conscience'?
The meat market
The meat market is safe because, as Paul says quoting Psalm 24, everything in the world is the Lord's, but if a host announces that the meat was sacrificed, Paul says to leave it for the host's conscience.
Q 27Why, puzzlingly, does 1 Corinthians 11:10 say a woman 'ought to have authority over her own head'?
Because of the angels
Because of the angels is all Paul offers, and John Chrysostom used the verse to argue that the covering should be worn continually, not only at prayer.
Q 28What does 1 Corinthians 11 complain happens at the Corinthians' shared meals while 'one person remains hungry'?
Another gets drunk
Another gets drunk, because the better-off were going ahead with 'private suppers' before the poor arrived, which is why Paul says their meetings 'do more harm than good'.
Q 29What does 1 Corinthians 11 blame for many Corinthians being 'weak and sick' and some having 'fallen asleep'?
Taking communion unworthily
Taking communion unworthily, 'without discerning the body', brings 'judgment' in Paul's view, and 'fallen asleep' is his usual way of saying died.
Q 30In 1 Corinthians 12's body metaphor, which part says 'Because I am not a hand, I do not belong to the body'?
The foot
The foot speaks first, then the ear complains it is not an eye, and Paul's answer is that God 'has placed the parts in the body, every one of them, just as he wanted them to be'.