Catholic Bible Trivia
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99 free Catholic Bible trivia questions with answers — literature quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
47 free Catholic Bible trivia questions with answers. Catholic Bibles have 73 books, and this quiz is about the ones, and the history, that other Bible quizzes leave out. Fifty questions cover the deuterocanonical books (Tobit's angel and fish, Judith and Holofernes, the Maccabees and Hanukkah, Sirach, Wisdom, Baruch, Susanna, Bel and the Dragon), the Septuagint they came from, Jerome and the Vulgate, the councils from Rome in 382 to Trent in 1546, and the English translations from Douay-Rheims through Challoner, Knox, the Jerusalem Bible and the New American Bible used at Mass. It starts with easy counting questions (how many books, how many in the Old Testament) and works up to ones for seminarians: who coined 'deuterocanonical', which pope promulgated the Nova Vulgata, and what the Sixto-Clementine Vulgate hid in its appendix. It suits RCIA groups, Catholic school religion classes, youth ministry and anyone who wants to know why their Bible is thicker than their Protestant friend's. Every answer has been checked against the Wikipedia articles on the books, translations and councils involved, and each question shows its source.
30 of 99 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01How many books are in the Catholic Bible?
73
73 books: 46 in the Old Testament and 27 in the New. Most Protestant Bibles have 66, because the Reformers set aside seven Old Testament books that are not in the Hebrew Scriptures.
Q 02Protestant Bibles group seven Catholic Old Testament books under what name?
The Apocrypha
The Apocrypha is the Protestant name for them; the Church of England still reads these books 'for example of life and instruction of manners', but not to establish any doctrine.
Q 03What term describes the seven Old Testament books Catholics accept that are absent from the Hebrew Bible?
Deuterocanonical
Deuterocanonical means 'of a second canon': the word marks books whose place in the Bible was disputed for a time, not ones that rank lower, and Catholics hold them fully canonical.
Q 04Which 16th-century theologian, a convert from Judaism, coined in 1566 the term for books of 'second canon'?
Sixtus of Siena
Sixtus of Siena, a Dominican convert from Judaism, coined 'deuterocanonical' in his 1566 Bibliotheca Sancta for books whose canonical standing was settled later, in both Testaments.
Q 05Which of these is NOT one of the seven books unique to the Catholic Old Testament?
Ecclesiastes
Ecclesiastes is in every canon; the seven are Tobit, Judith, Wisdom, Sirach, Baruch and 1 and 2 Maccabees.
Q 06The seven extra books of the Catholic Old Testament are all found in which ancient Greek translation of the Hebrew scriptures?
The Septuagint
The Septuagint was the Old Testament of the early Church, and the New Testament writers took most of their quotations from it, which is how its extra books passed into Christian Bibles.
Q 07Which 16th-century council fixed the Catholic canon in 1546 and declared the Vulgate the Church's authentic Latin Bible?
Council of Trent
The Council of Trent defined the canon on April 8, 1546, anathematizing anyone who rejected the listed books, and declared Jerome's Vulgate the authentic Latin text.
Q 08Which pope commissioned Jerome in 382 to revise the Latin Gospels, the start of the Vulgate?
Damasus I
Pope Damasus I, whose secretary Jerome was, asked him in 382 to revise the Latin Gospels; the pope died two years later, long before Jerome began translating the Old Testament from Hebrew.
Q 09Jerome did most of his Vulgate translation work while living for 34 years near which town?
Bethlehem
The Roman aristocrat Paula funded his monastery beside the Church of the Nativity; he died there in 420.
Q 10What are the Latin Bible translations that predate the Vulgate collectively called?
Vetus Latina
Vetus Latina, 'Old Latin', names scattered texts rather than one book: no complete Old Latin Bible survives, and its Old Testament is known only in parts.
Q 11The name Vulgate comes from the Latin vulgata, meaning what?
Common
Common: the vulgata editio was the edition in general use, a title Jerome's Latin Bible earned only in the Middle Ages, after it had displaced the older translations.
Q 12Which pope promulgated the Nova Vulgata, the Church's official Latin Bible, completing a revision begun under Paul VI?
John Paul II
John Paul II issued it in 1979; the project had begun when the Second Vatican Council asked for a clearer Latin psalter for daily prayer, and Paul VI widened the task to the whole Bible.
Q 13The Catholic Bible that English exiles finished in 1610 is named after Rheims and which other town?
Douai
Douai housed the exiles' college, but the town expelled it in 1578 and it sheltered at Rheims until 1593, so the New Testament came out there in 1582 and the Old Testament at Douai later.
Q 21Which demon kills Sarah's suitors on their wedding nights in the Book of Tobit?
Asmodeus
Asmodeus has killed seven of Sarah's bridegrooms before Tobias drives the demon off with the smoke of a burning fish heart and liver; it flees to Egypt, where it is bound hand and foot.
Q 22Which Assyrian general does Judith behead in his tent to save her city of Bethulia?
Holofernes
Holofernes had drunk himself senseless at his own banquet; Judith took his sword from the bedpost and struck twice (Judith 13), a scene painted by Caravaggio, Artemisia Gentileschi and Klimt.
Q 23Most modern Catholic scholars classify the Book of Judith as what?
A theological novel
Q 14Which pope's 1943 encyclical Divino afflante Spiritu urged Catholic translators to work from Hebrew and Greek rather than the Vulgate?
Pius XII
Pius XII wrote that the original text carries more authority than any translation, however good; until then Catholic Bibles in modern languages were normally made from the Latin.
Q 15Which 1970 Catholic translation became the basis of the US Mass lectionary?
New American Bible
The New American Bible began as a translation from the Latin; in 1944, after Rome encouraged work from the original languages, the bishops had their scholars start again from Hebrew and Greek.
Q 16The 1966 Jerusalem Bible was inspired by a French translation by Dominicans at which school?
The École Biblique
The Jerusalem Bible followed La Bible de Jérusalem (1956), produced by Dominicans of the École Biblique in Jerusalem; J. R. R. Tolkien contributed to the English edition.
Q 17Vatican II's 1965 Dogmatic Constitution on Divine Revelation is known by what Latin title?
Dei verbum
Dei verbum, 'the Word of God', called for easy access to Scripture for all the faithful and for new translations from the original texts, even ones made jointly with other Christians.
Q 18Which Latin mark in a Catholic Bible shows a bishop has authorized its publication?
Imprimatur
Imprimatur, 'let it be printed', follows a censor's nihil obstat, 'nothing hinders'; neither means the bishop agrees with the book, only that nothing in it harms faith or morals.
Q 19In the Book of Tobit, which archangel travels in disguise with young Tobias?
Raphael
Raphael, calling himself Azariah, guides Tobias to Media and tells him a fish's burnt heart and liver drive out demons and its gall cures blindness.
Q 20In Tobit, what blinds the pious Tobit as he sleeps in his courtyard?
Sparrow droppings
Sparrow droppings fall into Tobit's eyes as he sleeps by the courtyard wall (Tobit 2:10), forming white films; physicians' ointments only worsen it until fish gall restores his sight.
Most Catholic scholars read Judith as a theological novel: its anachronisms, such as Nebuchadnezzar ruling the Assyrians from Nineveh (Judith 1:1), signal didactic fiction rather than history.
Q 241 Maccabees is best known for recounting the origin of which Jewish festival?
Hanukkah
Hanukkah's eight days come from 1 Maccabees, but its famous miracle of the oil does not: that story first appears in the Talmud, written down centuries later.
Q 25Which Seleucid king's bans on Jewish practices provoked the Maccabean revolt?
Antiochus IV
Antiochus IV Epiphanes outlawed circumcision and Sabbath observance and desecrated the Temple in 167 BC, provoking the revolt led by Mattathias and his son Judas Maccabeus.
Q 26Catholics cite 2 Maccabees 12 as scriptural support for which practice?
Prayer for the dead
2 Maccabees 12:44-46 praises Judas Maccabeus for having atonement made for his fallen soldiers, calling prayer for the dead 'holy and pious'; Catholics cite it for purgatory.
Q 27In 1 Maccabees, Judas's brother Eleazar is crushed to death after stabbing which animal from underneath?
An elephant
An elephant: Eleazar took the one in royal armour to be carrying the enemy king, fought his way to it and stabbed it from below, and the dying beast fell on top of him.
Q 28By what Latin name, roughly 'church book', is the Book of Sirach also known?
Ecclesiasticus
Ecclesiasticus was known only in translation for centuries; then, from 1896, large parts of its lost Hebrew original came to light among worn-out manuscripts stored in a Cairo synagogue.
Q 29Who translated Ben Sira's Hebrew wisdom book into Greek in Egypt and added his own prologue?
His grandson
His grandson made the translation after moving to Egypt, and his prologue begs readers' indulgence, since words first spoken in Hebrew lose their force in another language.
Q 30Scholars place the Greek-speaking Jewish author of the Book of Wisdom in which city?
Alexandria
Alexandria is the likely home: he wrote in Greek, belonged to its Jewish community by most accounts, and aimed a long polemic at the animal worship of Egypt.