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50 free Resurrection trivia questions with answers — literature quiz, new questions added Aug 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 50 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 phrase comes from Hosea 6; in Semitic reckoning any part of a 24-hour period counted as a day and a night, which is how Friday to Sunday makes three.
Q 02Mark's original ending has the empty tomb found by the Magdalene, Salome and whom?
The mother of James
A young man in white tells them Jesus will meet the disciples in Galilee; the longer ending was added later.
Q 03In Mark's account, who announces to the women at the tomb that Jesus has risen?
A young man in white
Matthew makes it an angel and Luke two angelic beings; John has Mary meet Jesus himself.
Q 04The earliest written Christian creed about the resurrection appears in which New Testament letter?
First Corinthians
Paul says he received it and passed it on; scholars think it was formalised in Jerusalem within a few years of the events.
Q 05According to that creed, after Cephas and the twelve, Jesus appeared at one time to how many people?
More than five hundred
Paul adds that most of them were still alive, then lists James and all the apostles, and finally himself.
Q 06The Greek term prototokos, applied to the risen Jesus, means what?
Firstborn
As the firstborn from the dead he takes the preeminent place of the heir, in Paul's language.
Q 07In Luke, Jesus appears to two followers walking to which village, who recognise him at the breaking of bread?
Emmaus
One of the pair is named Cleopas; the other is never named, and candidates from Simon to Luke himself have been proposed.
Q 08Which painter's 1648 recognition supper shows a disciple risen with hands clasped in prayer?
Rembrandt
The meeting on the road and the meal afterwards have both been popular subjects in art for centuries.
Q 09The apostle who wanted to see and touch the wounds gave English the phrase 'doubting' what?
Thomas
The scene is usually painted, as by Caravaggio, at the moment he puts his fingers into the wound in Jesus's side.
Q 10The Latin phrase Noli me tangere, said by Jesus to Mary Magdalene in John 20:17, means what?
Touch me not
Titian, Fra Angelico and Correggio all painted the scene, and Picasso borrowed Correggio's version for La Vie.
Q 11Mary Magdalene's image as a repentant prostitute stems from a 591 sermon by which pope?
Gregory I
There is no biblical basis for it; the Church later stressed her role as first witness of the resurrection and Apostle to the Apostles.
Q 12According to Luke, Jesus had cast how many demons out of Mary Magdalene?
Seven
The detail is repeated in Mark's longer ending, which is missing from the earliest manuscripts.
Q 13According to Acts, for how many days did the risen Jesus appear to the apostles before ascending?
Forty
He told them to wait in Jerusalem for the Holy Spirit, which came at Pentecost.
Q 21The Garden Tomb, favoured by many Protestants as the burial place of Jesus, was discovered in which year?
1867
The archaeologist Gabriel Barkay dates it to the 8th or 7th century BC, far too early for a new tomb in the first century.
Q 22The Garden Tomb sits beside a rocky outcrop with what name, proposed in the 19th century as Golgotha?
Skull Hill
The site draws hundreds of thousands of pilgrims a year, especially evangelicals.
Q 23Radiocarbon dating in 1988 placed the Shroud of Turin's linen in which period?
1260 to 1390
Three laboratories agreed; the shroud's documented history begins in 1354 at Lirey in France.
Q 14Luke's Gospel places the Ascension at Bethany, a village on which hill?
The Mount of Olives
The Chapel of the Ascension on the summit is the traditional site, and a Russian Orthodox convent stands nearby.
Q 15The command to make disciples of all nations, given by the risen Jesus, is traditionally called what?
The Great Commission
It appears in various forms in Matthew 28, Mark 16, Luke 24, Acts 1 and John 20.
Q 16The Church of the Holy Sepulchre was originally known by which Greek name, meaning Resurrection?
Anastasis
The same word names the Byzantine icon type showing Christ pulling Adam and Eve out of Hades.
Q 17Which Roman emperor ordered the pagan temple over the tomb site replaced by a church around 326?
Constantine
Hadrian had filled in the cave two centuries earlier to build a temple to Jupiter or Venus; digging revealed a rock-cut tomb.
Q 18The Church of the Holy Sepulchre was destroyed in 1009 on the orders of which ruler?
Al-Hakim
His son let the Byzantine emperor Constantine IX rebuild it, and the Crusaders remodelled it again after 1099.
Q 19After retaking Jerusalem in 1187, Saladin entrusted the church's key to which family, who still keep it?
Joudeh
The iron key is 30 cm long; the Nusseibeh family serve as doorkeepers, and the arrangement is part of the 1757 Status Quo.
Q 20The 19th-century shrine enclosing the tomb inside the Church of the Holy Sepulchre is called what?
The Aedicule
The Status Quo of 1757 means even minor changes to the building need consensus among the churches.
Q 24Which photographer discovered in 1898 that the Shroud of Turin's image is clearer as a negative?
Secondo Pia
He took the first photographs of the shroud; the negative image feeds devotion to the Holy Face.
Q 25The Shroud was damaged by fire in 1532 while kept in a chapel in which city?
Chambery
The House of Savoy moved it to their new capital Turin in 1578, where it has stayed.
Q 26In Matthew's Gospel, whom did the chief priests bribe to say the body had been stolen?
The tomb guards
The stolen-body claim resurfaced in the fifth-century Toledot Yeshu and in Reimarus's writings in the 1700s.
Q 27The theory that Jesus merely fainted on the cross and revived in the tomb is known as what?
The swoon hypothesis
The rationalist Heinrich Paulus argued for a coma from 1802; David Strauss retorted that a half-dead man could not have inspired faith.
Q 28Which 1965 Hugh Schonfield book argued Jesus choreographed his own crucifixion to survive it?
The Passover Plot
The Ahmadiyya movement independently teaches that Jesus swooned and later travelled east.
Q 29Which 1700s writer portrayed Jesus and his followers as revolutionaries and revived the stolen-body claim?
Hermann Samuel Reimarus
His fragments, published after his death by Lessing, launched the modern quest for the historical Jesus.
Q 30According to Bart Ehrman, most claimed parallels between Jesus and pagan dying-and-rising gods exist where?
Only in the modern imagination
He says there are no ancient accounts of others born to virgin mothers who died as an atonement for sin and rose again.