Whether you call it the Good Book or the Book of Books, whether you have only heard much about it or read parts of it, the Bible has shaped lives and history like no other book. But how well do we really know it? Here is a Bible quiz to mark World Book Day on 23 April.
1. The longest Bible in the world was recognised by Guinness World Records in 2019: the Wiedmann Bible, named after its creator Willy Wiedmann. The internationally recognised artwork presents the contents of the Bible in 3,333 hand-painted colour drawings.
How long is the concertina-fold book?
a) 870 metres
b) 1.17 kilometres
c) 2.8 kilometres
2. The smallest Bible in the world is the Hebrew Nano Bible, which was created in 2015. Israeli physicist Ohad Zohar engraved the Old Testament on a silicon chip. The text can only be read with an electron microscope. How small is the chip?
a) 2 square millimetres
b) 1 square millimetre
c) 0.5 mm millimetres
3. Between 1452 and 1455, Johannes Gutenberg printed a total of 1,286 pages, thereby creating the first Bible in Europe to be printed with movable type. In 2019, a collector from Switzerland purchased a rare fifteenth century Bible related to the Gutenberg press, paying the highest price ever achieved for a Bible at an auction in Germany. How much did he pay?
a) 620,000 euros
b) 840,00 euros
c) 1.2 million euros
4. To mark the 625th anniversary of Johannes Gutenberg’s birth, the world’s largest Bible page was printed in his hometown of Mainz on 26 April 2025. How big is it?
a) 12 square metres
b) 24 square metres
c) 35 square metres
5. According to Guinness World Records, the Bible is the most widely distributed book in the world. In 2022 alone, 23 million Bibles were sold. How many copies of the Bible have been distributed worldwide?
a) 1.2 billion copies
b) 3 billion copies
c) 5 billion copies
6. Portions of the Bible have been translated into more than 3,000 languages. It is considered the most translated book in the world. In how many languages has the complete Bible been translated?
a) 694
b) 743
c) 1,237
7. In 1930, the American Louis Waynai crafted one of the largest Bibles in the world. It measures 1.1 x 2.4 metres and weighs about 496 kilos. Louis Waynai and his wife developed a hand-made printing apparatus to produce it. How much did the production of the Bible cost?
a) 2,000 US dollars
b) 10,000 US dollars
c) 25,000 US dollars
8. Which phrase appears most frequently in the Bible?
a) “Praise the Lord”
b) “Do not be afraid”
c) “Thus says the Lord”
9. Which is the shortest book of the Old Testament?
a) Obadiah
b) Nahum
c) Malachi
10. Which is the shortest book of the New Testament?
a) the Epistle of Jude
b) Paul’s epistle to Philemon
c) the Third Epistle of John
11. The longest chapter in the Bible contains 176 verses. Which is it?
a) Psalm 119
b) Proverbs 31
c) Isaiah 53
12. How long does it take, roughly, to read the Bible in its entirety?
a) 70 hours
b) 95 hours
c) 120 hours
13. Over how many years was the Bible written?
a) 500 years
b) 1,000 years
c) 2,000 years
14. The oldest man mentioned in the Bible lived to be 969 years old. What was his name?
a) Machlon
b) Adam
c) Methuselah
Photo: 69 – stock.adobe.com
For the solutions, click to expand here:
1. b), 2. c), 3. b), 4. c), 5. c), 6. a), 7. b), 8. c), 9. a), 10. c), 11. a), 12. a), 13. b), 14. c)