New Testament Midterm (TQuiz)
Jesus' last words on the cross in the Gospel of Mark are:
"My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?"
How many books are there in the New Testament?
27
Scholars think Jesus died around:
30 C.E.
In what year did Athanasius name the current twenty-seven books of the New Testament as authoritative?
367 CE
We currently possess about how many manuscripts of New Testament?
5,700
The Gospel of Mark was probably written around:
65-70 C.E.
Which of the following does not take place immediately before Jesus' trial and crucifixion in the Gospel of John?
A Passover meal with the disciples
In first-century apocalyptic Judaism, the term "Son of Man" referred to:
A cosmic figure
When Jesus is baptized, the Spirit of God descends on him in the shape of:
A dove
According to the Jewish-Christian adoptionists, Jesus was:
A man
In non-Christian Jewish circles, the term "Son of God" referred to:
A person especially close to God
The emphasis placed on Jesus' death classifies the Gospels as:
A subgenre of the genre of ancient Greco-Roman biography
The Roman historian Tacitus says that Christianity is:
A superstition
The first New Testament Gospel was written _________ years after Jesus' death.
About 35
In the story from Mark of the women who find Jesus' tomb empty and are instructed by a young man (or angel) to go tell Peter and the other disciples (Mark 16), the last twelve verses were:
Added to the Gospel of mark by a scribe
A redactor is:
An editor
Who lived at about the same time as Jesus, was reported to have had a life and death similar to Jesus, and was considered by his disciples to be the Son of God?
Apollonius of Tyana
Why will scholars always disagree about the end product of their labors; that is, why will their accounts of what happened in the past always be different than other scholars'?
Because the past can never be empirically proved; it can only be reconstructed
Why do most scholars think that Q was a written document?
Because there are long stretches of verbatim agreement between Matthew and Luke
The New Testament Gospels belong to which genre?
Biography
The term "cult" means
Care
Which of the following represents an intentional scribal error?
Changing the text to fit the doctrine
What was the physical sign of the covenant between ancient Jews and God?
Circumcision
Which codex is the most valuable—because it includes all twenty-seven New Testament books, as well as the Epistle of Barnabas and the Shepard of Hermas?
Codex Sinaiticus
In John's community, the belief in Jesus' divinity probably:
Developed over time
"Diaspora" means:
Dispersion
Hellenism promoted a city-state focused world-view or outlook that discouraged learning about other cultures or sharing information.
False
Which was probably the first book of the New Testament to be written?
First Thessalonians
What genre do the Gospels most closely fit?
Greco-Roman biography
In what language were the New Testament Gospels written?
Greek
The New Testament was written in what language?
Greek
The author of the Gospel of Mark probably spoke:
Greek
The Septuagint is:
Greek translation of the Hebrew Bible
Which of the following best describes Jesus in the Gospel of John?
He is preexistent and divine.
In Mark, what is Jesus' response to his impending death?
He seems to doubt his mission
The spread of Greek culture and language is known as:
Hellenization
In John, Jesus' teachings focus primarily on
His identity
Most historians think Josephus's testimony about Jesus was:
Inserted by a later Christian scribe
Where was Q finally discovered?
It is still hypothetical.
The Gospel of Mark begins with
Jesus' baptism by John
The phrase "Jesus' Passion" refers to:
Jesus' suffering
Which of the following groups thought it was blasphemy to call Jesus God
Jewish-Christian adoptionists
All of the following figures recognize Jesus in Mark except:
John the Baptist
Gnostics believed which of the following brought salvation?
Knowledge
When Mark and Matthew tell the same story, Mark's story is:
Longer
The Jewish response to Antiochus Epiphanes' actions was:
Maccabean Revolt
Which early Christian group believed in two Gods: the just God of the Old Testament and the merciful God of Jesus?
Marcionites
Both Matthew and Luke used _____________ as a literary source.
Mark
Which are considered the four canonical Gospels of the New Testament?
Mark, Matthew, Luke, John
Who assembled all the miracle stories dispersed throughout Mark into one large collection?
Matthew
The argument of "sequence of the narrative" suggests:
Matthew and Luke follow Mark's sequence of stories
According to Mark, Jesus is from:
Nazareth
Did the authors of the Gospels claim to be eyewitnesses to the events that they narrated?
No
How many first-century pagan authors mention Jesus by name?
None
Which of the following Gospels was written during Jesus' lifetime?
None
The story of Jesus and the woman taken in adultery (John 7:59-8:11) is:
Not an original part of any Gospel
Which of the following is least helpful in establishing the original text of the New Testament?
Number of manuscripts
When individuals wished to know the will of a god, they visited a(n):
Oracle
The New Testament Gospels belong to which genre?
Oral sources
The Marcionites particularly liked which of the following apostles?
Paul
Who is the earliest of the New Testament writers?
Paul
Which one of Jesus' disciples comes closest to recognizing Jesus' identity in Mark?
Peter
The Roman who convicts Jesus is:
Pilate
Ancient biographies were especially concerned with:
Portraying the personality of the protagonist
Which of the following best summarizes Jesus' impact on wider society in his own day?
Practically nil
Scholars refer to the first eighteen verses of the Gospel of John as
Prologue
Stoicism, Platonism, and Epicureanism all involved the exercise of:
Reason
The term "canon" means:
Ruler
Greco-Roman religion incorporated which of the following?
Sacrifice
The sect of Judaism that wielded the most political power at the time of Jesus was the:
Sadducees
In Mark, when Mary the mother of Jesus, Mary Magdalene, and Salome discover the empty tomb, they:
Say nothing
"Synoptic" means:
Seen together
Matthew and Luke
Sometimes change Mark to change theological emphases
An alternative place of worship (to the Temple in Jerusalem) where Jews came together in the community to discuss the sacred traditions of the Torah was called a(n):
Synagogue
n John, Jesus does all of the following to show his divine nature except:
Teach in parables
After chapter 12 in the Gospel of John, Jesus decides not to preach publicly because
The Jews reject him
In the Gospel of John, Jesus is explicitly called all the following except:
The Word of God
Identify one discrepancy in the Gospel accounts of Jesus' Last Supper.
The account in Mark states that it occurs as the Passover meal, while John's account states that Jesus' Last Supper occurred the night before Passover.
Which of the following episodes is most likely historical according to the criterion of dissimilarity?
The baptism of Jesus
The Pentateuch is:
The first five books of the Bible
The most popular scholarly explanation of the Synoptic Problem is:
The four-source hypothesis
What feature typically accompanied the stories of religious figures in ancient Greco-Roman biographies?
The miraculous
Scholars use all of the following criteria to determine the historical reliability of a tradition except:
The more popular books are, the more likely they are to be reliable.
The Johannine Christians most likely were excluded from the synagogue because
The tried to proselytize other Jews
One group of Essenes left Jerusalem because:
They believed the wrong priestly family was running the Temple.
What does the term "heresy" mean?
To choose
Ancient biographies were usually written for what main purpose?
To give instruction on proper behavior.
What was the primary aim of ancient philosophy?
To investigate the best way to live
According to some Gnostics, the Old Testament God was evil.
True
No two existing ancient manuscripts are precisely alike.
True
The Gospel of Mark consistently portrays Jesus as misunderstood.
True
The Gospel of Mark presents Jesus as keeping his messianic identity hidden.
True
We do not have the original copy of any New Testament book.
True
Oral cultures tend to
Understand stories as changeable
The earliest copyists of the New Testament were:
Untrained but literate
In the Greco-Roman world, stories about a god having the power to heal:
We're relatively common
Polytheism is the:
Worship of many gods
John, the forerunner of Jesus, proclaims forgiveness of sins and performs
baptisms
Why are the Dead Sea Scrolls so valuable?
because they are nearly a thousand years older than the oldest copies of the Hebrew Scriptures that we previously had
At Jesus' trial in Mark, the Sanhedrin charges him with
blasphemy
What framework were ancient biographies often crafted within?
chronological
In John, the signs are intended to
convince people of Jesus' true identity
Of the four New Testament Gospels, Mark was probably written
first
Biographies written by Christians put a significant amount of emphasis on what event in Jesus' life, which was very unusual for ancient biographies?
his death
How is the War Scroll unique among ancient Jewish literature?
its graphic and detailed description of the future battle that will end the age
Missionary movements in the Greco-Roman world were advanced mostly by:
schools of philosophy
Consistent testimony of many independent witnesses _____________ a case.
strengthens
According to Mark, the messiah must
suffer and die
According to the Gospel of John, Jesus died:
the day before the Passover meal
