Catholic Bible Trivia
A Catholic Bible is seven books longer than the one most English readers grew up with, and almost nobody can name all seven. Inside those seven: an angel travelling under a false name, the only friendly dog in the Bible, a widow who walks into an enemy camp and comes back carrying a general’s head, a mother who watches seven sons die in one day, and a teenage Daniel winning a court case by asking about a tree. Then the shelf itself — seventy-three books, a Latin translation that ran the Western world for a thousand years, and the three songs in Luke the Church has not stopped singing since. Forty questions sit in the bank and you get fifteen at random, so it is a different round every time, and every answer shows the chapter it came from.
That round moved across the whole Catholic shelf — seventy-three books, a fish’s gall that cured a blind man, a sword lifted off a bedpost, a hammer called Judas, two elders who named different trees, and the canticles Luke wrote down that get prayed every single day.
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Common Questions About the Catholic Bible
What is a Catholic Bible, and how is it different from other Bibles?
A Catholic Bible contains 73 books — 46 in the Old Testament and 27 in the New. A standard Protestant Bible contains 66, with the same 27-book New Testament and a 39-book Old Testament. Everything in the shorter Bible is also in the longer one, so the difference is entirely a matter of seven additional Old Testament books plus longer versions of Esther and Daniel. Catholic editions also order some books differently: Baruch sits between Lamentations and Ezekiel, and 1 and 2 Maccabees close out the historical section rather than being left out. Beyond the contents, a Catholic Bible is usually printed with an imprimatur, a formal statement that the edition has been reviewed and approved, and most include cross-references and footnotes keyed to the Church’s own reading tradition. The familiar stories — the exodus, the psalms, the Gospels, Paul’s letters — are word for word the same material every Christian tradition reads.
What are the seven deuterocanonical books?
They are Tobit, Judith, Wisdom, Sirach, Baruch, 1 Maccabees and 2 Maccabees. Catholics call them deuterocanonical, meaning second canon; most Protestant Bibles that print them at all label them the Apocrypha. Tobit is a family story with an angel travelling in disguise, a dog, and a cure made from a fish. Judith is a siege story in which a widow walks out of a starving city and comes back with the enemy general’s head. Wisdom and Sirach are poetry and practical teaching in the same vein as Proverbs, and Sirach is unusual in that the author’s grandson wrote a preface explaining how he came to translate it. Baruch is attached to the scribe who wrote down Jeremiah’s words. First and Second Maccabees cover the revolt against Antiochus IV, the rededication of the Temple that Jewish families still keep as Hanukkah, and the famous account of a mother and her seven sons.
Why does a Catholic Bible have 73 books and a Protestant Bible 66?
The short answer is that Christians inherited two slightly different Jewish collections. The Greek-speaking Jewish world used a translation known as the Septuagint, which included the seven books in question, and the early Church, which mostly read Greek, used it. The Hebrew collection settled by rabbinic authorities did not include them. Jerome flagged the difference in the fourth century while producing the Latin Vulgate, yet those books stayed in Christian Bibles for well over a thousand years. At the Reformation, the reformers argued for the shorter Hebrew list and moved the seven books into a separate section or dropped them. The Council of Trent responded in 1546 by listing all 73 books by name. Even the 1611 King James Version printed the disputed books, in a section of their own between the testaments; most modern printings simply leave that section out. It is a real disagreement with a long history, and it is worth understanding rather than scoring.
Are the extra books in a Catholic Bible worth reading on their own terms?
They are some of the most readable writing in the Old Testament, whatever you believe about where they belong. Judith and Tobit are tightly plotted short stories with real suspense, closer to a novella than to a genealogy. First and Second Maccabees are the best surviving narrative of a period the rest of the Bible simply skips — the roughly four centuries between the last prophets and the opening of the Gospels — and reading them makes the political world Jesus was born into far less confusing. Sirach is blunt, practical advice about money, friendship, speech and grief that holds up uncomfortably well. And the Susanna story in Daniel 13 is probably the oldest courtroom cross-examination in Western literature, resolved when two accusers are questioned apart and name different trees. You can read all of it free online in minutes.
Where can I play free Catholic Bible trivia online?
Right here, and right now. The trivia game at the top of this page is completely free, needs no account, no download and no sign-up, and works on a phone as well as on a laptop. Forty questions sit in the bank and each round pulls fifteen of them at random, so playing twice gives you a different game both times. Every answer shows the chapter or verse it came from, which means a wrong guess still teaches you something and points you at where to look it up. The questions cover the full 73-book canon, the seven deuterocanonical books and what happens inside them, the history of the Vulgate and the Douay-Rheims, and the Gospel passages behind the prayers Catholics say most often. If you want a gentler warm-up or a different angle, the end screen links to several more free Bible games. Scroll back up and play the trivia above.