Quote Me A River Trivia Quiz

Answer: Abram/Abraham

The Euphrates, along with the Tigris, is one of the two great rivers of the Middle East. Both are mentioned at the beginning of the Bible, in the description of the Garden of Eden:
"A river watering the garden flowed from Eden; from there it was separated into four headwaters. The name of the first is the Pishon; it winds through the entire land of Havilah, where there is gold. (The gold of that land is good; aromatic resin and onyx are also there.) The name of the second river is the Gihon; it winds through the entire land of Cush. The name of the third river is the Tigris; it runs along the east side of Asshur. And the fourth river is the Euphrates" (Genesis 2 v. 10-14).

God's covenant with Abram/Abraham was seen by the Israelites as the point at which they were born as a people. There are, though, other covenants to be found in the Old Testament and these include those made with Noah (Genesis 9), Moses (Exodus 24) and David (2 Samuel 7).

Answer: Joseph

After Abraham, the next two generations, centered on Isaac and Jacob, proved to be highly dysfunctional and their stories make interesting reading! Joseph was Jacob's eleventh son but the first by Rachel, his favorite wife. Jealousy led his brothers to sell him into slavery and this was the means through which he ultimately ended up in Egypt, interpreting Pharaoh's dream and being appointed to one of the highest positions in the land.

It also paved the way for the rest of his family to come to Egypt and the subsequent slavery of the Israelite people within that country.

Answer: Moses

"Then Pharaoh's daughter went down to the Nile to bathe, and her attendants were walking along the river bank. She saw the basket among the reeds and sent her slave girl to get it. She opened it and saw the baby. He was crying, and she felt sorry for him. 'This is one of the Hebrew babies,' she said. Then his sister asked Pharaoh's daughter, 'Shall I go and get one of the Hebrew women to nurse the baby for you?' 'Yes, go,' she answered. And the girl went and got the baby's mother. Pharaoh's daughter said to her, 'Take this baby and nurse him for me, and I will pay you.' So the woman took the baby and nursed him. When the child grew older, she took him to Pharaoh's daughter and he became her son. She named him Moses, saying, 'I drew him out of the water' (Exodus 2 v. 5-10).

Moses was born whilst the Israelites were in slavery in Egypt and was the man who led them out from that slavery and to the Promised Land. At the time of his birth, there was an order in place by which all newly born Hebrew boys were to be thrown into the Nile. Moses' mother managed to conceal him for three months but then had to give him up to the Nile. She did, however, place him in the basket to prolong his life and this led to his survival. Although the writer clearly believed the name Moses to come from the Hebrew word for "drawing out", it is more likely to have come from the Egyptian verb meaning "to give birth".

Answer: He had a tent peg driven through his skull

"Her hand reached for the tent peg, her right hand for the workman's hammer. She struck Sisera, she crushed his head, she shattered and pierced his temple. At her feet he sank, he fell; there he lay. At her feet he sank, he fell; where he sank, there he fell - dead" (Judges 5 v. 26-27)

The period after Israel's entry into the Promised Land is known as the time of the Judges. These were leaders raised up by God to bring Israel back to obedience. The list includes such characters as Samson, Gideon and Deborah, to prove that sexual equality was going strong even way back then.

Deborah turns out to have been quite the military strategist and her plan worked perfectly. The chariots became bogged down in the muddy conditions and the army was slaughtered. Sisera escaped on foot and sought refuge in the tent of a woman named Jael whom he thought to be supportive. She turned out to be anything but and, whilst he slept, she put her camping gear to deadly use. For trivia buffs, it also gives the first use of the word "temple" in the Bible.

Answer: Elijah

After the period of Judges came the period of the Israelite monarchy which began with Saul, David and Solomon. They were followed by a succession of kings in a divided kingdom. Alongside these kings (and usually calling them to account) were prophets, of whom the greatest were Elijah and his successor Elisha.

Elijah is a larger than life but very human character, in one chapter calling down fire from heaven and, in the next, hiding in a cave because he is frightened and depressed (1 Kings 18/19).

Answer: Nineveh

After the death of King Solomon, Israel divided into two kingdoms. The northern part (confusingly still called the Kingdom of Israel) comprised ten of the twelve tribes. The southern part was known as the Kingdom of Judah. The Kingdom of Israel was overrun by the Assyrians in approximately 720 BC leading to the loss of the northern tribes.

Located alongside the Tigris river, on the same site as the present day Iraqi city of Mosul, Nineveh's history stretches back a long way and it is mentioned early in the Bible:
"Cush was the father of Nimrod, who grew to be a mighty warrior on the earth. He was a mighty hunter before the LORD; that is why it is said, 'Like Nimrod, a mighty hunter before the Lord.' The first centers of his kingdom were Babylon, Erech, Akkad and Calneh, in Shinar. From that land he went to Assyria, where he built Nineveh, Rehoboth Ir, Calah and Resen, which is between Nineveh and Calah; that is the great city" (Genesis 10 v. 8-12).

Nahum's prophecy, however, was pretty accurate as Nineveh's prominence as the Assyrian capital was short-lived. Having been significantly built up by King Sennacherib, at the start of the seventh century BC, it was sacked by the Medes and Babylonians in 612 BC. Thebes is located close to modern day Luxor and was a one time capital of Egypt. By Nahum's time, though, it had long since been supplanted and had been captured by the Assyrians in 663 BC.

Answer: Babylon

How could the Israelites sing the songs of the Lord while in a foreign land? That was the dilemma they faced after going into exile in Babylon in 587 BC. The response turned out to be the genesis of the synagogue system and a radical theological approach that shaped the editing of much of the Old Testament. Psalm 137 goes on to express how they felt about their Babylonian captors:
"O Daughter of Babylon, doomed to destruction, happy is he who repays you for what you have done to us - he who seizes your infants and dashes them against the rocks" (Psalm 137 v. 8-9).

Answer: Belteshazzar

The book of Daniel is set during the time that the Israelite intelligentsia were in exile in Babylon. It begins by describing how some of them were trained up for service in the Babylonian royal court:
"Among these were some from Judah: Daniel, Hananiah, Mishael and Azariah. The chief official gave them new names: to Daniel, the name Belteshazzar; to Hananiah, Shadrach; to Mishael, Meshach; and to Azariah, Abednego" (Daniel 1 v. 6-7).

Although the book purports to be from the time of exile (sixth century BC), most scholars date it to the second century BC and believe it to have been written to encourage Jews suffering persecution at the hands of the Seleucid empire.

Babylon was built upon the Tigris river, as was Nineveh, as was Seleucia, capital of the Seleucid Empire, and as is modern day Baghdad.

Answer: John the Baptist

The Jordan river has its source at Mount Hermon and flows into and out of the Sea of Galilee, connecting that lake, in turn, with the Dead Sea. It runs through the same rift valley that ends up in East Africa. At its closest point, the Jordan is about 25 miles from Jerusalem.

John's baptism was probably an adaptation of the Jewish rite of Mikvah, a ritual immersion that symbolises purification and new beginnings. Jesus was one of those baptised by John and Christian theology has traditionally seen John as preparing the way for his ministry as God's Messiah. Jesus himself, according to the gospels, did not baptise anyone (John 4 v. 2).

Philip is only noted as having baptised one person, an Ethiopian, in water that may or may not have been a river (Acts 8 v. 26-39). Joshua led the whole people of Israel through the Jordan river but without getting any of them wet (Joshua 3 v. 14-17)!

Answer: Paul

"One of those listening was a woman named Lydia, a dealer in purple cloth from the city of Thyatira, who was a worshiper of God. The Lord opened her heart to respond to Paul's message." (Acts 16 v.14)

Philippi was located in what is now Northern Greece and originally had a water related name, being called Krenides from the Greek word for a spring. The river in question is the Gangites river which was about a mile outside the town. Although Paul describes himself as an apostle to the Gentiles (Romans 11 v. 3; Galatians 2 v. 8), his usual strategy in a new place was to make first contact with the Jewish community. This was done by either speaking in the synagogue (if there was one and it was available to him) or going to where he knew a significant number of people would be gathered.