Viva La Vida Trivia Quiz

Answer: Seth

"Jesus himself, when he commenced his work, was about thirty years old, being the son, as the opinion was, of Joseph...son of Seth, son of Adam, son of God." (Luke 3:23, 38; NWT)

When Adam was 130 years of age, Eve gave birth to their son Seth and said, "God has appointed another seed in place of Abel, because Cain killed him." (Genesis 4:25; NWT) Seth's name thus means "appointed." Adam, fulfilling the punishment inflicted on him after sinning in the Garden of Eden, died at age 930 in the year 3096 B.C.E. Seth lived to be 912 years old.

Answer: Calling on the name of Jehovah

"And to Seth also there was born a son and he proceeded to call his name Enosh. At that time a start was made of calling on the name of Jehovah." (Gen. 4:26; NWT) Enosh's name means "mortal man," and during his life of 905 years, he fathered Kenan, among others.

Some views of the above-quoted verse, including those of Jewish tradition, hold that this "calling on the name of Jehovah" was the start of a profane worship, possibly involving idols, rather than a continuation of Abel's worship of God.

Answer: God took him

Jared was the second longest-lived man in the Bible at 962, and the father of Enoch. Enoch is spoken of at Jude 14-15 as a prophet of God who declared a warning of coming judgment. "Enoch kept walking with the true God. Then he was no more, for God took him." (Gen. 5:24; NWT) Enoch's years amounted to 365 before God ended them, sparing him from experiencing death.

Answer: His name means "ancient fossil"

Genesis 5:25-27 reveals that Methuselah lived to the grand old age of 969 (a palindrome!), making him the oldest man on record in the Bible. His name was given to an extremely long-lived Great Basin Bristlecone Pine found at California's Methuselah Grove; the tree was estimated to be over 4,800 years old at the onset of the 21st century.

The meaning of the name "Methuselah" is unclear, but is usually translated to something like "Man of the javelin/spear."

Answer: Lamech

Little is known of the Lamech who descended from Seth, but when naming his son Noah, he said: "This one will bring us comfort from our work and from the pain of our hands resulting from the ground which Jehovah has cursed." (Gen. 5:29; NWT) The subsequent verses tell us his life ended at 777 years.

The other Lamech descended from Cain and had two wives, Adah and Zillah; this is the Bible's first mention of polygamy. He wrote a poem for his wives in which he recounted his retaliatory murder of a young man who had injured him. (Gen. 4:19, 23, 24)

Answer: The Deluge came upon the earth

In accord with his father's words upon his birth, Noah's name may mean "rest" or "consolation." Noah reached 500 years of age before he became a father, and after his sons were grown and married, God tasked him with building an ark. Then, "Noah was six hundred years old when the deluge of waters occurred on the earth." (Gen. 7:6; NWT) After the Flood, he became a farmer, and the Bible records an incident in which he became intoxicated by the fruit of his vineyard, leading to a curse upon his grandson Canaan. All told, Noah's years amounted to 950.

Answer: Shem

"Shem was a hundred years old when he became father to Arpachshad two years after the deluge. And after his fathering Arpachshad Shem continued to live five hundred years." (Gen. 11:10-11; NWT) In his life of 600 years, Shem also had sons Elam, Asshur, Lud, and Aram. Through these five sons, Shem became the father of the Semitic peoples, including the Chaldeans, Assyrians, Syrians, Elamites, and Hebrews, making him an ancestor of Abraham. Both Shem and his brother Japheth were blessed by their father, whereas Ham's son Canaan was cursed. (Gen. 9:25-27)

Answer: Peleg

A great-great-grandson of Shem, Peleg, his name meaning "division" in Hebrew, was born about a century after the Flood. At some point in his 239 years, "the earth was divided." (Gen. 10:25; NWT) This may have referred to the division that occurred at the Tower of Babel, when people separated and became spread out through the land due to the confusion of their languages.

Answer: Sarah

The eldest born to him at age 70, Terah had three sons: Abram, Nahor, and Haran. Abram was married to his half-sister, Sarai (later Sarah): "She is truly my sister, the daughter of my father, only not the daughter of my mother; and she became my wife." (Gen. 20:12; NWT) Sarah laughed upon hearing from an angel that she, at 90 and beyond her childbearing years, would have a child with her 100-year-old husband. Yet, with miraculous intervention, she did give birth to a son. (Gen. 21:1-2)

Answer: Nimrod

"Then God said once more to Moses: 'This is what you are to say to the sons of Israel, "Jehovah the God of your forefathers, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac and the God of Jacob, has sent me to you."' (Exodus 3:15)

Nimrod was "a mighty hunter in opposition to Jehovah." (Gen. 10:9; NWT) On the other hand, Abraham (formerly Abram) was described in the Bible as a friend of God, and saw the end of his days at the "good old age" of 175. Abraham and Sarah's only son, Isaac, died "old and satisfied" with his 180 years. Isaac and Rebekah's son, Jacob, whose name was changed to Israel when he received a blessing, was 147 when he died. Jacob was buried in the cave of Machpelah, where his parents and grandparents were likewise laid to rest. (Gen. 25:7-10; 35:28-9; 47:28)