Bible Quiz of Indeterminate Difficulty

[patrick457]

Last one, guys.

 

[You]

A. Sisera
(No looking! I promise! )

She hammered his head thru with a tent spike. Book of Judges.

 

[patrick457]

Darn, you’re all correct!

But Sisera fled away on foot to the tent of Jael, the wife of Heber the Kenite, for there was peace between Jabin the king of Hazor and the house of Heber the Kenite. And Jael came out to meet Sisera and said to him, “Turn aside, my lord; turn aside to me; do not be afraid.” So he turned aside to her into the tent, and she covered him with a rug. And he said to her, “Please give me a little water to drink, for I am thirsty.” So she opened a skin of milk and gave him a drink and covered him. And he said to her, “Stand at the opening of the tent, and if any man comes and asks you, ‘Is anyone here?’ say, ‘No.’” But Jael the wife of Heber took a tent peg, and took a hammer in her hand. Then she went softly to him and drove the peg into his temple until it went down into the ground while he was lying fast asleep from weariness. So he died. And behold, as Barak was pursuing Sisera, Jael went out to meet him and said to him, “Come, and I will show you the man whom you are seeking.” So he went in to her tent, and there lay Sisera dead, with the tent peg in his temple.

-Judges 4:17-22

Now for the next question:

The Gospels merely apply to Pontius Pilate the generic title hegemon, ‘governor’. But based from what evidence we have discovered about him, what would have been Pilate’s actual title?

A.) Dux
B.) Procurator
C.) Senator
D.) Legate
E.) Prefect
F.) Consul

 

[djd83]

I’m going to guess it’s Prefect…

Just a warning to all y’all copy-pasters

 

[SanAgustin]

I think I’ve heard him referred as Prefect before, Consul is too high a title, the others don’t seem to apply.

Although Procurator … nah, let’s go with Prefect.

 

[patrick457]

Okay, new rule: no copypasta allowed. Sure, one can’t help it if one’s preferred answer is already given by another, but at least try to formulate the answer in your own way. Else I might require the offending poster to write a post on a given topic as a penalty. And by ‘a given topic’ I mean something like “explain in detail the various processes that eventually led to the eruption of the Jewish-Roman War in the late 1st century and the various characters involved therein within 5000 letters or less” or “give a concise yet clear summary of St. Thomas Aquinas’ Summa, in rhyming verse” or “make a Shakespearean tragedy out of the life of Tola the eighth judge of Israel.”

In that note, just one more to go.

 

[You]

so I’m forced to pick B. or suffer a fate worse than Geography

 

[patrick457]

so I’m forced to pick B. or suffer a fate worse than Geography

You ain’t in any way obligated, but just make sure that your given reason for choosing said answer isn’t TOO eerily similar to that given by the poster/s before you down to choice of words and word order that even the most casual of readers would instantly recognize copypasta being involved (mmm, pasta…) In other words, feel free to choose, but don’t copy-paste.

The answer will be revealed next post.

 

[patrick457]

Now the answer:

For much of Christian history, it was believed that Pilate was a procurator because the Roman historian Tacitus referred to him as such (Annals 15.44):

Consequently, to get rid of the report, Nero fastened the guilt and inflicted the most exquisite punishments on a class hated for their disgraceful acts, called ‘Chrestians’ (sic) by the populace. Christus, from whom the name had its origin, suffered the extreme extreme penalty during the reign of Tiberius at the hands of one of our procurators, Pontius Pilatus, and a most mischievous superstition, thus checked for the moment, again broke out not only in Judaea, the first source of the evil, but even in Rome, where all things hideous and shameful from every part of the world find their center and become popular.

However, in 1961, a team of Italian archeologists led by Dr. Antonio Frova found a block of limestone in an ancient theater, built by decree of Herod the Great c. 30 BC, located in Caesarea Maritima (present-day Qesarya), the capital of Roman Judaea. On the partially damaged block is a dedication to Tiberius Caesar by Pilate.

http://www.theevidence.org.uk/library/arch4_15.jpg

The text is so damaged that one can only make out Tiberieum, [Po]ntius Pilatus and [Praef]ectus Iuda[ea]e on it now and thus there have been a number of proposals as to how the original inscription ran. The stone caused some sensation among experts, because it proved that Pilate’s title was praefectus, and not procurator, as per Tacitus.

The title used by the governors of the region varied depending on the period. When Samaria, Judaea proper and Idumea were first amalgamated into Judaea Province, from AD 6 to the outbreak of the First Jewish Revolt in AD 66, officials of the equestrian order governed. They held the Roman title of praefectus until Herod Agrippa I was named ‘King of the Judaeans’ by the emperor Claudius. After Herod Agrippa’s death in AD 44, when Judaea reverted to direct Roman rule, the governor began to held the title procurator. When applied to governors, procurator, otherwise used for financial officers, connotes no difference in rank or function from the title known as prefect. Contemporary archaeological finds and documents such as the Pilate Stone attest to the governor’s more accurate official title only for the years 6 through 44: prefect.

So the correct answer is E!

 

[steve53]

Josephus I think goes into that.

Here is a more open-ended question:

Antonius Felix was Procurator of Judea and Samaria from c. A.D. 52 to A.D. 60.

-who was his brother?

-who were the three queens he married?

 

[Darran]

Bah! I got here too late! I would have still gotten a wrong answer, but I would have looked smart talking about the tablet, eh?

Caesarea Maritima, is that of any relation to Caesarea Philippi do you know? I thought Philippi was the main roman port in those days.

 

[steve53]

Caesarea Philippi was located at altitude at one of the sources of the Jordan River at the base of Mount Hebron, in the ancient country of Banias.

Caesarea Maritime was the old Strato’s Tower on the Mediterranean coast that Herod the Great transformed, and built a state-of-the-art harbor in, which was called Sebaste.

 

[Darran]

Caesarea Philippi was located at altitude at one of the sources of the Jordan River at the base of Mount Hebron, in the ancient country of Banias.

Caesarea Maritime was the old Strato’s Tower on the Mediterranean coast that Herod the Great transformed, and built a state-of-the-art harbor in, which was called Sebaste.

I see, thank you. I’ve never heard of Caesarea Maritime untill now.

 

[patrick457]

Bah! I got here too late! I would have still gotten a wrong answer, but I would have looked smart talking about the tablet, eh?

Caesarea Maritima, is that of any relation to Caesarea Philippi do you know? I thought Philippi was the main roman port in those days.

Steve already gave you information, so at best I can only add.

First off, there were a lot of places named Caesarea in the Roman Empire, because people in those days so loved to dedicate cities to whichever Caesar happened to be reigning as flattery. Which necessitated suffixes to distinguish which Caesarea one is talking about: something like Maritima (‘by the sea’), Philippi (‘of Philip’), Magna (‘great’), Mazaca, Antiochia.

Caesarea Philippi was built by Herod Philip in a famous cultic site located at the foot of Mount Hermon in the Golan Heights known in Greek as Paneias (whence came the modern name Banias), named after the Greek god Pan. Philip gave it the name Caesarea as a tribute to the recently-deceased Augustus when he made improvements to it in AD 14. King Agrippa II tried to change the name to Neronias in 61 but the name only held up until Nero’s death in 68. Herod the Great meanwhile built [Caesarea Maritima]/URL] in around 25-13 BC and also dedicated it to (the then still-alive) Augustus.](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caesarea_Maritima)

 

[patrick457]

Josephus I think goes into that.

Here is a more open-ended question:

Antonius Felix was Procurator of Judea and Samaria from c. A.D. 52 to A.D. 60.

-who was his brother?

-who were the three queens he married?

Okay, I’ll bite.

Antonius Felix, the brother of the Greek freedman Marcus Antonius Pallas, married Drusilla, Drusilla, and a third about whom little is known.

 

[steve53]

You da’ man!

Both Felix and Pallas were previously slaves in the house of Antonia, the widow of Drusus the Great. Who said that Rome had a structured and suffocating social class structure?

Another question:

What ex-High Priest of the Second Temple in Jerusalem resigned to become a part of Nero and Poppea’s inner circle in A.D. 62, and probably was a part of it in A.D. 64 when Nero began to persecute the Christians and had Peter and Paul executed?

 

[patrick457]

You da’ man!

Both Felix and Pallas were previously slaves in the house of Antonia, the widow of Drusus the Great. Who said that Rome had a structured and suffocating social class structure?

Another question:

What ex-High Priest of the Second Temple in Jerusalem resigned to become a part of Nero and Poppea’s inner circle in A.D. 62, and probably was a part of it in A.D. 64 when Nero began to persecute the Christians and had Peter and Paul executed?

Come on folks, don’t turn tail and abandon this thread!

That’s a rather hard question, but since there’s nobody left to answer I’ll take a wild guess: Ishmael ben Fabus, perhaps?

 

[patrick457]

As compensation for Steve’s highly-impregnable questions, here’s a dreadfully easy chestnut.

How many magoi visited Jesus in Bethlehem?

A.) Two
B.) Three
C.) Four
D.) Seven
E.) Twelve
F.) We don’t know

 

[SanAgustin]

As compensation for Steve’s highly-impregnable questions, here’s a dreadfully easy chestnut.

How many magoi visited Jesus in Bethlehem?

A.) Two
B.) Three
C.) Four
D.) Seven
E.) Twelve
F.) We don’t know

(f) We don’t know, it never says the number in the Bible.

 

[SanAgustin]

Another question:

What ex-High Priest of the Second Temple in Jerusalem resigned to become a part of Nero and Poppea’s inner circle in A.D. 62, and probably was a part of it in A.D. 64 when Nero began to persecute the Christians and had Peter and Paul executed?

Hey who is this a Biblical question!?!?!