Bible Timeline Challenge
Put the events of Scripture back in order, earliest at the top. Drag the cards or use the arrow buttons — after you check your answer, each event opens its historical note.
Leaderboard
The twenty highest scores for this game, by day, week, month and all time.
About Bible Timeline Challenge
The Timeline Challenge is about sequence. Most confusion about the Bible comes from holding its events in the wrong order — placing the exile before the kingdom, or the prophets after the return, and reading everything at the wrong angle as a result.
A workable outline runs like this: the primeval history of Genesis 1-11; the patriarchs; slavery in Egypt and the exodus; the wilderness and the conquest; the era of the judges; the united kingdom under Saul, David and Solomon; the divided kingdom of Israel and Judah; the fall of Samaria to Assyria and, later, of Jerusalem to Babylon; the exile; the return and rebuilding under Ezra and Nehemiah; the centuries between the Testaments; the life of Jesus; and the spread of the church in Acts and the letters.
Dates for the earlier periods are debated among historians and among Christians, and this game deliberately concentrates on order rather than on precise years. Getting the sequence right is both more achievable and more useful for reading than memorising figures that specialists still argue over.
How to play
- 1.Choose a tier — the easier sets use widely known events, the harder ones add finer detail.
- 2.Drag the event cards into order, earliest at the top, or move them with the arrow buttons.
- 3.Check the arrangement. Each card then opens its historical note explaining where the event sits and why.
- 4.Play in timed mode for pressure, or practice mode to take your time over the notes.
What it reinforces
- The large-scale shape of biblical history from creation to the early church.
- Which prophets spoke before, during and after the exile.
- The relationship between the kingdom period and the books that describe it.
- A sense of proportion — how much time passes between events that sit on facing pages.
What to notice while you play
- How long the gaps are. Centuries pass between Joseph and Moses, and roughly four hundred years separate Malachi from the Gospels.
- The two separate falls: the northern kingdom to Assyria, then Judah to Babylon over a century later.
- Events that overlap rather than follow one another, especially among the prophets.
- Where the wisdom literature sits — much of it is harder to date than the narratives.
Taking it into your Bible reading
When you open a prophet, the first question worth asking is: is this before the exile, during it, or after? Isaiah warning Judah about Assyria, Jeremiah watching Jerusalem fall, and Haggai urging a returned remnant to rebuild the temple are three very different situations, and the same words of comfort or warning land differently in each.
Try sketching the outline above on a single sheet of paper from memory, then check it. What you cannot place is exactly what to read next.
Passages to read
- 2 Kings 17:1-23 — The fall of the northern kingdom, with the writer's explanation of why.
- 2 Kings 25 — The fall of Jerusalem and the beginning of the Babylonian exile.
- Ezra 1:1-4 — The decree that allowed the return and rebuilding.
- Luke 3:1-2 — Luke anchoring his account to named rulers, dating it deliberately.
Read these in full rather than as single lines. A game can only point at a passage; the passage itself is the thing worth your time.
Keep learning
- Books of the Bible Challenge — the books that record these events, in canonical order.
- Bible Geography — where each of these events took place.
- Learning Center — lessons on the exile, the kingdom and the intertestamental period.
Learn the story behind the dates in Bible Trivia or order the canon in the Books of the Bible Challenge.