One of the shows I enjoy watching is the TV quiz show “Jeopardy.”  I actually have a few previous Jeopardy-related posts on this blog, most notably my post from 2020 which explores Jeopardy math. Although the contestants on Jeopardy consistently know way more than I do, I like to test my own knowledge while watching the show – especially in categories in which I feel like I can do well – usually math, sports, U.S. history or geography, and categories on the Bible.  After a recent Jeopardy tournament, and one Bible question in particular, has generated a lot of fan reaction and discussion, I thought I would provide my own thoughts on here on the topic.

The 2022 Jeopardy Tournament of Champions, which concluded this past week, was the culmination of a memorable season of super-champions.  It was an interesting tournament with a different format and an exciting conclusion; however, a controversial finish to one of its games leaves a bit of a stain that I would like to see rectified.  I am, of course, referring to the Romans-Hebrews debate from their November 16 episode.

In addressing this question, I want to be sure to approach this from a proper perspective, as I don’t want this post to come across as argumentative, but rather as an effort to get some clarity on the confusion that has resulted.  With that said, I would at least like to provide my own insight on what should have happened, and what I believe would be the fairest way for the show to address the issue now.  But first, for those unfamiliar with what happened, let’s go over some context to address the moment in question.  The final three contestants in the Tournament of Champions featured Amy, Andrew, and Sam.  Under this year’s finals format, the first contestant to win three games would be declared the champion.  After Andrew won Game 1 and Amy won Game 2, the moment in question came in the Final Jeopardy round of Game 3 – the November 16 episode.  With Sam holding the lead in this game, the Final Jeopardy category was “The New Testament.”  The final round unfolded as follows:

This finish left many viewers – including myself – perplexed, as it is commonly held that the writer of the book of Hebrews is unknown.  Or, at the very least, the identity of the author is disputed.  As I was watching the events unfold on TV at the time, both Romans and Hebrews came to my mind as the most likely answers.  But, since the clue mentioned Paul, and since the author of Hebrews is commonly held not to be Paul, this affected my thought process, and I would have answered Romans.  Had the clue not mentioned Paul, and simply started with, “This letter…”, I think I would have probably gone with Hebrews.  But considering the clue attributed the letter to Paul, I was quite surprised that Jeopardy considered the official correct response to be “Who are the Hebrews?” rather than “Who are the Romans?”  Since Sam’s response of the Romans was ruled incorrect, this cost him the game, and Game 3 went to Andrew for his second win of the finals.  But if Sam had been ruled correct, the finals would have been tied, 1-1-1.

After digging into this further, I still believe that Sam should have been awarded with a correct answer, for either of the following two reasons:

1. As previously mentioned, the authorship of Hebrews is disputed, as there is not widespread scholarly agreement that it was written by Paul, and
2. Even setting aside the question of the authorship of Hebrews, Romans has more Old Testament quotations than Hebrews anyway.

The authorship question has generated most of the debate I have seen online.  I tend to agree with those who have pointed out that the inclusion of Paul’s name in the clue is misleading due to the authorship question.  In fairness, others have pointed out that Jeopardy uses the King James Version, and that the name of the letter in the King James Version is “The Epistle of Paul the Apostle to the Hebrews”.  Jeopardy themselves came out with a statement along these same lines earlier this week, in essence, affirming their position which attributes Hebrews to Paul.  Even with this information, I personally still view the clue to be misleading. But let’s say for the moment that this solves the authorship question, and that we set that issue aside and attribute the letter to Paul.  There still remains the issue of which New Testament epistle contains the most Old Testament quotations, which I think people generally assumed must apparently be Hebrews.

As to the number of Old Testament quotations, I’m sure very few people actually knew for sure which New Testament book contained the most, or how many quotations each letter contained.  I myself didn’t know this information either, but I decided to do a little digging out of curiosity.  By my count, Romans has 52 Old Testament quotations¹, and Hebrews has 43 Old Testament quotations².  (Also, thanks to Peter Krol’s website, www.knowableword.com, for assistance with this research as well. Although his count differs from mine in exact number of quotations, I found it to be a tremendous resource, and it also supports the idea that Romans contains the most Old Testament quotations. See the bottom of this post for my exact count and other references.)

Granted, I used the New International Version for the above count, and I understand that Jeopardy uses the King James Version.  But I don’t think this would affect the number of Old Testament quotations in each book.  Or at least not significantly enough to make up for a 52-43 difference by my count.  If Jeopardy still holds that Hebrews contains the most Old Testament quotations, I would be interested to see if they have a statement as to specifically how they determined or counted this.  In the meantime, my view is that Romans contains the most Old Testament quotations of any New Testament epistle, and that, regardless of whether or not Paul wrote Hebrews, Sam should have been given credit for a correct answer on this question.

I have also seen comments online that it is up to the contestant to appeal the ruling immediately (or perhaps at least before the start of the next game), and apparently Sam raised no concerns about his response being ruled incorrect.  So, once the next game started, the result stood, no matter what.  But I would like to see this ruling reversed anyway.  This brings up the issue as to what would have happened if Sam’s response had been ruled correct.  Although impossible to verify with 100% certainty, I think I can take a pretty good stab at it.

In an alternate universe where Sam’s response of Romans was accepted, the finals would have been tied 1-1-1 after three games.  Amy won Game 4, and I have no reason to believe that this would have turned out any differently.  In real life, this then tied Amy and Andrew at 2 games apiece, but in our alternate universe, Amy would have taken a 2-1-1 lead.  Then we get to the end of Game 5, where things get really interesting.  Amy had the lead going into Final Jeopardy of Game 5, with a chance to win the tournament.  However, a strategically small wager in Final Jeopardy from Amy, while it guaranteed that Andrew would not win the game and the tournament, did allow Sam to sneak in with a correct response and win Game 5, as seen below:

For those wondering why Amy would make such a low wager, it appears that her Final Jeopardy wager of 1,800 gave her a lowest possible score of 14,000 with an incorrect answer, which would have still given her more than Andrew’s highest possible score of 13,600. This had to have factored into her strategy, considering Andrew had two wins. However, I say that the events above would have unfolded differently in our alternate universe, as Amy would have been up 2-1-1 in games won at the time, and would have had no reason to make a low wager to block Andrew.  In that reality, Amy would surely have wagered enough to win the tournament in Game 5.  So, ironically, the fact that Sam did not win Game 3 (even though he should have) is what allowed him to win Game 5.  So, we really can’t say, “Sam should have won two games!”  Because he really only wins one game either way.  Really, the series of events that unfolded, with Sam’s “Romans” answer in Game 3 being ruled incorrect, kept Amy from winning the tournament in 5 games.

Then, Amy won a hard-fought Game 6 to win the tournament with her 3rd win.  Andrew finished in 2nd place, having won two games, and Sam finished 3rd, having won one game.  So, fortunately, the Romans-Hebrews question did not affect who won the Tournament of Champions, as Amy would have won the tournament either way.  However, if Sam had been credited with a correct response in Game 3, the final result of the tournament (as best as can be determined) is that both Sam and Andrew would have won one game apiece, and Sam would have won the tiebreaker for 2^nd place, based on most 2^nd place finishes.  So, the way I figure it, while the Romans-Hebrews question did not affect the overall champion, it did affect who won 2^nd and who won 3^rd in the 2022 Tournament of Champions.

Based on this information, since Sam should have been awarded with a correct response in November 16’s Final Jeopardy category, and since the resulting series of events would have led him to a 2^nd place finish, I believe Jeopardy should declare Sam to a co-2^nd place finisher in the 2022 Tournament of Champions, and that he should be awarded with an additional $50,000 in prize money.  No need to take anything away from Andrew at this point – he and Sam can share 2^nd place.  And of course, Amy would have still won the tournament regardless, and her status as champion would not be affected.  In my view, if Jeopardy were to issue a statement to correct this matter and award Sam a 2^nd place finish (and 2^nd place prize money), this would be the fairest way to address the question that resulted from this clue.  Alternatively, I would also be interested to see if Jeopardy has an explanation on how they determined that Hebrews has more Old Testament quotations than any other New Testament epistle (namely Romans).

Again, my hope is not for this question to devolve into arguments (even more than it already has online), as the intent of the Bible is not to be used for arguments about trivia.  I like that Jeopardy uses the Bible for categories and clues, and I hope they continue to do so – I just wish they had used a better clue with a non-controversial answer for this category.  I thought this was an interesting enough topic to post here and make my appeal on behalf of what I believe to be the fairest course of action by Jeopardy.  And hopefully, with the increased attention of the Biblical quotations contained here, perhaps it can prompt us into doing further study and even more importantly, to hide these truths in our hearts.  With that, I’ll close with this thought from the apostle Paul from his letter to the Romans:

The commandments, “You shall not commit adultery,” “You shall not commit murder,” “You shall not steal,” “You shall not covet,” and whatever other command there may be, are summed up in this one command: “Love your neighbor as yourself.”  –Romans 13:9 (with quotations from Exodus 20:13-15 and Leviticus 19:18)

Edit: After I originally posted this, it has since come to my attention that the clue shown below was asked in an episode of Jeopardy which aired on June 2, 2021. (The correct response was “Who is Barnabas?”) I believe this further strengthens my appeal that Jeopardy should re-consider its position as to what the correct response should have been to its Final Jeopardy clue from November 16.

Sources:

1 – Romans 1:17, 2:24, 3:4, 3:10-12, 3:13a, 3:13b, 3:14, 3:15-17, 3:18, 4:3, 4:7-8, 4:17, 4:18, 7:7, 8:36, 9:7, 9:9, 9:12, 9:13, 9:15, 9:17, 9:25, 9:26, 9:27-28, 9:29, 9:33, 10:5, 10:6-8, 10:11, 10:13, 10:15, 10:16, 10:18, 10:19, 10:20, 10:21, 11:3, 11:4, 11:8, 11:9-10, 11:26-27, 12:19, 12:20, 13:9a, 13:9b, 14:11, 15:3, 15:9, 15:10, 15:11, 15:12, 15:21

2 – Hebrews 1:5a, 1:5b, 1:6, 1:7, 1:8-9, 1:10-12, 1:13, 2:6-8, 2:12, 2:13a, 2:13b, 3:7-11, 3:15, 4:3, 4:4, 4:5, 4:7, 5:5, 5:6, 6:14, 7:17, 7:21, 8:5, 8:8-12, 9:20, 10:5-7, 10:8, 10:9, 10:16, 10:17, 10:30a, 10:30b, 10:37, 10:38, 11:5, 11:18, 12:5-6, 12:20, 12:21, 12:26, 12:29, 13:5, 13:6

Other References:

Top 10 New Testament Books that Quote Old Testament Passages. April 17, 2013, by Peter Krol. Top 10 NT Books that Quote OT Passages (knowableword.com)

Paul’s Letter with the Most Old Testament Quotations. November 23, 2022, by Peter Krol. Paul’s Letter With the Most OT Quotations (knowableword.com)

Final Answer? Jeopardy, Paul, and Hebrews. November 17, 2022, by the Gospel Coalition. Final Answer? Jeopardy, Paul, and Hebrews (thegospelcoalition.org)