‘Jeopardy!’ Fans Fuming Over “Misleading” Bible Clue

For the second time this week, Jeopardy! is finding itself in hot water — first with a “tasteless” clue referring to Brian Laundrie’s suicide on Celebrity Jeopardy!, and now with a prompt in the quiz show’s Tournament of Champions that many fans are claiming is incorrect.

The biblical flub came during the Final Jeopardy! round of Wednesday night’s (Nov. 16) episode, which featured contestants Amy Schneider, Andrew He and Sam Buttrey. Host Ken Jennings read, “Paul’s letter to them is the New Testament epistle with the most Old Testament quotations.”

Jennings deemed Schneider’s response, “Who are the Hebrews,” as correct. Meanwhile, Buttrey, who answered “Who are the Romans,” and He, who responded, “Who are the Philippians,” were both considered incorrect.

After the clue aired, many fans pointed out that the answer is up for debate: whether Paul actually wrote the letters to the Hebrews is still a topic of discussion among Biblical scholars.

Decider has reached out to representatives of Jeopardy, but did not hear back by time of publication.

Irritated viewers aired their grievances on Twitter, where one wrote, “Very poor research by #Jeopardy #JeopardyToC as the authorship of Hebrews has never been established. Attributing to Paul was questioned hundreds of years ago. Extremely misleading & inaccurate clue.”

Another added, “Sam got screwed by an erroneously worded question. Most biblical scholars agree that Paul did not write the Letter to the Hebrews.”

While third viewer fumed, “This Final Jeopardy! clue is wrong! The answer is wrong! Sam is right. It’s Romans. Paul didn’t write Hebrews. @Jeopardy. Fact check yourself.”

Yet one more quipped, “How much time will I waste tonight reading all the tweets about the final Jeopardy error? Like the author of Hebrews, nobody knows.”

Describing the Final Jeopardy clue as “so weird,” one viewer wrote, “They think Paul wrote Hebrews?! I hope they make some sort of correction because that is clearly WRONG!”

Only Jeopardy fans would have the knowledge of biblical proportions to catch this one, but we can’t say we’re really surprised.

Jeopardy! airs on weeknights at 7/6c on ABC.