Catholic Bible - extra books?

Hi, what about the extra books in the Catholic bible that is not found in the Protestant Bible?  How can we understand / trust the canonization process when there are such differences?  Can you comment on this?

How Do We Trust the Writers of the Bible?

It seems clear that the writers of the Bible were fallible men, and for some of them, they were even rebuked by Jesus as being wrong.  They had wrong ideas, they had wrong beliefs.  So how can we trust that their writings (the Bible) is the word of God?

O.T. God Reveals Himself So Explicitly..

The question goes something like this:
In the Old Testament, it seems like God revealed Himself all the time to people in scary and very explicit ways. How come He doesn't do that in the N.T.? In the Old Testament, God judges people and is quite scary. But the New Testament God doesn't seem to do that.. Are we talking about different Gods here?

Matthew Biased Toward OT Prophecies?

How would you respond to allegations that the gospel writers had done a bit of "map-bending" in their gospel accounts to force the events in Jesus' life to conform to OT scriptures. For example, Matthew seems to have recorded that Jesus rode on a donkey and a colt on Palm Sunday, while the other synoptics recorded only one. Matthew seems to have recorded 2 donkeys to fit the prophecy in Zechariah. Also, in Matthew, Jesus is shown as a second Moses - the slaughter of the innocents parallels the circumstances around Moses' birth, and the escape to Egypt is also a parallel to Moses' situation. I might have missed it, but I don't think these things are in the other gospels. This would seem to undermine the credibility of the gospel. How would you answer this?

Apostle Paul's Role in NT and Christian Faith

I was wondering if you could give some historical/theological background and explanation to Apostle Paul's special role as the early Christian authority whose application of and exposition for much of Jesus' teachings (and OT teaching as well, as it is 'fulfilled' in Jesus' teaching and life), inform such a large part of the practical living out Christian life today? Perhaps including issues like: is there significance that Paul ended up writing most of the NT (or the other way around in terms of causation) though he was not one of the Twelve who lived with Jesus; how Paul distinguished between things that were "[he] and not the Lord" and "the Lord, not [he]"; what would distinguish Paul and a later Christian who also had a vision of Jesus and who decided to write similar homilies, explanations, and applications (since Paul's conversion experience was highly personal, one of the criteria used to determine the likely historicity of a spiritual encounter, as with Jesus' resurrection appearances)?

Uncomfortably Violent Passages

I was wondering about the topic of Divine Inspiration and Biblical Fallibility in the canonization of the Bible. There are some passages, like the supplication prayer of Psalm 137, that ask God to act as the avenger of Israel. Some of the things the psalmist prays for makes me squirm, like

8 O Daughter of Babylon, doomed to destruction,
happy is he who repays youfor what you have done to us-
9 he who seizes your infantsand dashes them against the rocks.

What would be the role of passages like these in the Bible? Is it also divinely inspired, or did it find its way into the Bible as a consequence of human fallibility? How should we treat such passages?

Corinthian Women

I somehow found this link and as I was reading some posts it was good to see issues ironed out. It made me think of a question I have that I figured I'd find a better answer to later if I read some commentaries or invested more time in researching but since you seem more knowledgeable than me I'll ask you and maybe you can direct me where I should go for more info. Anyway, its 1 Corinthians 15:34-35,(1 Corinthians 11:13-15), I think those right now are good there's other little things you know I don't think I would know what to say if someone said hey were not the "weaker partner"(1 Ptr 3:7) but anyway I'm asking because one of my friends belongs to an apostolic church so there's all these rules for women and I kind of want to start dialogue going on interpreting the bible and giving these verses the proper context they deserve. Okay thanks.

End of Mark?

This question wasn't submitted by anyone, but because we just finished the Remarkable Jesus message series at Gracepoint Berkeley, I thought that I should open up a thread just in case someone had a question. As Pastor William covered during the message, the earlier copies of the Gospel of Mark is missing the last few verses - so we decided to cover only up to chapter 16 verse 8, since that's what we know for sure as being written by John Mark.

Question: Isn't it strange that Mark seems to be missing the resurrection account? Doesn't that mean that the resurrection account might have been made up at a later time?

Pastor William gave a good explanation of this in his message this past Sunday, so you can review your notes and post an answer here. There's also some more background (regarding dating) that we could give in support of what Pastor William said - what would that be? All you Gracepoint SET people - you should be able to briefly answer this question in 3 sentences. If not, then it's time to review your notes!

Canonization? Divine Inspiration?

I was wondering about the legitimacy of the Bible as a whole unit. What does "God-breathed" or "divine inspiration" really mean? What constitutes the criteria for being in the Bible, and how is it that a council had the authority to choose it? Is it really relevant to insist on the truth of every aspect of the entire Bible (e.g. does whether Paul actually wrote all those letters have any impact on our faith)? A friend of mine came up with a fairly interesting analogy: how is the collections of the Bible different from a council of scholars coming up with a British literature anthology? Sure, you can pick out key relevant works, but how can you reduce all of Brit lit into just those few works? And what would it take for the resulting anthology to be considered the definitive tome of Brit lit?