Well, I want to welcome everybody to our question answer panel. I've got a couple of our great speakers today to be on our panel discussion, and we have questions from you. And so thank you so much for submitting so many wonderful questions, and we're going to try to get through a bunch of them, because you've asked some great questions about the Bible, and that's what we want to dive into. So we've got Dr. Marishek who's going to be with on this panel and Dr. Michael Barber.

And I'm going to list out the questions and then they're going to answer and then I'll chip in here and there as well.

So the first question I want to start with is, what are the most important books in the Bible that all Catholics should know besides the Gospels and the

New Testament letters. So great question. So what would be your first choice? I'll go to each

of you, Dr. Gieschak. What would be your first, after the Gospels and epistles?

Yeah, I'd say to start with the book of Genesis. The book of Genesis. Begin at the beginning. Begin at the beginning.

That's a good foundational book.

That's important, especially, yeah, there's so much in Genesis. Obviously, creation. Adam and Eve. Canaan and Abel. The Tower of Babylon. Man and wife. Noah and the Flood. He made them in his image likeness to... Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, Joseph. if there's a lot there and it really gets you into the story of the Bible.

And if you don't know Genesis, the rest of the Bible won't make a lot of sense. That's a good argument. Good case for me for that. Dr. Barber, you have a better one than that? I got to say the Psalms. The Psalms are really the center of the church's liturgical life in as much as we pray the Psalms virtually every Mass and the

responsorial Psalm and then the Liturgy of the Hours which all priests, religious, the Pope, everybody prays the liturgy of the hours and that's primarily taken from the Psalms exactly. Right. So you know there's something important there, sorry, that's a bad joke,

when the church is using that book, and of course, fathers and doctors have studied the Psalms

and seen so much there that's important for understanding Christ.

But I would just say, the reason I love the Psalms is first and foremost

from a Catholic perspective. The reason the Bible is so key is because God speaks to us

in the books of sacred scripture. And the great thing about the Psalms, as Thomas Aquinas

says, is here God speaks to us giving us the words that we can use to speak

back to him.

Yeah.

Right?

Right.

Right.

So those are two great books.

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