Divine, or Not?

There are a great many people who claim the The Bible is the Word of God. They claim that the writers thereof were divinely inspired and that even those books which were written after the death of Christ must, by this claim, be included as God's unchanging Word.
They claim that this divine inspiration makes the Bible divine, as a whole text. But does it truly make all the writers divine as well? Who decided they were inspired, and how do we define divine inspiration?

According to Dictionary.com, divine inspiration is: an act or process that is purportedly inspired by a deity; 

inspiration endowed by God upon 

spiritually gifted persons

Now, that in itself is pretty easy to understand. A person has a spiritual sensitivity and so is able to more plainly evoke what he or she believes is the nature, will or desire of God. But can we spread this same sensitivity to all of the authors of the Bible? How do we measure the 'sensitivity' of authors we know so little about? We could claim that their writings are so in common that we can assume the power of inspiration runs throughout. But the commonality of the Gospels is not so easy for us to show.

From the historical perspective, even if we simply want to hold the light of historicity to the Gospels alone, we begin to see some tears in the fabric of divinity.
Mark, the youngest of the Gospels in terms of time passed between the death of Jesus around year 30 and it's origin tells the story of a Jesus who is not seen after the resurrection, has no mention of virgin birth and makes no claims of the divinity of Jesus. Written somewhere between 60 and 70, it also has the empty tomb tale.

Paul's writings begin somewhere around 50. Which means that long before the tale of Jesus was written down by the Gospel authors, Paul had converted and had begun his ministry and letters.
Eight of the books of Paul are undeniably his work. However thirteen books that are attributed to Paul or Timothy, are not verified works. They are called, by theologians, pseudepigraphic, or 'under a false name'. If we cannot verify these authors, how can we know that they were inspired? Also, Paul never claims that Jesus was born of a virgin. And unlike Mark, there is no empty tomb. He claims Jesus was raised from the dead and appeared to him on the road to Damascus.

Matthew, having origins closer to year 80, records virgin birth and being born in Bethlehem.

Between Luke and the Acts, we can see more of the Passion, those things we are used to seeing. The last supper, appearing multiple times in the Upper Room, the ascension and the murder of his followers. Luke and Acts have origins near year 85. John, happening in year 90 talks more about the incarnation of God-as-Man, the divinity of Jesus and so on.
In every single one of these cases, from Paul, through the lowly Mark and through, we see so many different versions of Jesus, that we can tell that his many biographers were not so sure of his story as they perhaps claimed.
If there are this many differences among men who were this close to these times, how can we say that there is a truth that runs through all of them which invites us to accept infallibility of the text.

Even if we ignore the translations of the original writings, various 'gnostic' texts ascribed to Mary Magdalene and Jesus himself, we have enough of a muddled history to make even the most sane historian mad.Leaving out Paul's letters, how can you adhere to the divinity argument, if even the Gospels do not agree? Perhaps one is more accurate, historically, than others, but even in the face of all that, we cannot tell for sure, which of the four was the most accurate.
If we cannot even apply empirical historical validity to these events, and the writers don't agree or match up, how do we logically make the claim of divinity of the texts?
The next question is: do dare apply divinity to those texts which were obviously written under an assumed name? Were they written under duress? Were they published under a different name to avoid persecution? How does that hold up against the idea that martyrdom is a good thing?
Perhaps, even if Paul's epistles were inspiring works, we might disagree that they were divinely inspired. He says very different things to the different 'churches'. Pastors and theologians will chalk this up to different cultures of his audiences.
But the real question is, outside of Jesus himself (we will tackle his divinity later) can anyone in or contributing to the unfolding story of Jesus' life and ministry be considered divine?
If we apply this same incredulity of divinity to The Bible as we do to the Quran or the Kalevala or the Bhagavad Gita, we may be surprised at how poorly it holds up to historical scrutiny, not to mention questions of divine inspiration.

Even more poignant, can we call the writings of theologians and other clerics who wrote about Jesus divine too? What if they disagree with Paul or the Gospels? Clearly historical integrity among the Gospels themselves is not considered important, or, at least is glossed over. At what point do we draw the line? Only those books that were accepted at the Council of Nicea?
But it is not enough to question this book's origins in history. We must ask, do the claims made in the book to anything to add or subtract to the morality within that believers also call divine and absolute?
At what point do we willingly suspend disbelief in order to believe that which doesn't hold up against very much literary and historical scrutiny?

Note: Special thanks to Matt Barsotti at his blog Jericho Brisance and the lovely infographic there which guided my navigation of the historical origins. I take no credit for the infographic, but you may find it helpful. Find it here