I have been reading Fortress Introduction to the Gospels by Mark Allan Powell where he talks about various differences in the synoptic gospels as to emphasis and details. It reminded me of my days at Dallas Theological Seminary where the accepted view was that all of these are just telling the same story with slightly different perspectives. I wasn’t aware of it at the time, but that was a period when there was a big debate going on about inerrancy of the Bible, so it was necessary to make the different books agree. This required quite a few gymnastics or downright distortions. Which is ironic considering that conservative schools like this claim to be true to the Bible in a way other schools or denominations are not. I agree with comments I’ve seen that fundamentalists treat the Bible as sort of a philosophical icon but they don’t actually read it with any attention.