Totally NOT a debate about the veracity of the gospels

[discipulus]

Continual questioning of your ideas is always healthy I thought.

Yes, of course. But that's not what you said (nice try though). You said "faith," which by its definition does not allow for honest evaluation of the validity of faith itself. If by "continually questioning" your faith, which is your unsubstantiated or irrational convictions, it grows stronger, you have not asked yourself the proper questions. One a person might begin with is, "Why should I value faith over skepticism?" Or "Why value faith at all?"

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Kudos to the above.

Historians look for things like divergence in details and similitude in major events. This is what you expect to find if multiple people are writing accounts of a series of events.

So actually instead of serving to discredit the gospels, incidents like the one in question serve only to substantiate it.

Now you're arguing that the Gospels are not perfect but may contain some minor (or major, in the case of Jesus' birth narratives) contradictions that help to bolster their credibility?

Divergence in detail and contradiction are two different things.

To me, when I say I have faith in God, that simply means I trust Him because He has proven on numerous occasions that He is trustworthy. Therefore my faith is rationally justifiable based on my prior observations of God's trustworthiness.

If you think faith is something different then fine.