[squirt]

when people testify about events they saw, they will often try to protect themselves or others by conveniently forgetting to mention details that are embarrassing or hard to explain, as a result, this raises uncertainty about the veracity of their entire testimony, did the gospel writers include any material that might be embarrassing, or did they cover it up to make themselves look good? did they report anything that would be uncomfortable or difficult for them to explain? there's actually quite a bit along those lines, there's a large body of Jesus' teachings called the hard sayings of Jesus, some of it is very ethically demanding, if I were inventing a religion to suit my fancy, I probably wouldn't tell myself to be as perfect as my heavenly Father is perfect, or define adultery to include lust in my heart, but there are demanding statements in other religions as well, which is why the more persuasive kind of hard sayings are those that could be embarrassing for what the church wanted to teach about Jesus, for instance, Mark 6:5 says that Jesus could do few miracles in Nazareth because the people there had little faith, which seems to limit Jesus' power, Jesus said in Mark 13:32 that he didn't know the day or the hour of his return, which seems to limit his omniscience, now, ultimately theology hasn't had a problem with these statements because Paul himself, in Phillippians 2:5-8, talks about God in Christ voluntarily and consciously limiting the independent exercise of his divine attributes, but if I felt free to play fast and loose with gospel history, it would be much more convenient to just leave out that material altogether, and then I wouldn't have to go through the hassle of explaining it, Jesus' baptism is another example, you can explain why Jesus, who was without sin, allowed himself to be baptized, but why not make things easier by leaving it out altogether? on the cross Jesus cried out, "My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?" ... it would have been in the self interest of the writers to omit that because it raises too many questions, Mark's perspective of Peter is pretty consistently unflattering, and he's the ringleader! the disciples repeatedly misunderstand Jesus, James and John want the places at Jesus' right and left hand, and he has to teach them hard lessons about servant leadership instead, they look like a bunch of self-serving, self-seeking, dull-witted people a lot of the time, now we already know that the gospel writers were selective; John's gospel ends by saying, somewhat hyperbolically, that the whole world couldn't contain all the information that could have been written about Jesus, so had they left some of this out, that in and of itself wouldn't necessarily have been seen as falsifying the story, but here's the point: if they didn't feel free to leave out stuff when it would have been convenient to do so, is it really plausible to believe that they outright added and fabricated material with no historical basis? I'd say not