Gospel Errors in Timing

As a trained historian, I always find it odd that Christians claim that the Bible should be viewed as a historical document. It's clear to me that the Bible was written in a historical context, and there are endless points of historical correlation, but the Bible is a spiritual book, not a book of pure history. As pointed out in this "Gospel Errors in Timing", there are clear inconsistencies in the historical sequences presented in the four Gospels:

If a prophet is having a vision one might expect the sequence of events to be jumbled up - much like a dream. However if an historical narrative is being given the sequence of events should be in proper order. The Gospel of John is written from a different perspective than the synoptic gospels so it might be expected that it would differ in chronological order from the other gospels. The interesting thing is that even among the synoptic gospels there is considerable difference in the order of events.

Does this mean the Gospels are wrong or historically valueless? The simple answer is no. It makes sense though to look at the Gospels as they were intended: not a history with theological implications, but theology with historical implications. Each of the Gospel writers was trying to communicate something beyond the mere chronology of Jesus' life. When things happened were not as important as the fact of their happening. In addition, the placement of certain events into the structure of each book was (probably) meant as a point of emphasis (at least that's how I write about real life events as it relates to a bigger message). Finally, we are dealing with human authors here; I believe that God did play a role in the authorship of the Bible, but that doesn't mean men didn't have the opportunity to mess things up.

In my mind, that does not diminish the message as radical skeptics would argue. Nor does it strengthen the truth of the Gospels. It simply demonstrates that each of the Gospels was written with a slightly different message in mind and that each Gospel was written, not as historical narrative but, rather, as a testimony to the spiritual truths found in the historical person of Jesus Christ.