According to one commentator, when Matthew came to write his narrative of Jesus’ birth, he based it on Luke’s account.  Matthew, however, was writing for a different readership, and so changed Luke’s true story about the humble shepherds coming in from the fields to visit the baby Jesus into a fictitious one about some high-ranking Magi coming from the East to pay their respects, offering costly gifts.  Matthew re-told the story because he wanted to emphasise Jesus’ mission to the Gentiles.  Matthew transformed the story not only in broad outline, but in small details, too.  For example, not willing for such important guests to come to a mere stable, Matthew had them visit a ‘house’.

It would be tempting to put such uncontrolled imaginings down to the work of some radical biblical scholar.  But that reconstruction is the work of Robert H. Gundry, in his 1982 commentary on Matthew.  And Gundry was, at the time, a member of the Evangelical Theological Society (ETS), which requires its members to affirm biblical inerrancy on an annual basis.

When the matter came to the attention of the ETS, some urged that because Gundry affirmed biblical inerrancy, no action was necessary.  Others, however, insisted that the doctrine of inerrancy cannot be consistent with the idea that a biblical might materially depart from the actuality of historical events.

Gundry was therefore formally asked to resigned from the ETS, and he did so.

It seems to me, though, that if biblical inerrancy can be so readily affirmed by redaction critics such as Gundry, by open theists such as the late Clark Pinnock, by revisionists such as Peter Enns, and by self-esteem evangelists such as Joel Osteen, then there might be something wrong with inerrancy as a concept, or at least as a boundary-marker for evangelicalism.

See this article in Christianity Today.