The Gospel authors themselves say that they were writing “so that you might believe”. That was their primary purpose. If telling metaphorical (fictional) stories about Jesus helped to convince non-believing Jews that Jesus was the Messiah, what was the harm? If a little fib saves even one soul from eternity in Hell, is it wrong?
Then you should teach your children that it is entirely possible that all the miracle claims in Hinduism are true, including the claim that Lord Ganesh exists with the body of a human and the head of an elephant. Since they haven’t been proven false, we must not reject them as silly foolishness.
No, if you read Licona, such literary devices are not “little fibs” that the authors are trying to slip by their audience to convince them of something that didn’t happen. The role of such devices would have been understood by the audience of the day who knew the bios genre. Thus, they were fully able to distinguish the relevant facts in the bios from the literary formatting that helped to convey the key (true) message. It’s we 21st century readers who assume that bios must conform to a video-tape like reporting of history who get hung up on these oddities I think.
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I have not seriously evaluated such claims, know very little about them and have no judgment on the matter. Here, I’ll make you proud. I lack belief in your elephant deity. If atheists only realized how silly that sounds. 
My skeptical meter says BS but that is just a personal bias of mine, not an actual argument. But I don’t subscribe to the anthropomorphic features of my own God. As far as Hindu deities, I believe sound metaphysical arguments demonstrate monotheism and thus, the notions of multiple “gods” and all anthropomorphic deities are demonstrably false and at best, are possible misrepresentations of heavenly beings who are not God—whether naughty or nice. I suspect source analysis for the gospels and whatever you are peddling would also be radically different. I am not doing the leg work though. As far as I know, Hinduism allows polytheism, monotheism, atheism, agnosticism and so. My knee-jerk reaction is “get your act together.”
This happened to Robert Gundry way back in the day for thinking there was some midrashic elements in GMatthew as well.
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Considering two separate authors copied and altered Mark in short order, it seems to have been a popular and widely known text in Christian circles. One could imagine Matthew adding some dramatic flair to what his audience would know are additions to the passion narrative they are already well familiar with and have heard time and time again. Joel Marcus (in the link I posted above) leans against this but I think it’s a viable option. The same could be said with the guards at the tomb.
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