<< It is only when we graft on “God” to the “gods” of the original story that it becomes contradictory. >>
An interesting perspective. Bear with me:
If a Greek myth or Grimm fairy tale or Aesop fable has “contradictory” elements in it, we think it is flawed story-telling. This is because Greek myths or Aesop’s fables are simple, straight-forward, stories-to-be-told-to-children. We do not expect depth beyond a simple moral (“Don’t say that you are more beautiful than Hera, not out loud” or “Trust Kodak and someday your prints will come.”) (ASIDE: Actually, any such stories that DO have internal contradictions have probably not survived, for exactly that reason.)
When Shakespeare’s characters behave in ways that are seemingly contradictory – like, say, Hamlet – we don’t even call it “contradictory”, we use words like “contrast” and “psychological.” We mumble about masterful characterization, profound depths of meaning, and we discuss it in classes for generations, never reaching definitive finality of interpretation.
So, let’s look at Genesis, and at the Adam/Eve/Serpent story. For those who believe the Genesis stories are simple, straight-forward, stories-for-children, then God’s actions and humanity’s responses are contradictory. This is flawed story-telling. It should be simpler, more direct, more readily understandable. There should be a single very clear moral (“Don’t Disobey.”) If they have no knowledge of good and evil, they can’t be tested against a standard of good/obedience and evil/disobedience. Etc etc.
For those who believe the Genesis stories contain profundity, depth, and enormous levels of meaning in terms of morality/ethics, these contrasting elements are what makes it interesting. We try to reconcile the seeming contradictions, sometimes in straight-forward ways (“good and evil” means everything, like “A to Z” or “soup to nuts”; they already have knowledge of what is “good” and what is “evil.”). Sometimes in very profound ways (“Are we responsible for evil deeds if we didn’t know that the consequences would be evil?” – the story seems to say yes, we SHOULD have known.)
If you want to disbelieve, then the story is inherently improbable (talking snakes?), and God is immoral (He sets Adam and Eve up for a fall), ignorant (Didn’t He know how they would behave?), dim-witted (He didn’t know what they had done), vengeful, nasty, and tempramental.
If you want to believe (at least, to believe that the story has profound depth of meaning, then the story is a parable, a metaphor, that describes the human condition, the nature of obedience/sin, and the nature of God, in profound terms. Example: It’s not that God “set” them up, it’s that God wanted people to have free will, and the best way to do that is to show them, right at the start, that they can disobey, they can disbelieve. God is not as simple a being as the gods of Sumerian myth, or a fairy-tale king: the nature of God (and mankind) is far, far more complex than that, and pretty much incomprehensible to our minds except through parable, poetry, and anthropomorphism.