GreyWolf

Among the many reasons that there are so many contradictions in the Bible, and why many can never be reconciled (the questions of dogma/law) is that the Bible never was a coherent whole. Even within the Book of Genesis there are 2 distinct threads (the P-coda and the N-coda), which were attempts to meld the Hebrew and Babylonian versions of creation (going from memory here, my text is at home). As a result, a law in one society might contradict a law in the other, leading to a direct contradicition.

In the New Testatment, the gospels were written more with specific audiences in mind than with any particular desire to lay out an accurate historical story. A particular example is St. Luke's story of the visitation of Mary to her cousin Elizabeth, who was pregnant with John the Baptist. While a 17-yo maiden might make such a journey unescorted in those days, it is unlikely. But it is a virtual certainty that the gospel's having Elizabeth recognise her cousin Mary as the "mother of god" was solely intended to show the followers of John the Baptist the obvious ascendancy of Christ.

This makes perfect sense in the historical context of the bloody internecine struggle for messianic supremacy between the followers of Christ and John at the time . I leave it to your imagination to determine which faction won.

Much of what you suggest above has already been done in the widely ignored and generally dismal failure of the Readers' Digest Condensed Bible.

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The secret to great marksmanship is deciding what the target was AFTER you've shot.