Was Abraham absent minded or is God one of those drunk guys that tells the same story over and over again?

Having a lot of free time the last week at work I picked up a bible, that a co-worker had brought for the sake of argument, and began reading through it. Now, I tried reading the bible once before, when I thought it was true, and I didn't make it passed the 3rd chapter. This time, however, I read through the entire book of Genesis in one day! The following are a couple of mental notes I made while reading. First of all, it's drastically redundant. I can see why ministers take one citation here and one citation there. Reading straight through is like a severe case of chronic deja vu. For example, here are the four times that god promised Abraham that his descendants would multiply and take over the world. 

Genesis 12:2, 13:16 (uses dust as a metaphor), 15:5 (uses stars), 17:12 (many kings will come forth). After making the same promise four times god tells Abraham to murder his only son, Genesis 22:2, when he sees that Abraham was dumb enough to do it he promises yet again that his descendants would rule the world, 22:12. Let me get this straight, you make the same promise four times when no one is forcing you to, you tell the guy to kill his kid, and then you act like the promise is a reward for almost killing his kid?? So were the first 4 times just a joke? My explanation, these stories were originally an oral tradition, which makes them very hard to keep accurate, think telephone times a million. Solution, be redundant, be very redundant. That way the main points have a greater chance of making it through the ages. When someone finally decided to put pen to papyrus they probably thought all the metaphors were simply too fresh to pass up so they included all of them. 

Secondly, every female in the first 30 chapters is sterile. Really? Stop and think, how many sterile woman do you know? What are the chances that the wives of Abraham (Gen. 16:1), Isaac (Gen. 25:21) and Jacob (Gen. 29:31) are all sterile!? Was it the water? Maybe they should have been eating pork!? My explanation, like Joseph Smith, who I'm sure we would agree was a lunatic, there needed to be an excuse for polygamy. Why was it ok for these guys to take on more than one partner while their wives had to remain faithful? Well, the bible was written in hindsight, so you not only write the wives off as sterile, you add that they insisted that their husbands sleep with their maidservants. I don't know about you guys, but that's probably the last thing my girlfriend would suggest if she were unable to bear children.

Third, this one was kind of a favorite, Abraham would tell Sarah to claim she was his sister, lest they kill him. First in Egypt (12:12), then again in Gerar (20:2). Both times god would rat him out through a dream he would give the king. The king, freaked out by the dream, would then give Abraham every thing he wanted or needed. Sounds like a good con to me. Here's the best part, the king of Gerar was Abimilech, this same king would have the same issue years later when Abraham's son Isaac comes into Gerar and tells Rebekah to say she was his sister (26:6). Seeing as this isn't a common occurrence, if you were the king wouldn't you be like, "What the hell is wrong with these people?!" My explanation, this happened to one guy one time (sans the god induced dream), but again, when putting charcoal to cave wall how do you not use this fresh anecdote multiple times??

Here are some smaller points I noticed, Genesis 13:32 Lot bones not one but both of his daughters. Of course, the way it's written they got him wasted and then seduced him. Right. Thats always how these things happen isn't it? What really happened, he got his daughters drunk and then laid the hebrew national to both of them. In a culture where a women's word is worthless his excuse was taken as a true account. I wouldn't suggest anyone try this method, the justice system would never let you get away with it. Next, Genesis 17:10 god establishes his covenant with Abraham and here it is, cut your wiener. Say What?! Yeah you heard that right, gods choice way of making a covenant with mankind was for Abraham and his descendants to cut their wieners. What really happened? Nomadic people didn't have the best hygiene so it probably wasn't that uncommon for their wieners to get infected. One solution, cut that bitch! But wait, we can't just tell people that we customarily cut our wieners, lets make up some elaborate story as to how god told us to do it!

So there you have it, my recent experience with the bible; a mythological explanation for how things came to be, every culture has them and this is no different.