Weird things in Genesis

Genesis is a strange book. Most Christians have read the opening chapters so many times (usually as they start over the attempt to read the Bible completely through) that they are very familiar with the content and fail to read slowly and think about the strangeness of it all. Genesis 3, the account of "The Fall" is particularly strange.

Let me point out a few things that I am mulling over in this chapter:

• Crafty serpent: what does it mean that "the serpent was more crafty than any of the wild animals"? The definition of crafty is to be "skilled in or marked by underhandedness, deviousness, or deception." Would God create a creature that is inately crafty?
• Speaking serpent: I've never heard a snake speak...hiss, but not talk to me or anyone. I think I'd be a little shocked if a snake spoke to me. Eve doesn't seem surprised at all. Does this mean that snakes could speak before the fall? Or does it mean that Eve had never encountered a serpent before this? Adam, who is with her, has seen a serpent before (God brought all the animals to Adam to name them) and he doesn't seem shocked either. Did serpents have vocal cords? Could they speak? Or is something else at work here?
• What did Eve think it meant to die? We must assume that nothing has ever died in God's new creation. What is her understanding of this threat of punishment?
• Adam was with her: much has been made of this. Some authors have said that men inherently abdicate their leadership role in the family, society, and the church. This is based off this passage in Genesis 3. But if men inherently do this then God did not make man perfect or good initially. Man was prone to sin even before the fall. It would seem we were doomed to fail. Where do we get the idea that Adam is the leader anyway?
  
• Adam was instructed by God not to eat from the tree. We have to imply that Adam needed to instruct Eve and any other humans not to eat from the tree as well. It seems that this implication implies that Adam is the leader. But another option for Eve and others learning about God's command is that God would let others know. Why wouldn't he? He desires relationships with them as well and before the fall wouldn't every human enjoy uninterrupted friendship with God? Wouldn't it make sense that this self-revealing God would reveal himself and his will to Eve as well? Either way, we know from what Eve says to the serpent that she has been instructed.
• If Adam did abdicate his leadership role, then sin actually entered the world through this action rather then through the action of eating the forbidden fruit. But clearly God said that they couldn't eat from the fruit of the tree. Is this the only thing they could do that would be considered sin? Are there other behaviors that they could do that would be sinful? For instance, what if Adam decides to become a meat eater and kills a chicken. Would this behavior be sin?

Well that's just a few of my questions. One thing I believe we can take away from this is that it is difficult to build doctrine on narratives. We must remember that it is a story and it is not seeking to answer all of our questions.