Imagine going to visit a solicitor or attorney. In their office you will generally see many volumes which are filled with laws, tons of them, written over many, many years.
But these law books do not consist of rows and rows of: "It is against the law to do such and such..." That would be unhelpful.
Instead, these books actually contain stories, similar to:
On November 16, 1969, one Elena P. Silverstone of Edgetown, New Jersey, was walking her poodle, when the dog broke from its leash and went chasing after the postal carrier a few yards away. The dog bit the man on the leg who, shocked and in pain, went tumbling into the street into oncoming traffic, causing a car to swerve into the front yard of a one George T. Howard and...
While quite interesting, but the stories are not there to entertain. They are there to teach how laws came to be or were applied in certain circumstances. They set a precedent by means of illustration.
This model, in the West, was adopted, interestingly, from the Mosaic Law. While the Jews were not the first to invent this formula (as they themselves adopted it from their neighbors of their time period), Christians of the West created their legal systems based on what they learned from the Bible, especially from the Old Testament (which is why one often sees the Ten Commandments in some courtrooms in the West).
As Peacefulpete noted from his conversation with the rabbi, Jews generally hold to the narrative of the Garden of Eden as being mythology (an ancient form of genre which explains how something originated). It is also important to note that God is considered a character in this play as well: he owns the garden, sets Adam as the caretaker, and takes walks in the garden to talk to the man in the afternoon.
There is more: at the very beginning of Genesis it is implied that the Torah has always existed as God is actually obedient to the laws of the Torah. God works every day of the week, performing "mitzvahs" or "good works" (which is what the Hebrew term is here) for 6 days, but rests on the Sabbath. Why would God be under the Mosaic Law?
Let us say, for the sake of argument, that God in this mythology does in fact lie to Adam or asks too much of the man and woman.
But at the same time, in the same myth, God seems to own a garden that doesn't exist anywhere that one can actually locate. It's description seems to be that of one of the hanging gardens own by Nebuchadnezzar who was long gone by the time this story was composed.
God doesn't really own a hanging garden in Babylon. God doesn't talk to humans in the way presented in this myth. God isn't under the Mosaic Law. Did God ever really rest on any Sabbath? Jesus said no.
Jesus said, “My Father has never stopped working, and this is why I keep on working.”--John 5:17 CEV
This narrative is part of the five law books that make up the Torah, the Mosaic Law. Just like the stories that you find in law books of today, the stories in the Mosaic Law are not there to tell history lessons. They were placed there to teach the Jews how to apply the Law in their daily lives.
Some of the stories, like that of Abraham, are folklore, based on oral traditions that come from their culture and ancient communities, but they are still selected for the Torah to teach the same thing, namely how to apply the Law in one's daily life. There are other stories about Abraham, for example, that were preserved in the Talmud that are just as ancient but not applicable to the Law (i.e., "Abraham and the Idol Shop" for example, which while also folklore has origins far older than its Talmudic preservation).
I am not here to say that God did not lie. In fact, in the Hebrew Bible God does lie many times.--1 Kings 22:23; 2 Chronicles 18:22; Jeremiah 4:10.
The problem is that there might be some readers on this site that could still be influenced by Watchtower theology and misread the following texts in light of Jehovah's Witness religion even though they may no longer be JWs, namely Numbers 23:19, Titus 1:2, and Hebrews 6:18*.
Regardless of how you wish to read Christian texts, literally or not, these were not envisioned at the time of the writing of the Torah. And in the end, it doesn't matter. If one makes the case that God is lying in the Garden of Eden narrative, then along the same logic, one can make the case that God walks in gardens in the afternoon, and that God is under the Mosaic Law, and that the Torah existed for eternity before the earth was created--for all these things are also in play in the same mythology. You cannot escape one without the other.
Silly, but there you go. It's called anthropomorphism. If you believe in Biblical literalism and ignore Jewish sages like Maimonides who very cleverly taught that you can just as easily make an idol out of words as you can out of stone or gold or wood, then you are essentially worshipping an idol too since the Ineffable God of Abraham is not made in the image of man with arms, legs, etc., and does not speak, nor walk, nor becomes jealous or lies like humans. If that is what you believe God is, even if it is just in words, it is an "idol" of words.
The narrative of Genesis, however, is meant to teach the application of the Mosaic Law to Jews. God is no less a character than Adam and Eve in this illustration, to teach the application of law no less than Elena Silverstone, the runaway poodle, and the biten postal carrier in our demonstration regarding narratives in legal books of modern days. Is it that Elena is a lady who likes poodles of all things that is the point of there being a story in a law book or are the stories those law books placed there to set a legal precedent the important thing?
In various stories of the Bible, at least the Hebrew ones, you find the "character" of God doing all kinds of things due to anthropomorphic composition. But this is not meant to be seen as a dogmatic definition on the theology of God the way Jehovah's Witnesses claim the Bible is to be read. There are various genres in play. Did the Jews wait until the words were written down before they worshipped to become Jews or were they Jews there first and then wrote down the words? Was there God first and then they wrote about God (whether or not God is real)?
But yes, in the Hebrew Bible God does in fact lie. Just because Christians wrote one thing in the New Testament doesn't change the fact the Jews didn't write what they did in the Hebrew Bible. And what the Watchtower taught doesn't stand as the last word on any New Testament text.
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*--Numbers 23:19 is Balaam's Oracle to Balak, telling him that God doesn't change course or "his mind" like mere humans; Titus 1:2 is saying that God never lies about his promises; Hebrews 6:18 is saying that people can depend upon God's promise and oath, because God wouldn't lie about these two things.
