But isn't the very inconsistency of the material part of the very validity of the witnesses' (aka authors') evidence, Martin?, along with the fact that the different materials are from different literary genres?

It depends what you mean by 'validity' and 'witnesses' Andy.  The inconsistency doesn't, for example, make it any more likely that the miracles written about actually happened.  All one could say that the inconsistency indicates is that the different parts of the Bible were written by different, fallible, authors with different, fallible views of what God is like.

As for dogma-bound liars, this means that there must be a lot of such liars, especially when they have studied the material in as much depth as they have, and even - in some cases - changed their views from dogmatic opposition/disagreement.

Too right! But people have a variety of motivations. For example, I'd say there are a lot of people who want very badly to believe something, who are prepared to enter into a self deception to continue in that world.  There are some of these whose motivation is that, in their hearts, they want the same thrill/comfort/safety for other people that they themselves are aiming for.  Those sorts of people still practice a self deception, but at least their motivation for encouraging others is well meant.  There are others who are pompous, for whom a narrow faith provides them with something to make them feel and act as if they are more knowledgeable than others.  But whatever the reasons, there are a hell of a lot of people who deliberately don't face facts where religion is concerned.

Finally, for now, I find a lot of the so-called inconsistencies to be totally irrelevant.  For instance, when does one 'accuse' a poet of hyperbole or using poetic licence or other poetic techniques?  There are large portions of the Old Testament, especially, that are in poetic form.  Similarly, there are portions - such as the early parts of Genesis - which are making no attempt to provide scientific answers to scientific questions, but that are trying to discover the often far more important answers to abstract questions, such as the purpose of humanity, the nature of love and hate, of the nature of God himself.

But the portions of the OT that we've just been talking about, and that you don't address, aren't poetry!  They were written as law, and law which would have been all too real for the woman with her arm held on the block by two male servants of 'god' as a third lifted the axe. .  Of course you want to divert attention from these, because you know you can't argue on that ground. That's what I'm talking about Andy, it's a sort of deceit, the slipperiness of the serpent, the father of lies

Too often, the detractors - and I would include you amongst this group at present - seem intent on ignoring the whole aspect of the literary nature of the material, trying to simply treat it as a scientific/historic treatise - with all the inevitable flaws that it clearly has when approached from that direction alone.

Smokescreen Andy.  In what way have I 'ignored the whole literary aspect' of the law which insists that a woman's hand should be chopped off by the command of 'god'.