Another Pauline self-contradiction: Food sacrified to idols

I Corinthians 8 is well-known to critical scholars for largely torpedoing Luke's claim in Acts 15 of some grand "Council of Jerusalem."

Luke claims there, in v 20, that Paul agreed there to have Gentile converts abstain from food sacrified to idols. It's believed that this was due to it not being slaughtered in kosher fashion; that, in turn, is of course a Noahide law, not a Torah for Jews.

But, we have I Corinthians 8:4:

So then, about eating food sacrificed to idols: We know that “An idol is nothing at all in the world” and that “There is no God but one.”

And, this has long been understood as Paul meaning, in essence, eat away, especially when the rest of the chapter goes into Paul's "weaker brother" concern — about which I shall say something else in a future post.

But, we then have Paul appearing to contradict himself, and worse, in the same letter, just two chapters later! Here's 1 Corinthians 10, which talks eventually about the "Lord's Supper." 

A lead-up to that? Verses 19-20, part of a short pericope normally called "Idol Feasts and the Lord's Supper":

19 Do I mean then that food sacrificed to an idol is anything, or that an idol is anything? 20 No, but the sacrifices of pagans are offered to demons, not to God, and I do not want you to be participants with demons.

Sure sounds like a self-contradiction, namely as Paul does not make the "weaker brother" appeal here. He does later in the chapter, but that's after introducing the "Lord's Supper," which may or may not be the same as an "agape meal," or may be something like the "Eucharist" as a sanctification for a surrounding agape meal.

And, he appears to go back to his Chapter 8 point of view in 10:25:

Eat anything sold in the meat market without raising questions of conscience

But, that comes after the first "weaker brother" hint in this chapter at 23-24:

23 “I have the right to do anything,” you say—but not everything is beneficial. “I have the right to do anything”—but not everything is constructive. 24 No one should seek their own good, but the good of others.

Followed by picking that back up after verse 25.

If nothing else, this torpedoes the idea that Paul was some brilliant theologian.