12,014 related texts · Page 157 of 251
The Wisdom of Solomon, a book from the Apocrypha, speaks directly to this. It gives voice to those who whisper doubts in their hearts, those who let cynicism color their words. It'...
The Book of Jasher, an ancient text referenced in the Bible itself (Joshua 10:13 and (2 Samuel 1:1)8), offers some pretty fascinating, and sometimes unsettling, glimpses.. The chap...
It's a period marked by loss, divine warnings, and ultimately, a chance for renewal. Chapter 5 opens with a somber roll call. One by one, the righteous of the old generation pass a...
We all know the basic story: the flood, the animals, the rainbow... But some ancient texts offer us a glimpse into the nitty-gritty, the behind-the-scenes drama. Book of Jasher, a ...
We often associate it with powerful Egyptian rulers, but its origins are a bit…unconventional, to say the least. Buckle up, because the Book of Jasher has a wild story to tell abou...
The letter Nun delivers a proverb about the domestic nightmare the Alphabet of Ben Sira seems to fear most—not infidelity, not poverty, but a wife who won't stop talking: "Shake yo...
"Blind your eyes because of a widowed woman, and do not covet her beauty in your heart." That's what Ben Sira says, in the proverb attached to the Hebrew letter Ayin (ע)—and it's a...
"Control your face around evil friends. Do not walk on the road with them. Hold your feet back around them, lest you be caught in their trap." This proverb, corresponding to the le...
"Listen, master, to what I am saying. Rest yourself from starting quarrels with your neighbors, and if you see something evil about your friend, do not produce their slander on you...
Ben Sira's reputation for impossible feats of knowledge—like counting every grain of wheat in a bushel at a glance—eventually reached the court of Nebuchadnezzar, King of Babylon. ...
Nebuchadnezzar's second challenge to Ben Sira is deceptively simple. "Count the trees in my garden." The seven-year-old doesn't even need to look. "Thirty types of trees are in you...
Before Eve, there was Lilith. According to the Alphabet of Ben Sira, a medieval text composed between 700 and 1000 CE, God didn't create Eve first. God created a woman from the sam...
Gnats live for a single day. They're born, they swarm, they die. New ones replace them. So why do they exist at all? Nebuchadnezzar wanted to know, and Ben Sira had a two-part answ...
In the beginning, the cat and the mouse were friends. Partners, actually. But according to the Alphabet of Ben Sira, a satirical medieval text composed between 700 and 1000 CE, the...
The War Scroll doesn't just predict a cosmic battle—it choreographs one. Columns 7 through 9 of the scroll lay out the most elaborate angelic military operation in all of Jewish li...
The opening columns of the Community Rule describe a yearly covenant renewal ceremony that reads like a cross between a monastic initiation and an ancient Israelite oath of allegia...
The opening song of the Sabbath Sacrifice cycle establishes a structure that would influence Jewish mysticism for centuries: seven heavenly sanctuaries, each governed by an angelic...
The Pesher Habakkuk is one of the first Dead Sea Scrolls ever read by modern eyes, and it introduced the world to a revolutionary method of interpreting scripture. The Hebrew word ...
The dead do not simply lie still. According to the Chronicles of Jerahmeel, a 12th-century Hebrew chronicle translated by Moses Gaster in 1899, the righteous dead have a vast habit...
After the expulsion from Eden, Adam was separated from Eve for 130 years. He slept alone. According to the Chronicles of Jerahmeel, a 12th-century Hebrew chronicle translated by Mo...
Cain was the first city builder. According to the Chronicles of Jerahmeel, a 12th-century Hebrew chronicle translated by Moses Gaster in 1899, after marrying his wife Qalmana, Cain...
Two angels told God not to create humanity. When the generation of the flood proved them right, Shemhazai and Azael stood before God and reminded Him: "Did we not say, 'Do not crea...
When God told Moses that his time had come, Moses refused to accept it. He drew a circle on the ground, stood inside it, and declared: "I will not move from this place until the de...
In Babylon there lived a man named Jehoiachin whose wife Susanna was known for her beauty and her devotion to God. Her parents had raised her according to the Torah of Moses, and s...
The fall of Babylon began with a friendship and ended with a finger. According to the Chronicles of Jerahmeel, a 12th-century Hebrew chronicle translated by Moses Gaster in 1899, G...
When a person is about to die, the angel assigned to them delivers a devastating eulogy. Not a eulogy of praise. A eulogy of regret. According to the Chronicles of Jerahmeel, a 12t...
Isaiah son of Amos saw all five kinds of punishment in Gehinnom (the place of spiritual purification after death). According to the Chronicles of Jerahmeel, a 12th-century Hebrew c...
Every compartment of Gehinnom (the place of spiritual purification after death) contains 7,000 crevices. Every crevice contains 7,000 scorpions. Every scorpion has 300 cavities, an...
Daniel had grown old. He came before the king one last time and asked permission to go home. According to the Chronicles of Jerahmeel, a 12th-century Hebrew chronicle translated by...
The persecution was methodical and savage. According to the Chronicles of Jerahmeel, a 12th-century Hebrew chronicle preserved by Moses Gaster in 1899, Phillipos, the officer left ...
Seven brothers and their mother were seized and brought before King Antiochus. According to the Chronicles of Jerahmeel, a 12th-century Hebrew chronicle preserved by Moses Gaster i...
The breaking point came at Mod'aith. According to the Chronicles of Jerahmeel, a 12th-century Hebrew chronicle preserved by Moses Gaster in 1899, after Antiochus departed for Maced...
Antiochus Eupator, son of the infamous Antiochus Epiphanes, inherited his father's hatred of the Jews. According to the Chronicles of Jerahmeel, a 12th-century Hebrew chronicle pre...
Abraham asked the question that every prophet and mystic after him would ask: "O Eternal, Mighty One! Why have you established that things should be this way, and then proclaimed t...
While God was still speaking, Abraham suddenly found himself back upon the earth. "O Eternal, Mighty One," he said, "I am no longer in the glory in which I was while on high, and w...
After the ten plagues, after the final convulsions of the dying age, God revealed to Abraham the moment everything would change. "Then I will sound the trumpet out of the air and w...
Enoch was three hundred and sixty-five years old when the visitation came. He was alone in his house. Resting on his bed. Asleep. And in that sleep, a terrible distress seized his ...
The second heaven was darkness. Not ordinary darkness — not the darkness of a moonless night or a sealed room. This was a darkness thicker and heavier than anything on earth. A dar...
After the horror of the second heaven, the third was a revelation. Enoch looked down from where the angels placed him and saw a landscape of impossible beauty — a garden whose abun...
The sixth heaven was order itself. The angels carried Enoch upward, and he found himself among seven bands of angels — radiant beyond anything he had yet seen. Their faces shone br...
The seventh heaven nearly destroyed him. The two angels lifted Enoch upward once more, and what he saw stole the breath from his body. A very great light — not sunlight, not fireli...
God continued speaking to Enoch, and the story of creation grew stranger and more terrible. He had made the heavenly circle firm. He commanded the waters below heaven to gather int...
God told Enoch how He built the world in six days — and how it all went wrong. On the third day, He planted paradise and enclosed it with flaming angel-guards. On the fourth, He se...
Enoch made his children swear — but not by heaven. Not by earth. Not by any created thing. "The Lord Himself said: There is no oath in Me, nor injustice — only truth," Enoch told t...
Eve dreamed of blood. Her son's blood. Pouring into the mouth of his brother. After their expulsion from Paradise, Adam and Eve journeyed eastward toward the sunrise and settled th...
The serpent did not act alone. Behind the serpent stood a jealous angel -- and behind the angel stood a grudge older than humanity itself. Eve gathered all her children and grandch...
The seven heavens opened. The sun and moon went dark. And every angel in creation wept for the first man who ever died. Seth rose from his father's body and went to his mother. "Wh...
A demon was feeding on a child. Every evening, after the workers building the Temple in Jerusalem finished their labor, a spirit called Ornias descended upon the boy who served the...
