9 myths
Seventy elders climbed Sinai and saw sapphire under the Throne. Onkelos guarded the vision from becoming a body in memory.
When Israel's elders climbed Sinai and looked beneath the divine throne, they saw a sapphire. The Targum says it was a brick made from the slave clay of Egypt.
Two commandments, one urgency: what belongs to God must arrive without delay, and leaven must be cleared before the Passover blood touches the altar ground.
Before Aaron's sons became priests, Israel's firstborn carried the altar fire and stood at the Tabernacle gate as the first sacred servants.
God sends an angel whose name holds divine power, but warns Israel not to mistake him for God, because that angel cannot forgive.
On the night of the Exodus the dogs of Egypt stay silent while every house cries out, and God remembers their restraint and builds the reward into the law.
Shemot Rabbah measures God's power against Nebuchadnezzar's, turns a borrower's debt into a cosmic obligation, reads Isaiah's clay as an argument for mercy.
A witch rides a man through the market as a donkey, another strangles a child in the womb, and the sages rule how such women must die.
Rome sent legion after legion to arrest the emperor's convert nephew, and each cohort sat down, listened, and crossed over instead.
