14 myths
Jacob went down to Egypt with saplings in his baggage. He set them in foreign soil so his children would have timber ready for the day of building.
For seven days Moses raised the Tabernacle each morning and took it down each evening. On the eighth it stayed standing, and fire came down on the altar.
Pharaoh asked how many cities God had conquered; Moses forgot the menorah (the lampstand) three times; and the brass altar stood in constant fire without ever.
Israel built a lamp for God in Moses' day and it went out. They built another for Solomon and it went out. After that they waited for morning.
Rabbi Nehemiah saw the whole universe folded into the desert tent. Its curtains were the sky, its laver the divided waters, its lampstand the sun.
Willing women flooded Moses with gifts in two days while princes arrived late. Tabernacle gold came from Egypt, and Jacob's stored wood met them in the sand.
After the calf, God asks for gold again, the same metal of betrayal funding a sanctuary so the nations see Israel forgiven.
When the Temple burned, the fire found only an empty shell. The true sanctuary had slipped out of sight, still standing, waiting on Zion.
Moses told God the plated altar would burn through. God answered with the angels of glowing fire who stand under water and are never eaten.
A crowded ship mocks the lone scholar whose cargo cannot be found, until officers strip every merchant and only his hidden goods survive.
Solomon needed a demon to build the Temple. He caught the king of demons with wine, used him, then kept him chained. The demon got his revenge.
Seventy flames waited in the new sanctuary, five candelabras on the south wall and five on the north. Solomon lit the lamp that had crossed the wilderness.
Nebuchadnezzar fed a sworn king barley and grazed him before the nations, so God drove the emperor onto all fours in his own field.
Gold, silver, bronze and iron carried into the desert sanctuary rise again as a king's dream idol, until a stone no hand cut grinds it to dust.
