13 myths
A Roman emperor digs Mount Nebo for the bones of Moses, but the grave keeps leaping from summit to base until the mountain wins.
The sons of Esau asked what was written in it. God named one command. They remembered Isaac's blessing and would not take the rest.
On his last day Moses did the arithmetic and it frightened him. Bilam was called a prophet too. Both of them were going to die.
Samael drew his sword for Moses and fell on his face. The grave God dug in Moab would not stay still for anyone who looked for it.
Joshua tore his clothes and asked what grave could hold him. On Nebo the Accuser claimed the dust. Michael would not curse. He rebuked.
Moses climbed Abarim at a hundred and twenty and looked out at the country he would not enter. He was still speaking to Joshua when the cloud came down.
God sent Gabriel, then Michael, then the sword-bearing Samael to take Moses, but none could touch the man worth six hundred thousand.
At the border he will never cross, Moses tells God that Adam broke one command and died, while he broke none. So why must he die too?
Every Torah scroll ends with Moses dying. The Talmud wrestled with who wrote those final words and how Moses could have done it.
His eyes were still sharp at a hundred and twenty. What shut that morning were the gates of wisdom, not his legs or his sight.
His brothers got vineyards and grain while he got mountains and a raw shore. So Zebulun went up and told God he had been shortchanged.
On the last day of his life, atop Mount Nebo, Moses is shown not a map of the land but the centuries of war and rescue that will sweep across it.
Angels stood by the bed before the man knew he was dying. His soul came loose at the feet, and his sight got sharper as it rose.
