17 myths
Seven hundred thousand people beat on the ark's door and drowned in the rain. One giant was already on the roof, fed through a hole in the pitch.
Rebecca's pregnancy became a battlefield before Jacob and Esau were born, forcing her to seek God's answer in the house of Shem.
A beast sprawls across a thousand hills, drinks a river that circles the earth, and roars once a year in Tammuz to silence every animal alive.
Sailors saw a bird standing in the sea with water only to its ankles and thought they could swim. A voice from heaven knew better about the Ziz.
God made the sea from fire and water, then set one tiny fish over Leviathan so creation would not drown beneath its own power.
David followed a deer into country he did not know. Ishbi, Goliath's brother, threw him into a winepress and waited for the crush.
Inside the fish, Jonah had light, space, and no urgency. He sat there for three days without praying once, until God sent a pregnant fish to change his mind.
Nebuchadnezzar presented Daniel with a living dragon the court worshipped. Daniel asked to approach it without a sword and fed it straw packed with nails.
At two in the morning they climbed to the attic of the Old-New Synagogue. The clay still had a man's shape. They walked the other way around it.
Solomon used a ring inscribed with God's name to call every beast, bird, and demon to his table. Every creature came dancing. Then one did not appear.
A wasp was eating a spider in the garden and a fool was swinging a stick at both. David asked God what any of the three were good for.
The hill had no flowers and no rocks. The tree at the top was horn. David sat at its foot to see what would happen if he stayed.
A poor man obeyed his dying father and bought a sealed casket, then fed a frog that grew into a teacher of Torah and all seventy human tongues.
Eve fed the fruit to Adam, then to every animal and bird in the garden, so she would not die alone. One bird kept its beak shut.
A traveler heard his host tell his wife to serve their man for dinner, and went out the door at a run. Nobody in that house ate people.
On the Ark, Noah sewed a cat-torn mouse back together with a hair and thread, then sentenced the lying raven to a stranger fate than death.
On the second day of creation the sky trembled like fresh milk in a bowl, waiting. One divine word dropped in and the whole expanse seized and stood.
