31 myths · Page 1 of 2
Fiery serpents tore through the camp, so Moses raised a bronze serpent on a pole and told the bitten to lift their eyes and live.
Jehoiakim sat in the winter house and fed Jeremiah's columns to the brazier. Three officials begged him to stop. No one in the room tore his clothes.
The Book of Jasher records what Cain and Abel argued about before the murder. The Tikkunei Zohar says when Abel died, letters were removed from God's own name.
God spoke the names of Isaac, Solomon, and Josiah into the air before any of the three had been conceived, and each name held.
The angel moved from the front of the camp to the rear, set itself between Israel and Pharaoh's chariots, and a different Name rode with it.
Rabbi Elijah of Chelm shaped a man from clay and wrote truth on his forehead. The golem kept growing until Rabbi Elijah had to get close enough to stop it.
Rabbi Tarfon leaned close during the Temple blessing and heard the divine Name hidden inside the priests' chant, guarded by many voices.
The ministering angels were one breath from crying Holy over the new man, using the word kept for God alone. God put Adam to sleep in front of them.
Three choices went out ahead of the army. Leave, make peace, or fight. The Girgashites packed and left their graves behind.
A hand closed on the Name at his shoulder. He pulled. The angel pulled. By morning the camp stood in ordinary cloth.
God reached for dust while a warning already named Adam's anger. After the fruit, Adam pointed at Eve and would not confess.
Inside the sanctuary the priest said the four-letter Name out loud. Anywhere else he said a substitute. Korah stood in the camp and watched Aaron do it.
Elisha's most gifted disciple inscribed the Divine Name on golden calves and made them utter the words of Sinai. Nothing after that could be undone.
Zedekiah dug a tunnel from Jerusalem to Jericho. God sent a deer, soldiers gave chase, and it led them straight to the exit as the king emerged.
The idol said, "I am thy God." Music filled the hall. Daniel asked only to kiss it, and the king smiled as if he had won.
Vashti would not walk into a hall where Daniel stood. He had read her father's ruin off a wall in Babylon, and he was not finished with her house.
Answer the prayer leader out loud in synagogue and you are keeping a rule from Moses' last poem. He calls the name. The people praise it.
An Egyptian hid behind a ladder in Goshen before the husband left. Years later that woman's son stood in the camp and cursed the Name.
Rabbi Ishmael asked which songs would get a man past seven gates and back alive. At the sixth palace the water was a lie.
While digging the Temple foundations, David struck a shard that sealed the abyss, and when he lifted it, the waters of the deep began to rise toward the world.
A pregnant woman in medieval Europe kept a scrap of parchment in her clothes. It named Michael, Gabriel, and Raphael, and she wore it even into the bath.
Before the Temple was built, a stone already held the abyss under Zion, engraved with the Name, and King David nearly lifted it and flooded the world.
When the angel Shemhazai demands her love, Istehar agrees on one condition: teach her the Name. She speaks it and rises into the sky forever.
On the seventeenth day of the fast one old man wept harder than the rest. He knew of a boy in Tiberias. Tiberias was six days away.
Joseph rises in Egypt and needs his father's arrival to silence whispers. Moses kills with the Name, Amalek attacks, and Korah opens the earth.
Peninnah came in every morning to ask whether Hannah was washing her children's faces. Hannah went into the shrine at Shiloh with a threat.
Eli watched her lips move with no sound behind them and told her to sleep off the wine. She was not drunk. She was building a case out of her own body.
A guest from another town reached to eat for hunger alone. A hand caught his wrist, gentle and firm. Hunger is invited, the host said. Haste is not.
The bush burned and made no ash. Moses wanted a name he could carry into Egypt. What he got was a future he had to keep behind his teeth.
Night poured into his eyes on the mountain. Angels moved to kill him. He seized the Throne, and a cloud closed over his back.
