12 myths
The origins and nature of good and evil in Jewish thought, from the two inclinations to the cosmic struggle between light and darkness.
12 myths on JewishMythology.com retell how Jewish tradition imagines good and evil, drawn from the Hebrew Bible, Midrash, Talmud, Kabbalah, and later Jewish literature. Each story below synthesizes primary sources into a single narrative; follow any myth to read it, and from there into the source passages behind it.
Eve walked to the gates of Paradise for healing oil to save Adam. Satan met her on the road and tricked her a second time before she could arrive.
When God formed Adam and commanded the angels to honor him, one refused. Ha-Satan had been formed from fire. He would not bow before dust.
Adam blamed Eve and lost everything. Cain committed murder and walked away forgiven. The difference was one word spoken in full honesty before God.
Before Adam opens his eyes, two inclinations are kneaded into his formation, two faces grow back to back, and the war inside him begins before his first breath.
When Benjamin went to Egypt, Joseph pulled him aside and asked what their brothers had told Jacob. The answer revealed a mercy his brothers never knew about.
Issachar watches his brothers receive visions and kingship, then tells his children he never sinned in all his years of farming. He explains what that cost him.
Asher did not warn his sons about murder or theft. He warned them about the sin no one sees coming because it looks like virtue from the outside.
At one hundred and twenty-five, Asher gathered his sons and delivered the most systematic ethical teaching any of Jacob's twelve sons left behind.
Dan spent his whole life thinking about the night a voice told him to take a sword and end his brother. He almost obeyed.
Gad helped sell Joseph into slavery and spent the rest of his life studying what hatred does inside a human being. His findings were brutal.
Laban chased Jacob to Gilead to wipe out his house, and the same hunter rose again as Balaam, the Devourer of Nations, mouth open over Israel.
When Haman fell onto Esther's couch, an unseen archangel had pushed him, and ten angels in the king's garden were felling trees to time it.
