116 myths · Page 1 of 4
The prohibition against idol worship, the smashing of Abraham's father's idols, and the rabbinic war against avodah zarah.
116 myths on JewishMythology.com retell how Jewish tradition imagines idolatry, 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.
Abraham helps carry an idol home from the workshop. It falls. He asks his father what god cannot hold itself upright.
Solomon bound a prince of demons and made him confess his secrets. Then he put the entire court of the underworld to work cutting marble for God's house.
Most people think the Red Sea left Egypt behind. A second-century rabbi says Israel carried something through the water Moses had to strip away.
Before Abraham left his father's house, he asked Sarah for one kindness, a single word she would speak in every strange land. Call me your brother.
Terah told the king it was Haran who had advised the swap. It was a lie to save himself, and it put his own son in front of the fire.
The Torah introduces Abraham as a grown man. The older traditions say his father had already saved his life once by swapping him for a slave child.
A boy walked between two standing walls of water. Behind him the sea hissed where the chariots had been. Three nations were laid on the scale for that road.
God said he would rain down on Sodom. The rabbis found a hidden offer in that word: rain can be water or fire. Sodom chose fire.
Abraham smashed his father's idols his whole life. Then God showed him a vision of an idol standing inside the Temple his descendants would one day build.
Gabriel made milk flow from his finger for the abandoned infant Abraham. Decades later he carried the same man on his shoulder into Nimrod's capital.
Running from Esau, Jacob hit the ground at Bethel. The word was vayifga, he struck against the place. The rabbis called it prayer.
Before Abraham became the great icon-breaker, his mule panicked at a Syrian inn and broke three idols. The first crack came by accident.
Abraham's father sent him out to sell idols. Abraham turned the shop into a courtroom and made every buyer doubt his god.
Gabriel offered to go down and cool the furnace himself. God turned him down, gave a reason, and promised him three men in Babylon instead.
Her priests told her to refuse the king unless he honored their gods. Solomon said no for a long time. Then she made the request small.
Every Egyptian idol fell during the plagues, but Baal-zephon still stood. God left it standing so Pharaoh would pray there, trust the sign, and charge.
Israel marched into battle with two arks: one holding the whole Torah, one holding the broken tablets Moses smashed when he saw the golden calf.
The god of Babylon ate a bullock every morning. Daniel proved fraud with ashes on the floor. Then he killed the sacred dragon with iron spikes baked in dough.
Israel tied Egypt's sacred ram in public, waited four days, then turned its blood into the first sign that slavery had lost its grip.
The builders had no stone, so they fired their own out of mud. A third of the tower burned, a third sank, and palm trees below the rest look like insects.
Hand over the foreign gods. Hand over the earrings. Then Jacob went through the clothing as well, because a picture woven into a sleeve can be worship.
At sixty years old, Abram rose in the night and burned the house of idols. His brother ran in to save the gods and never came out.
Seth's descendants learned fire and flood were coming. They carved their star charts on two pillars, one brick for the fire, one stone for the water.
Before he built anything, Nimrod rode out to a son of Noah to ask how a man takes the whole earth. He was told four kingdoms were coming, none of them his.
Abraham proclaimed the living God and the idols fell. So did Nimrod, lying senseless for two and a half hours while his court stood around him in silence.
Terah had reported his own son to the king. Three days later Abraham walked out of the fire, cords burned off, the governors flat on the ground.
The seduction at Shittim began with a feast and consecrated wine. Phinehas traced it to its source and placed a ban that still stands.
The Ark was present. The Urim and Thummim had said to advance. Israel advanced and lost. Then Phinehas stood before God and asked what was actually happening.
Josiah's inspectors toured every home in Judah and found no idols. The people had sawed each idol in half and mounted one half on each side of the front door.
Nebuchadnezzar built a golden idol that could speak the divine Name, using the High Priest's stolen diadem. Daniel dismantled the illusion by asking to kiss it.
