340 myths · Page 5 of 12
When Israel entered the promised land under Joshua, they carried two arks. Everyone remembers the Covenant. Almost no one remembers what traveled beside it.
Three hundred mules carried only the keys to Korah's storerooms. The rabbis trace that fortune to Joseph and ask what it means when the richest man rebels.
The woman of Memphis sent Joseph a dish laced with spells. He looked up and saw a figure standing behind the servant, holding out a sword.
Moses argued at the bush until God's anger flared. Joseph sat in a dry pit while his brothers settled on twenty pieces of silver. Saul hid in the baggage.
Lot descended into Sodom and Joseph into a dungeon, and neither fall was accidental. The rabbis saw the same hidden design threading both descents.
Jacob engraved the child's whole history on a gold plate and hung it around her neck. Then he left her at the border of Egypt for somebody else to find.
The conflict between Joseph and his brothers had nothing to do with a coat. It was about two mothers, two marriages, and which one Jacob loved.
On his deathbed, Simeon confessed he had planned Joseph's murder in his heart and traced the same spirit back through Cain to the first morning of the world.
On his deathbed, Dan told his children where the spirit that nearly made him a murderer had come from. It was older than any of them knew.
On the Mount of Olives, Naphtali watched his brothers race to seize the sun and moon. His two visions mapped the whole future of Israel and its exile.
Joseph buried gold in four places in the desert and told nobody. A few generations later a Levite named Korah found one of them and started spending.
No king who came after Solomon could replicate his throne. The problem was not the gold or the ivory. The throne was built to humble whoever sat on it.
Jacob had not received prophecy in twenty-two years. When the wagons arrived from Egypt carrying proof that Joseph was alive, the spirit returned in an instant.
When Judah raised his voice in Egypt demanding Benjamin's release, the rabbis said his cry shook the earth and made the angels tremble in heaven.
In a dream, Naphtali's brothers grabbed the sun and the moon, and he seized a star. On earth he carried Jacob's messages between Egypt and Canaan.
All Egypt was out at the festival. Joseph stayed in an empty house doing his master's accounts, and the road to Pharaoh's court started there.
Moses promises locusts, then walks out before Pharaoh can answer. With him gone, the advisers finally tell the king that Egypt is ruined.
Joseph read the butler's dream correctly and asked him for one favor, a word to Pharaoh. The butler walked free and forgot him for two years.
Egypt's wise men misread seven cows as daughters, Pharaoh's firstborn dies the day Joseph is freed, and grain rots in every storehouse except one.
For forty days the young king ate nothing, and wisdom came down to him. At Sinai it went the other way. The letters lifted off the broken stone.
The servant would not touch the meal until he had said his errand. He talked half the night. By morning Rebekah's father was dead in the house.
Joseph kept clerks at the Egyptian gates to write down every arrival's name and his father's name. One morning the list gave him ten of his brothers.
Jacob had deceived his father to take the firstborn's blessing. In Laban's house he got the wrong daughter on his wedding night and ten changes of wages.
Pharaoh woke from dreams his court could not hold. Joseph named what the night meant. Generations later Moses stood at the sea and the answer came again.
The people wept for meat and called the manna worthless. Moses told God the weight was too heavy and asked to be killed rather than watch it.
Famine sent Abraham into Egypt first, and generations later Joseph reached the same land through a pit, prison, and the dreams of a foreign king.
Abraham's tent rushed to serve strangers, Judah learned the cost of a half-finished rescue, and Joseph forced Egypt to promise his bones would leave.
On the second day the lower waters wept and would not split. The sky was three fingers thick. An angel sang about Sinai, and the waters went quiet.
Pharaoh's anger puts a prisoner in position to feed nations. Joseph's brothers arrive for grain and find guilt waiting at the storehouse door.
Asenath strips off her jewelry, covers herself in ashes, and weeps for seven days. On the eighth morning an angel arrives carrying honeycomb from Paradise.
