21 myths
The boy on the Temple site wasted toward morning. Michael put a ring on the king's finger. A prince of demons came down off the air and knelt.
Haman was already on his knees. Gabriel shoved him onto Esther's couch in the same breath the king came back from the wrecked garden.
Phinehas shouted across his own army asking whether any man there could fly. A Danite went up after Balaam and lost him above the fifth layer of air.
The water was cold the eighth time. She had already been in it seven times that night. At the door, a man wore her husband's face.
Lilith crossed a night road hunting a birthing mother, but Elijah stood in her path and bound her hunger with an oath by the Name.
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.
Earrings swung at her face. The traveler drank from the cup she held. Then the drink turned bitter, and the woman at the fork of the road drew a sword.
Kikanos came home from a war he had won and found his own gates shut. It took nine years, a king's death, and a flock of starving birds to open them.
Before Balak hired Balaam he had his own oracle. A golden bird fitted with a rare tongue. Seven days of offerings, one prick, and it spoke.
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.
Saul lied to his two officers on the road back. The prophet had promised him victory, he said, and high commands for his sons in the morning.
When Lilith flew from Eden, God sent three angels after her. She refused to return. What she offered instead became the contract that still limits her power.
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.
Balaam left the ground and found a road in the air no soldier could walk. Zaliah of Dan followed and lost him in the fifth sky.
Balaam's sons copied the blood and the frogs. Dust would not become lice for them. When the boils came they could not even stand in the hall.
Zepho pushed Agnias to invade Egypt and crush Jacob's sons. A fifteen-year-old Balaam sank wax armies in water, and the king canceled war.
The lamp smoked until the room smelled of burnt oil. He named the angel of that hour, then waited for a child's fever to drop.
Reuben found duda'im in the wheat and Rachel traded a night for them. Later ages said the root screamed, and envy could cut a life short.
A serpent bit Rabbi Ishmael's nephew, a forbidden healer offered a spell, and the uncle refused while the young man still searched for a proof-text.
Medieval Jews chase signs with children and black-handled knives, while sages at Usha open the law to foreign eyes without fear.
Two Egyptian sorcerers told Pharaoh the sea was angel-work, then flew up to pull the angels down until Michael caught them by the hair.
