230 myths · Page 3 of 8
Ten starving brothers stand before Egypt's throne, and the sentence they speak about one father becomes a password no idol can answer.
A tenth-century homily read Job 36 as a portrait of Abraham. In that reading, the patriarch is the field hand who tells the landlord what is growing.
Dots over one Torah word made the rabbis ask whether Esau kissed Jacob with mercy or tried to bite through his neck instead.
Abraham entered Canaan, saw its figs and olives and mountain water, built altars on ground that was not yet his, then asked God how the promise could survive.
Abraham, Jacob, and Moses each called God the same name without knowing the others had done it. Three men, one convergence, one proof.
When Adam left the Garden, the animals followed him out. What happened next was a quarrel the rabbis preserved for two thousand years.
Two students of Rabbi Yehoshua disguised themselves in Roman dress. An officer who had heard the rabbi teach stopped them at a crossroads.
Nimrod seizes Abraham's harvest before any victory comes, and what the hungry tyrant swallows always flows back to the righteous.
Pharaoh thought he was releasing slaves. His advisors catalogued what walked out -- wise men, artisans, wealth, an orchard of pomegranates.
After the expulsion from Eden, Adam separated from Eve for one hundred and thirty years. The Talmud preserves two accounts of what he did in that time.
God's long silence over Sodom was not neglect. Vayikra Rabbah says it was the most devastating judgment possible. The wealth was the sentence being built.
Heaven crowns the seventh day, carries the first man to the celestial feast, and raises canopies in Eden for all who keep the commandments.
Fitted with a crown and a helmet of salvation, the Messiah walks the burning walls of Paradise and calls Adam and the patriarchs out of sleep.
God carried the Torah first to Esau and Ishmael, who heard one command they could not bear and handed the fire back, until Israel said yes.
A three-year-old boy grabbed the crown off Pharaoh's head. A sorcerer wanted him killed. What happened next is one of the strangest tests in midrash.
Pharaoh's daughter reaches for the ark in the reeds, her maidens block her in the name of the decree, and Gabriel strikes them down.
Rabbi Tarfon groaned when Elazar Hamodai claimed the manna stood sixty cubits high. Then the old sage began counting the windows of heaven.
A king lost three caravans to the serpents of Shur and a woodcutter lost his hair to one glance, yet slaves and infants crossed the same waste untouched.
God gave the Torah under the sign of the Twins, leaving the door open even for Esau. Then He carved ten words on two stones that faced each other.
At Sinai the heavens tore through seven layers and each commandment flew out as living fire, faced the trembling camp, then burned itself into stone.
A witch rides a man through the market as a donkey, another strangles a child in the womb, and the sages rule how such women must die.
Moses tipped the holy oil over Aaron's head and felt it slide onto his own beard. One wet drop nearly broke him with fear.
Miriam died, her well vanished, and Moses wept six hours before the thirsting camp dragged him to a rock that would not give water.
Og measured the camp of Israel with one eye, tore a mountain loose, and balanced it on his head to bury a whole nation under a single stone.
Sihon and Og shared one father, a Watcher who fell from heaven, and their mingled blood made Moses crush one brother yet tremble before the other.
A gentile seer who could gaze on the Shekhinah shoves past his servants at dawn to saddle his own donkey, so hungry is his hatred for Israel.
God orders His mightiest angels to fetch the soul of Moses, and one after another they refuse the man worth six hundred thousand.
The verse says the frog came up and covered Egypt. The sages fought over what that meant. Rabbi Akiva said one frog filled the entire land.
A darkness fell on Egypt so thick a man could touch it, pinning bodies where it found them while Israel walked free with light.
An east wind carried the locusts through the night until Egypt woke under a living darkness that ate every green thing the hail had spared.
