19 myths
Each story names the sources it was written from.
Two brothers stand in an open field arguing over a sister, a strip of land, and whether God judges anyone. One of them picks up a stone.
Cain kept throwing stones because no one had died yet. After the neck blow he told God the punishment was heavier than Heaven could carry.
Cain killed his brother and then, the rabbis say, invented repentance. Adam heard about it and struck his own face. He had not figured it out yet.
He woke among the sheep with empty hands. A brass shield lay in the grass on the walk home. He hid the rest of the gift for a hundred years.
Twelve angels still stood around the bed. The child was already standing. His first gift to Eve was a stalk he had taken from the ground.
Cain built cities and survived the mark, but the count ran to seven generations. His blind descendant Lamech shot him in the dark, mistaking him for an animal.
Cain took the land and left Abel the movable goods. Then he hunted his brother from valley to mountain, shouting that every path was his.
Cain waited some days, then set dull fruit on the altar. Abel brought the first lambs and their fat. Heaven turned toward the flock.
The corpse lay where one town's path forgot the next. No killer stepped forward. The nearest city still had to wash their hands over a valley.
A man lay dying in a ruin and a second man stood over him holding a wet knife. Yehudah ben Tabbai was the only person who saw it, and one is not two.
Abel did not move. Cain stamped dirt over the cloth. Under his heel the ground opened a mouth and drank the bloods.
In the field Cain argued that no Judge ruled the world. Abel answered that judgment is real. Then a stone ended the debate.
The axe head left the handle and struck a neighbor stacking wood. The man who had swung it dropped the haft and ran for the gate.
Even a killer mid-service at the Tamid was pulled out to die, while the high priest's tunic atoned daily for innocent blood.
Two equal priests sprinted the altar ramp for one sacrifice; a knife found a heart, and a father begged only that the blade stay pure.
A corpse lay between towns with no killer named, so the nearest elders measured the land, broke a heifer's neck, and washed their hands in the wadi.
Cain backed toward a rock with his brother's blood on his hands. The animals wanted a verdict. God put a leash on the world instead.
A corpse between two cities brought blemished priests, a broken-necked heifer, and the memory that God mourns and fathers cover their children.
Elders break a heifer in a barren valley, and worms rise from the rite to crawl straight toward a living murderer.
