80 myths · Page 2 of 3
As a she-wolf nursed the twins who would wall Rome, Pharaoh tightened the yoke on Israel, and two cities climbed on one dark clock.
Rome decreed teaching Torah was death, so one rabbi taught in the open and burned in the scroll, and one took three hundred spears to save the chain.
An old priest strikes the king's officer at Modin and hands his sons a war no army can win, and one son frees Judea only to fall on a deserted field.
Esau sold the birthright for lentils and Methuselah's blade, then deeded the land and Machpelah to Jacob. Heaven repaid him with provinces ending at Rome.
Enemy camps lit fires and fled before dawn. Jonathan struck the Zabadeans instead, and elsewhere his men stormed a city with massive slaughter.
Josephus had a simple reply. Egyptian priests avoid pork and get circumcised too. Then he told how Apion died after his own circumcision.
Vespasian told the rabbi he had earned death twice over: once for the title, once for not offering it sooner. Yochanan opened Isaiah instead.
Gold, silver, and brass could enter the Sanctuary. Iron stayed out as the metal of a hatred that would one day claim kinship with Abraham.
Seleucid officers dared Judas to leave the hills for their plain. In Jerusalem the Akra held traitors while Rome wrote Demetrius a threat by sea and land.
Gold, silver, brass, and red skins in the sanctuary map Babylon, Persia, Greece, and Rome, while oil for the lamp still promises a future light.
At Sinai Moses fears Israel will be sold into exile, so God opens with a servant freed in the seventh year, six kingdoms of bondage already counted.
An empty treasury meets a wordless lesson of radishes while Esau's sword and Jacob's limp stage the long pageant of empire and exile.
They seize Rabbi Chanina ben Teradyon; he burns with his Torah scroll and still blesses the Judge. His wife and daughter answer after him.
A Roman emperor tried to banquet the God of Israel. Wind and rain, only scouting angels, wrecked two feasts before the main host arrived.
Asahels name broke Davids casualty list. Pharaoh's daughter broke Solomons list of loves. That wedding day Gabriel planted a reed in the sea, and Rome rose.
One hundred twenty mils from Rome, three sages cry at idol peace while Akiva laughs, reading empire's ease as proof of what God still owes the loyal.
In Rome, Rabbi Joshua locked himself in with a matron, then walked Hadrian past temples and latrines to explain God's missing Name.
Esau arrived already marked by blood-hunger. Jacob's hand locked on his heel, and centuries later Rabban Gamliel showed Rome that verse as its fate.
Because I circumcised my son, the first one said. The next was going to the fire for reading Torah aloud. A third had eaten matzah.
Near Tiberias a hundred-year-old man digs holes for trees he may never taste. Hadrian mocks him, then fills his fig basket with gold when fruit arrives.
Rome had just killed Rabbi Shimon and Rabbi Yishmael. Akiva told his students the two were taken early so they would not see what was coming.
Rome chains Zion's children to bed-feet as living idols of beauty. Four hundred boys and girls learn what waits, link hands, and walk into the sea.
They sent him in first because he knew the rooms. He carried out a golden candlestick and they took it from him at once. Then they told him to go back in.
The empire struck three commandments off the books. A Jew put on a counselor's robe, walked into the hall, and argued Rome into giving them back.
Two masters compared their most beautiful slaves and struck a business arrangement. Neither of them knew the boy and the girl came out of one house.
The guard left one small cup of water in the cell. Akiva poured half of it over his hands and ate his bread, then went thirsty the rest of the day.
Rome demanded a luminary and asked about pigs. Meir answered with profit and purity, while other sages faced matronas and royal courts.
Storm-driven sages poured ocean water that never overflowed, and Rabbi Yehoshua told Hadrian to look at noon light he could not bear.
An emperor crawled an underground passage to visit the redactor of the Mishnah in secret. Servants died for the friendship, and a disciple raised one back.
Rabbi Yehudah ha-Nasi pulled old trees for young ones before the emperor, teaching power without a word that walls could hear.
