49 myths · Page 2 of 2
A poor sage hawking baskets is cornered into sin by a noblewoman, so he hurls himself off her roof, and Elijah races to catch him before the ground does.
Denounced for hiding twelve thousand students from the poll-tax, Rabbah ran through the marshes of Babylonia until heaven itself summoned him.
He paid four hundred coins and crossed the sea for one forbidden night, then his own fringes rose up and slapped him off the bed.
A Roman emperor dares the sages to prove scattered dust can live, and they answer with clay, shattered glass, and a grain of wheat.
The rabbis counted six fires that break the rules of burning. Then a mountain of flame found David asleep in a forest and refused to consume him.
Trayanos told the two bound brothers to beg God for a rescue like the one in Nebuchadnezzar's furnace. They said no. They were not that righteous.
A caravan merchant guides Rabbah past giant sleepers and a mourning Sinai to the window where the turning sky pockets his basket of bread.
A blind man and a lame man strip the kings figs, then each blames the other. The soul tries the same defense and learns it grew up at court.
No human hand could reach the dead master in the wilderness, so heaven posted a canopy of motionless birds to guard his body until his students came.
A man stood under a tree on the far bank, looking at nothing. He never saw the frog swimming toward him, or the passenger balanced dry on its back.
For twelve months Noah feeds every beast on its own clock, never sleeping, until the night he comes late and the lion mauls him in the dark.
Ridya stands the size of a young ox, his lower lip split open, hooves resting on nothing. Rabbah swore he watched him tell the sky to drip its water down.
A rabbi begged Elijah to show him who in the loud market had earned Paradise. The prophet pointed at two clowns, and holiness turned over.
In a drought fast, Rav Yehuda barely began the rite of removing a shoe before the sky opened, while later sages cried and the clouds stayed shut.
Ben Dama woke certain he was dying. Rabbi Ishmael read the falling limbs as freedom, and a woman's same dream swung on who spoke over it.
A heretic split Ameimar's body between two gods at the belt; Ameimar answered with one Name and a world that has no second throne.
Hooligans bait Rabbi Meir until he prays for their deaths. Beruria stops his mouth mid-curse, flips one word in a psalm, and forces mercy to finish the verse.
A man wakes from a nightmare, tells it to three listeners, and watches their spoken reading bend the night's threat into a road he can walk by day.
Et (את) marks the object of a Hebrew verb. Shimon HaAmsoni read every et as an inclusion until fear of God left nothing else to add.
