393 myths · Page 5 of 14
A Samaritan challenged Rabbi Ishmael on the road to Jerusalem by pointing to their sacred mountain. The rabbi's answer reached back to Jacob's camp.
Zebulun is the forgotten tribe. No miracles, no prophets, no famous kings. Just trade routes and a coastline. The rabbis say that coastline built the Torah.
One Temple candelabra came out of the mold heavier than the wilderness lamp by a single coin's weight. It went back into the furnace eighty times.
God contracted the daylight to strand Jacob at Mount Moriah. In his sleep the stones quarreled, fused into one, and all of Israel history unrolled before him.
On Yom Kippur, Rabbi Ishmael entered the Holy of Holies to offer incense. He looked up, saw Akatriel Yah on the throne, and God asked him for a blessing.
The drawing kept collapsing. Nothing held until God made repentance and set it down beside the Throne, before there was any light to see it by.
Solomon had peace, the Temple, and the name Jedidiah. Isaiah saw what the messianic age required. Neither man fully grasped what he held.
Every day ten oxen, a hundred sheep, and a bird from Barbary carrying itself to the kitchen. The world came to Solomon unbidden. Then it stopped coming.
The stone Jacob used as a pillow at Bethel was the stone from which God had spread all creation outward. Jacob's dream showed him what would be built there.
Rabbi Joshua ben Levi descended through all seven chambers of Gehinnom (afterlife of judgment) and returned. Solomon never went himself, but he sent his.
The Torah never asked for trees inside the Temple. Solomon planted them in gold anyway, and they bore fruit until Babylon burned the Temple down.
Isaiah stood before the divine throne as the seraphim sang, but guilt sealed his lips. What he failed to do in that moment nearly cost him everything.
Balaam beat her three times for stopping in the road, then told her he would kill her if he had a sword. The angel in front of them already had one.
Honi the Circle-Drawer wondered how exile could feel like a dream. Heaven answered by letting him sleep through a lifetime and wake up forgotten.
The Sanhedrin was marched out of Jerusalem and she stayed. The Temple guard was marched out and she stayed. Then they drove out the children.
While digging the Temple foundations, David struck a shard that sealed the abyss, and when he lifted it, the waters of the deep began to rise toward the world.
A demon stood bound in front of the king of Israel and told him to go wash his hands before he questioned her. Solomon got up and washed his hands.
Titus defiled the Holy of Holies, stabbed the curtain, and sailed home victorious, but God sent a gnat into his nose that gnawed at his brain for thirty years.
The first rain was a light drizzle, barely enough to notice. The second came down hard enough to flood Jerusalem, and people ran uphill to escape the water.
Jaddua had sworn an oath to Darius and would not break it, so Alexander promised to make an example of him. Then he came up the road and went into the dust.
When Nicanor stretched his arm toward the Temple in contempt, Judah Maccabee vowed to hang it there, and Jewish memory made sure he kept his word.
Babylon's general found blood moving on the floor of the ruined Temple. The priests told him it was cattle blood, so he had cattle killed on top of it.
When the Temple burned, heaven itself went dark and God withdrew to weep alone, away from every creature who might witness the grief.
When the exiles returned, Nehemiah's priests dug for the sacred altar fire and found only thick water. He ordered them to pour it anyway.
Pilate set Caesar's portraits over Jerusalem in the dark. The crowd walked to Caesarea, lay down in front of him and bared their necks.
For three days the sages held the yetzer hara, the evil inclination, captive in a lead pot, and found that without desire the world could not reproduce.
Hiram of Tyre supplied the cedar for Solomon's Temple, then spent centuries building seven false heavens to claim the throne that was not his.
Three hundred priests washed the curtain. Two of them lowered it by inches onto the Ark so that no part of it would be in sight of the camp.
For seven days Moses raised the Tabernacle each morning and took it down each evening. On the eighth it stayed standing, and fire came down on the altar.
Before the Temple was built, a stone already held the abyss under Zion, engraved with the Name, and King David nearly lifted it and flooded the world.
