391 myths · Page 5 of 14
A man on Gerizim asked why walk to Jerusalem's ruins. Rabbi Ishmael named the refuse under the mountain, then ran for his life after dark.
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.
The High Priest had come only to burn incense. Akatriel Yah sat on the throne and asked him for a blessing, the way a father asks a son.
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.
The fire fell on Solomon's altar. Later Hezekiah watched an army die overnight and did not sing. Isaiah kept waiting for the one who would.
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.
The Messiah would not take him down. Joshua walked the seven chambers anyway. Solomon built the House over the same mouth and never went in.
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.
An old man pushed a carob seed into dirt he would never taste. Honi sat under a rock to think. He woke to a study house that used his name like a proverb.
The Sanhedrin marched north. The Temple guard followed. She stayed in the empty courts until the children were driven through the wall.
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.
She was a woman's head with no body, hair hanging wild. She told Solomon to wash his hands before he asked her name. He got up and washed.
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 not to fight Darius. Alexander came to punish him. He went down in the dust before the Name on the gold.
He spat toward the Temple and bared his right arm. The priests cried between the porch and the altar. Judah promised that arm a new place to hang.
Nebuzaradan found blood moving on the Temple floor. The priests said it was cattle. He killed cattle on it, and the old blood kept churning.
Metatron begged to weep in God's place. God refused him and went where no angel is allowed to enter. The Temple below was already ash.
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.
A fiery cub walked out of the ruined Holy of Holies. They sealed its mouth with lead. For three days no hen in the land laid an egg.
Hiram sat on a gold couch above six false skies. Ezekiel rode a wind up there and asked why a man born of a woman called himself God.
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 mornings Moses put the Tent up. Every evening he took it apart. On the eighth the boards stayed, and the camp went quiet.
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.
