393 myths · Page 9 of 14
Asmodeus said his business was wrecking marriages. Solomon chained him and made him haul water jars, ten at a time, past fish liver burning on a reed.
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.
Apion claimed Jews fattened a Greek in a Temple cell for yearly murder, and Josephus answered with courts, purity, and law on Jewish hearts.
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.
While some Jews volunteered for Greek laws and a gymnasium, Simon strengthened the Temple hill, lived there with his men, and made the day a memorial.
A suspected wife drank bitter water under oath and curse. If pure, she left unharmed, sometimes to conceive, while fire waited for the guilty.
King Uzziah killed Amos with a red-hot iron, then seized the altar. An earthquake split the Temple and leprosy marked his forehead forever.
King Amon swore he would revel young and repent old like his father. He burned the Torah, then death cut him off mid-crime with no return.
Daniel was buried on the rich bank of Shushan's river and the poor across the water rioted. A Persian king hung his bier by chains from the bridge.
Rebuilding turned up a skull in the dust: Araunah, who sold David the threshing floor. The priests could not say how far the bone defiled.
After idols leave the squares, a new altar rises from gathered stones. Priests fall on their faces until the sacrifice is consumed in smoke.
Abraham held the world and still asked for the Temple. Jacob's pillow stones became beams. Solomon's house built itself.
Joseph carried groundless reports about his brothers to Jacob. The words turned on him in slavery, while Benjamin's clean hands earned the Temple site.
Apion invents a golden ass in the Holy of Holies. Josephus answers with empty sanctuaries, bad history, and Manetho's broken plot.
A Rechabite who never tastes wine brings a sacrifice. A bat kol, a heavenly voice, answers from the Holy of Holies while Judah still counts its fasts.
Returned exiles found no sacred fire until an old man led Ezra to Jeremiah's cache, oil that rose into pure flame.
Hirom's scribes set the Temple 143 years before Carthage rose. Solomon's copper altar left service the day a greater house opened.
Idols, blood, and his daughter. The three things Jacob asked God to keep him from are the three that broke on him inside one town.
Under a ban that killed mothers for circumcision, Mattathias rose in Modin. Covenant deaths and later Temple freedom frame the revolt he began.
After the calf, God asks for gold again, the same metal of betrayal funding a sanctuary so the nations see Israel forgiven.
Judah's men cut off Nicanor's arm and hung it at the Temple gate. Antiochus answered by sending Bagris to outlaw the Sabbath and circumcision.
The Temple burned and God's presence went into exile too. She walked down into the dark shells to lift out the sparks trapped there.
Before a priest could marry, his family checked the woman's line in old records and asked witnesses. Then Titus came, and the archives burned.
Night after night the Shekhinah, the Divine Presence, descends to the empty Holy of Holies, calling for the husband who vowed never to leave her arms.
For a long stretch only God knew what would become of the House. Then He told a fugitive asleep on a rock, who woke at dawn and poured oil over the stone.
On the fourteenth, between the evenings, Israel slaughters the lamb in the Temple courts or is cut off for missing the fixed season.
On the fourteenth of Nisan, when the day falls on Shabbat, Israel holds the knife while two laws collide and only one may rule the hour.
For six months the palace showed off gold plunder, cup after cup. The Jews at the tables recognized the Temple vessels and put their food down.
Exiles sit and weep by Babylon's waters, and God takes up the same lament above. Metatron falls on his face and is told not to stop the tears.
