121 myths · Page 2 of 5
One language, thousands of workers, signals and schedules and supply chains. Then a man spoke to his fellow. The fellow heard noise and reached for his sword.
Four kings had captured Lot and plundered Sodom. Abraham raised 318 men and charged after them in the dark. What he refused afterward reveals who he was.
Amalek came from the far south and covered sixteen hundred miles in a single night, driven by a grudge that ran back to Esau and Jacob in the womb.
The Angel of Death came with orders to be generous. Rabbi Joshua ben Levi borrowed the angel's blade, vaulted the wall of Eden, and made heaven honor his oath.
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.
After soldiers slaughter Jews in a cave for refusing to fight on Shabbat, Mattathias decides that survival itself can defend the law.
Achior the Ammonite tells Holofernes that Israel falls only when it sins, then gets handed to the very city he tried to protect.
Eleazar Avaran fights his way under the tallest war elephant on the field, kills it from below, and dies when it falls on him.
He asked the crowd what he could do to end the war. They shouted back that he should kill himself. He built a wooden wall around the altar instead.
A Canaanite king mutilates seventy rulers and feeds them scraps under his table. When Israel captures him, he names what he did and accepts what comes.
A general reviews 120,000 infantry while a widow prepares to walk alone into his tent. The Book of Judith stages the confrontation across two scenes.
The messengers said the same words at every gate. All that is ours is yours. Then a widow gave one order at dawn and the whole army ran.
Roman soldiers eat the wedding birds and a rebellion ignites. Bar Deroa holds the army off until he says God forgot them. Then a snake finishes it.
Tryphon came to destroy Judea and held Jonathan hostage. Simon marched to meet him at every turn, and it was a heavy snowfall that finally blocked the road.
Israel marches to war and the Torah stops the column. Remember the desert, send home the man with an unfinished house, offer peace before drawing a sword.
Abraham lied to Sarah about where Isaac was going. Rebekah held a prophecy for decades and acted alone. Two mothers carried what their husbands could not name.
Thirty-one kings fight over a strip of land none of them plan to live in, where two debt clocks run at once and one word hides God's grief.
Arpachshad built towers a hundred cubits above his gates, and they did not save him. Then Nebuchadnezzar sent envoys west, and the nations laughed at them.
Holofernes marches with fire and orders to cut down sacred groves so every tongue will call Nebuchadnezzar by the name above all names.
Bethulia ran out of water and gave God five days. Judith told the elders they had no right to set a deadline for the plans of the Lord.
Before she lifts a sword, Judith feeds Holofernes the story he most wants to hear about himself, and he swallows it whole.
Judith carries Holofernes's head home in a food bag and turns a public display into the collapse of an empire's will to fight.
Judas Maccabee takes his fighters to prayer and fasting before battle, then tells them victory belongs to heaven, not to numbers.
Simon took three thousand men to Galilee. Judas took eight thousand east, marching all night by a different road to reach Bosora before dawn.
He routed an army of eight hundred thousand, then begged three travelers to stop for bread. The same man did both, and that is the whole point.
Amalek cut the sign of the covenant from the dead and flung it at the sky. The wars over that covenant began long before, with Jacob's sons.
Old and trapped beneath a giant's press in Philistia, David is saved when the earth softens, the road folds, and the Ineffable Name holds him in the air.
Seven Amorite kings crouch in the woods of Canaan plotting slaughter, until Judah leaps the battle line and the war the Torah left silent begins.
His own men flung Joab over the enemy wall, his sword snapped against their armor, and the blood of the slain glued the next blade to his hand.
Edom crowns Hadad, Africa wars over a stolen bride, and Chittim hoists infants on its walls, all while Israel groans unseen in Egypt's brickyards.
