237 myths · Page 5 of 8
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.
Hillel answered absurd questions three times without losing his temper, then served a cold meal to a very late guest and called it a pleasure.
A skeptic demanded the whole Torah on one foot. Hillel gave him a single sentence, then added three words that turned the summary into an obligation.
His roar carried four hundred parsangs. Hushim son of Dan heard it standing in Canaan and jumped, and Egypt came close to turning over that afternoon.
One of his wives asked him to bow to her father's idols. He had already ruled that women do not count, she said, so what harm was it? He bowed.
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.
Three hundred mules carried only the keys to Korah's storerooms. The rabbis trace that fortune to Joseph and ask what it means when the richest man rebels.
Noah had three sons. He also had twelve months of waking in the dark to feed every animal in the ark at its own hour, and he came out emaciated.
Balaam said of himself that he knew the knowledge of the Most High. He could not see the angel in the road, and his donkey could.
Solomon used a ring inscribed with God's name to call every beast, bird, and demon to his table. Every creature came dancing. Then one did not appear.
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.
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.
No king who came after Solomon could replicate his throne. The problem was not the gold or the ivory. The throne was built to humble whoever sat on it.
Jacob wrestled an angel until dawn and demanded a blessing. Job accused heaven of injustice and God called him correct. Solomon built a throne to mirror it.
Jacob had not received prophecy in twenty-two years. When the wagons arrived from Egypt carrying proof that Joseph was alive, the spirit returned in an instant.
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.
After the flood Noah planted a vineyard, drank wine, and became drunk. Most traditions see failure in it. Philo of Alexandria read the same verse and disagreed.
Jethro sent word ahead before he arrived. God told Moses to go out and meet him. Three sages disagreed about what Jethro's message actually said.
A poor man obeyed his dying father and bought a sealed casket, then fed a frog that grew into a teacher of Torah and all seventy human tongues.
A guarded heavenly secret causes grief among God's own servants until a voice beneath the Throne calls out Rabbi Akiva's name.
Bar Hedya read the same dream two ways based on payment, and his favorable words built one man's life while his hostile words dismantled another's.
The king who speaks every language hears an ant warn her colony before his army crushes them and learns his glory looks like danger from the ground.
An Athenian sent a boy to buy food he could eat, fill up on, and still carry away. The boy came back with salt, and he was right.
A high priest in Jerusalem refused to send Alexander troops because of an oath he had sworn to a losing king. Alexander came up the road to collect.
Daniel had grown too old to hold a court together. He walked out to the camp of the exiles, took a man by the hand, and brought him back as his replacement.
Solomon sees the Angel of Death eyeing his two scribes and sends them to Luz, where death cannot enter. But death is already waiting there.
Solomon finds a silver plate deep in a statue that speaks of Shadad ben Ad, who ruled a thousand thousand kingdoms and vanished at a touch.
Akiva was forty and could not read a word of Torah. At a stream he saw the hollow a slow drip had worn in stone. He went to learn letters beside children.
Seventy-two elders carried the Torah from Jerusalem into the Greek king's hall. He asked why no king before him had ever been given this book.
Demetrius had money, ships, and 200,000 scrolls, and still the greatest library on earth was missing one book. It was in Hebrew, in Jerusalem.
