a story

[cellio]

I rarely write fiction (well, other than in ralph_dnd, but that's different), but this bit of whimsy struck me earlier today.

Comments

[chaos_wrangler]

Lovely. This reminds me of the midrash group my mom was in (and I joined for a while as well) years ago. I think I still have the notebook with stuff I wrote back then.

Is there something in the text that says he was a cousin or is that "just" part of your story.

[cellio]

Thanks.

Cousin: no, I made that part up. For that matter, the text doesn't say where he's from, so Midian is pure fabrication too. This started out with the question "why the heck would he cite God by name?" and went from there. (When the question came up this morning at study I said "maybe he was an apikorus".)

interesting similarities

[chaos_wrangler]

I just reread the relevant parts in parshat yitro and parshat balak and noticed a couple of things: (1) those sections are named after those people, and (2) Moshe's wife's name is Tzipora and Bilam's father's name is Tzipor, i.e. same word except for gender.

(I also noticed that it says Yitro brought Moshe's wife & two sons and doesn't mention anyone else, but then again the torah is known for leaving out details.)

Re: interesting similarities

[cellio]

Bilam's father's name is Tzipor

Balak's father is Tzipor (and thanks for pointing out this similarity!). Bilaam's father is Beor.

Discovered while confirming that:

"Some say that Balaam was descended from Abraham's nephew Kemuel (Lekach Tov; see Genesis 22:21). Others say that he was a descendant of Laban (Sanhedrin 105a; Torah Temimah)." (From Navigating the Bible from ORT.)

[kyleri]

Okay, it took me a bit to really catch on, but that was cool. :)

[cellio]

Thanks. One of the things I wanted to see if I could do was to not say "this is the story of X" and still produce something that worked ok. (I also suspect that some of my readers don't know the story.)

[kyleri]

I don't know the _whole_ story, actually, though I got the 'Israelites in the desert' part. I'm now interested in reading the original tale...

So, I think you succeeded.

[cellio]

See Numbers chapters 22-24.

[mamadeb]

That was beautiful - it works very well indeed.

[cellio]

Thank you!