The Story of the Two Brothers – Revisited
By Daniel D. Stuhlman
May 31, 2012
Let me retell the story—
King Solomon wanted to find a place
build the Temple.
A heavenly voice directed him from Mount
Zion to a field that was
once owned by two brothers. One of the brothers was a bachelor and the other
was blessed with a wife and children. After the harvest each brother was
concerned about the other. Under the cover of night the father kept adding to
his brother's pile because he reasoned because he thought the bachelor had no
children to support him in his old age. The bachelor added to the father's pile
because he thought that with so many children his brother needed more grain.
The brothers met in the middle of the field and embraced. This field, a
manifestation of brotherly love, King Solomon reasoned this was best site for
the Temple.[1]
This article is both an update to the original
and an examination of sources I didn’t have available then.
The 1997 article is one of my most popular
because it illustrates how people use stories without understanding their
origins. I have referred people to this article because the Two Brothers story
is so widely known. In a recent rabbi’s
sermon, the rabbi presented this story as if it was an old Jewish story. Indeed it is a great example of familial
love, honor and respect and how a place can have the honor of commemorate that
story. The use of stories is an important part of speeches and sermons. However, one can not represent a story for
something it is not.
If a story is written as a parable to
illustrate a point and if you claim the story has ancient, royal roots, it adds
credence. For example at the Yom Tov
dinner table one guest told a story about a king who had a daughter who was so
special that she was not allowed to have any contact with men before her
wedding day. It took a long time for the king to find a groom who would marry
the daughter without ever meeting her.
People at the table kept interrupting the storyteller saying, “That is
terrible!” “How can the king be so
mean?” The people listening were
impatient. The story was a parable. It never happened, but was created to
illustrate a point. The king found a
groom. After the couple got to know each
other, the groom asked for another wedding celebration, because at the first
one he couldn’t fully understand the love of his life. If the people listening to the story would
have been patient, they would have learned the point to the story was that love
is learned and does not happen by accident.
This story of brotherly love contrasts to the
stories of brotherly rivalry such as the stories of: Cain and Abel, Yitzhak and
Ishmael, Ya’akov and Esau, and Joseph and his brothers. A story of brotherly love is rare. There is a 2300 year old Egyptian tale of two
brothers; the younger, conscientious one is accused by his older brother of a
proposal of adultery against his wife.[2]
The story of the two brothers sounds like it is
very old because it mentions King Solomon. (Remember royal and ancient add
credence.) Since the events seemingly happened in Biblical times, one should
first check the Bible. The story is not
in the Bible. Since the story happened hundreds
of years before the Talmud, one would next reason that the story should be
found in the Talmud, Midrash, or other rabbinic literature.
A search of the Talmud and Midrash found
nothing. We tried Hebrew and English terms such as “two brothers,” “Temple of Solomon,” and Beit Mikdash but found
nothing. We wanted to verify the story to be sure that we weren't imagining the
story. We tried Bialik's Sefer HaAgadah[3] and
Micha Joseph Bin Gorion's Mimekor Yisrael. [4]
Micha Joseph Bin Gorion retells the story as,
“A story of the Temple.” There are no comments or notes. This story was
hard to find because the title does not mention “two brothers.”
We looked in the index of The legends of the
Jews by Louis Ginzberg (1873-1953). The story is found on page 154 of
volume 4. Ginzberg quotes Israel Costa in Mikweh Israel,[5] no.
59 which says that Berthold Auerbach refers to this legend in his [Black Forest] Village Stories[6].
Ginzberg further speculates that the author may have been drawing upon an oral
tradition from the Jews of Russia or Germany. The legend seems to be a
midrashic exposition of Psalm 133:1 (How good and how pleasant that brothers
dwell together.). Ginzberg is not sure of the source. I was unable to verify
the reference that Ginzberg made to Black Forest Village Stories,
however I found another reference in a book about Berthold Auerbach[7] (1812-1882) written by Anton Bettelheim (1851-1930.) He
remembers his mother (died 1852) telling him the story saying that she learned
if from a rabbi who was her father’s neighbor.
In Zev Vilnay's Legends of Jerusalem on page 77, he says that Israel
Kosta (Mikwah Israel, 1851) relates a story of the two brothers. Vilnay
says the legend first appears in the description of travels by Alphonse de
Lamartine, Voyage en Orient, I, 1875.[8]
Both Vilnay and Ginzberg are unsure of the
exact origin of the legend. The story is definitely not from Biblical or
Rabbinic times. It may be a variant on a Russian or French non-Jewish legend.
Compare this to the evidence in Tanakh
(Bible). In II Chronicles 3:1 it says that Solomon built the Temple on Mount Moriah,
which was revealed to David. Moriah is connected to Akedat Yitzhak
(sacrifice of Isaac). Midrash Tehilim connects Adam and Noah to Mount Moriah.
The site had kedushah [holiness] long before the time of King Solomon.
This conflicts with the legend of two brothers. [9]
Here are some additional published versions of
the story.
Hebrew folklore from sidrach stories / edited by Steven M. Rosman. New York, UAHC Press, 1989 p. 19-20.
Smith, Cris, One city, two brothers. Cambridge, MA, Barefoot Books, 2007.
“A tale of two brothers” in Stories Seldom Told: Biblical stories retold for children & adults / by Lois Miriam Wilson. Wood Lake Publishing Inc., 1997 p 55-56.
“The two brothers” in The World Over story book / edited by Norton Belth. New York, Bloch Publishing Company, c1952 p. 10-12.
The answer to the bibliographic quest is the
legend is not rabbinic and even goes against Biblical and rabbinic evidence. There
is no recorded evidence of the story before 1835, however, by the time Ginzberg
wrote his Legends of the Jews the story was well known. There is weak
evidence that the legend is from Russian Jewish sources. We also learn that
bibliographic references must be verified since Ginzberg and Vilnay made
mistakes recording the titles of books. This is not the final word on the
source of the legend because I have not yet located any sources of similar
French, Russian or German legends. From this quest we learn that we should be
careful about what we call ancient, Biblical, Talmudic or rabbinic.
[1] This is an abbreviated
version; fuller versions are listed later in this article.
[2] The Ancient Near
East: An Anthology of Texts and Pictures / edited by James Bennett Pritchard, Daniel E.
Fleming. Princeton, NJ,
Princeton University Press, 2010 p. 11. (Page 12 in the 1958 edition.) The British
Museum web site has a
summary of the story. British Museum
site has a picture of the papyrus scroll with the story : http://www.britishmuseum.org/explore/highlights/highlight_objects/aes/s/sheet_from_the_tale_of_two_bro.aspx
[3] Full reference: Bialik, Ḥayyim Naḥman. ספר האגדה : מבחר האגדות שבתלמוד ובמדרשים == Sefer ha’Agadah
: mivḥar ha’agadot shebi-Talmud. vibamidrashim. Tel Aviv, Diver, 1967 (and other dates) English translation: The book of legends :
sefer ha-aggadah : legends from the Talmud and Midrash New
York : Schocken Books, 1992.
[4] Mimekor Yisrael
: classical Jewish folktales. Bloomington,
IN, Indiana University
Press, 1976. Vol. 1 page 491-492, no.
270.
[5] Vilnay spells the name
as “Kosta”. Full reference: Costa, Israel. Sefer Mikveh Yisrael : ve-hu sefer sipure
musar le-ḥanekh et ha-nearim … Livorno : Belforte, 1851.
[6] The book has several
stories about brothers. In one story the
brothers are feuding over the estate of their mother. They reconcile and live in peace on harmony
the rest of their lives. In another the
brothers always helped each other. In
the last scene of the story the majesty of God’s glory descends on them.
[7] Bettelheim, Anton, Berthold
Auerbach; der Mann, sein Werk, sein Nachlass. Stuttgart, Cotta, 1907 p.
13-14. May be read on the Internet Archive: http://archive.org/details/bertholdauerbac00bettgoog
[8] Vilnay says that the
story is on page 329 of the 1875 edition, but I was unable to locate this
edition. The book is a report of an 1832
journey that included the land
of Israel, first
published in 1935. I found via the Internet Archive (http://archive.org/details/apilgrimagetoho00lamagoog) an 1848 English translation published by D.
Appleton and Company. 
The title page is the
picture at the beginning of this article. After the story de Lamartine comments
on page 284:
The title page is the
picture at the beginning of this article. After the story de Lamartine comments
on page 284:
What a lovely tradition! How it breathes the unaffected benevolance of
patriarchal morals! How simple, primival
and natural is the inspiration leading men to consecrate to God a spot on which virtue has germinated upon earth! I have
heard heard among the Arabs a hundred of such legends. The air of the Bible is
breathed in all parts of this East.
This was a widely circulated book in both the original
French and translations. Note that the
story is identified as Arab, not Jewish.
[9] In Studies in Jewish
and World Folklore by Haim Schwartzbaum (Berlin, Walter DeGruyter,
1968) on page 462 are listed more
source. Schwartzbaum says that the story
appeared in the Arabic book of legends, Kalib wa-Dimnah in the prologue
attributed to Abdallah ibn Al-Muqaffa (died circa 760). I was
not able to find an English translation of this book online or in an accessible
library.
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