Story of Two Brothers

Since I no longer have have these Librarian's Lobby articles posted on my website, I am sharing them here. This article, from February 1997, was updated in May 2012.


 Story of Two Brothers 
 February 1997

One of our faculty members came into the Library with a question about the source of a story about two brothers. He said that the story is so old that it must be from the rabbis. He thought that he remembered it from the Talmud, but couldn't quite remember the source. He wanted my help to find the source.

Let me retell the story-- 

King Solomon wanted to find a place build the Temple. A heavenly voice directed him to Mount Zion to a field that was owned by two brothers. One of the brothers was a bachelor and the other was blessed with children. It was harvest time. 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 his 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.

The story sounds like it is very old. Since the events happened in Biblical times hundreds of years before the Talmud, one would reason that the story should be found in the Talmud.
We used a computer search of the Talmud and Midrash. We tried terms such as two brothers 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 and Bin Gorion's Mimekor Yisrael and found nothing.
 
We looked in the index of The legends of the Jews by Louis Ginzberg. The story is found on page 154 of volume 4. We checked Ginzberg's sources. Ginzberg quotes I. Costa in Mikweh Israel, no. 59 which says that Berthold Auerbach refers to this legend in his Village Stories. The HTC Library does not own either of the books referenced by Ginzberg. 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. Ginzberg is not sure of the source.
 
At this point in the search I put a query on the list H-Judaic, which is an internet discussion group for Jewish studies. An answer came back to check Zev Vilnay's Legends of Jerusalem. The Library owns this book. On page 77 Vilnay says Israel Kosta (Mikwah Israel, 1851) [Ginzberg and Vilnay refer us to the same author, but they site his name differently.] in the middle of the 19th century relates a story of the two brothers. Vilnay says the legend first appears in the description of travels by A. de Lamertine, Voyage en Orient, I, 1875.
 
Both Vilnay and Ginzberg are unsure of the exact origin of the legend. The story 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 Tanach. 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. 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. 

The answer to the bibliographic quest is the legend is not rabbinic and even goes against Biblical and rabbinic evidence. This is not the final word on the source of the legend; that requires a bit more research. From this quest we learn that we should be careful about what we call Talmudic or rabbinic.

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