Planet of the Apes and Other Jewish Legends

And these are the generations of Esau that were born to him in the land of Canaan; ‎and the sons of Esau were five....

And these are the ‎names of the sons of Seir the Horite, inhabitants of the land of Seir: Lotan, and Shobal, and ‎Zibean, and Anah, and Dishon, and Ezer, and Dishan, seven sons.‎‏...‎‏ ‏And the sons of Zibeon were: Ajah, and Anah-

This is Anah who ‎found the Yemim in the wilderness when he fed the donkeys of Zibeon his father.‎‏

And it came to ‎pass while he was feeding the donkeys of his father, driving them to the wilderness into pasture ‎as he had done before

And it was the day when he had taken the [donkeys] to one of the deserts on the sea shore opposite the wilderness ‎of the people,

And so it was that he was tending to the flock there when suddenly a very great storm came from the other side of the sea, and it ‎rested over the donkeys in the pasture and they were stunned and all stood still.‎‏

And ‎afterwards one hundred and twenty large and frightening creatures emerged from the wilderness ‎on the other side of the sea, and they came all to the place of the donkeys and stood there.‎‏

And ‎those creatures were from waist downwards were in the human form, and from the waist up in the form of bears and some in the form of apes, and they had tails behind, ‎hanging down from between the shoulders and sweeping the ground like the tails of the ‎hoopoe.‎

(18) And those animals mounted the donkeys and rode away with them and they were not to be ‎found to this very day.‎‏

And one of those animals approached Anah and dealt him a blow with ‎its tail and fled from the place.‎‏

And when he saw these things he was greatly afraid of his life, ‎and he too fled and escaped to the city.‎‏ ‏And he related unto his father and brothers all that ‎hath befallen him and many men went in search of the donkeys but they could not find them.‎‏

‏And Anah and his brothers never dared to approach that place again for they were in great ‎fear of their lives.

§ The mishna teaches that the members of the generation of the dispersion have no share in the World-to-Come. The Gemara asks: What sin did they perform? Their sin is not explicitly delineated in the Torah. The school of Rabbi Sheila say that the builders of the Tower of Babel said: We will build a tower and ascend to heaven, and we will strike it with axes so that its waters will flow. They laughed at this explanation in the West, Eretz Yisrael, and asked: If that was their objective, let them build a tower on a mountain; why did they build it specifically in a valley (see Genesis 11:2)? Rather, Rabbi Yirmeya bar Elazar says: They divided into three factions; one said: Let us ascend to the top of the tower and dwell there. And one said: Let us ascend to the top of the tower and engage in idol worship. And one said: Let us ascend to the top of the tower and wage war. With regard to that faction that said: Let us ascend to the top of the tower and dwell there, God dispersed them. And that faction that said: Let us ascend to the top of the tower and wage war, became apes, and spirits, and demons, and female demons. And with regard to that faction that said: Let us ascend to the top of the tower and engage in idol wor-ship, it is written: “Because there the Lord confounded the language of all the earth” (Genesis 11:9).

Rav Gamda gave four dinars (zuz) to sailors to bring him something from overseas in exchange for them.

However, they did not find anything of worth, so they bought him a monkey with the coins and brought it to him.

The monkey escaped and entered a hole.

When they dug after it to retrieve it, they found it crouching over pearls, and they brought all of the pearls to Rav Gamda.