Did You Just Punch Out Cthulhu?/Oral Tradition


 * Moses argues with God multiple times when he threatens to destroy the Israelites completely, and manages to convince him otherwise. It's debatable whether or not it was a Secret Test of Character (given that God knows everything), but still impressive.
 * Long, long before Moses, Jacob actually wrestled with God (or perhaps with an angel). After a long stalemate, his opponent realized that he would not give up and touched Jacob's hip, dislocating it. For this, Jacob gains the new name "Israel" ("Struggled/Persevered-With-God") as a reward for his stubbornness.
 * Also, because of the way in which the angel defeated Jacob, observant Jews do not eat the sciatic nerve. Since the sciatic nerve is remarkably difficult to remove, most Jews simply did not eat the hindquarters of the animal, selling it to their Gentile neighbors instead.
 * Zeus may have been a god, but Typhon was an ancient being endlessly more powerful than the gods themselves. Zeus dropped a mountain on him.