What's the story on Lilith, Adam's "first wife"?
straightdope.com
Dear Straight Dope:
What's this I hear every so often about Lillith, Adam's (as in adam and Eve) first wife?
We dunno what you've heard. You could have heard Lilith is a model for
Oppressed Womanhood. You could have heard she's a succubus who gives
men wet dreams. You could have heard that she's a demoness who murders
babies. You could have heard that she's a goddess, the wife of Death.
On the one hand there are all these (and likely other) interpretations.
On the other hand there are the legends themselves, which are also
quite varied, from Jewish folklore. Let's start with a paraphrase of the
most familiar legend, which dates to medieval times, from the
controversial work known as the Alphabet of Ben Sirah, including a few of our own interjections:
When God created Adam, he was lonely, so God created Lilith from the
same dust from which Adam was molded. But they quarrelled; Adam [the
proverbial domineering male] wished to rule over Lilith. But Lilith [a
militant feminist] was also proud and willful, claiming equality with
Adam because she was created from the same dust. She left Adam and fled
the Garden. God sent three angels in pursuit of Lilith. They caught
her and ordered her to return to Adam. She refused, and said that she
would henceforth weaken and kill little children, infants and babes. The
angels overpowered her, and she promised that if the mother hung an
amulet over the baby bearing the names of the three angels, she would
stay away from that home. So they let her go, and God created Eve to be
Adam's mate [created from Adam's rib, so that she couldn't claim
equality]. And ever since, Lilith
flies around the world, howling her hatred of mankind through the
night, and vowing vengeance because of the shabby treatment she had
received from Adam. She is also called "The Howling One." You can see how this legend could lead to various interpretations,
depending on whether you think she is noble (in rebelling against male
domination) or evil (in vowing vengeance against innocent babies.)
But where does this legend come from? The author of Ben Sirah basically wove together three separate threads from centuries earlier works, because Lilith is a very ancient legend.
Let's start with the Bible as primary source material. Genesis of
course mentions Adam and Eve, but -- please note -- doesn't mention
Lilith. The idea of Lilith as a "prior first woman" before Eve arises
much later. The only reference to Lilith in the Bible (Old or New
Testaments) is Isaiah 34:14, probably written around 540 BC; it's a
description of desolation, jackals and ravens among nettles and briers,
etc.: "Goat demons shall greet each other; there
too the lilith will repose." Most of the other creatures referenced in
this poetry cannot be positively identified. The KJV, following the
Vulgate, translates "the lilith" as "the night demon," confusing the
lili- with the Hebrew word for night. But presumably Isaiah meant some
sort of demon.
The notion of a lilith as a demon is probably Assyrian (say around 700
BC), incorporated into Isaiah by way of the ancient Israelite contacts
with the mythologies of Babylonia and Chaldea. The Assyrians had three
female demons, Lilit, Lilu,and Ardat Lilit. There's little doubt that
the Hebrew lilith-demon mentioned in Isaiah was a folkloric adaptation
of the Assyrian demons.
Several hundred years after Isaiah, we find Talmudic writings that
describe Lilith (now as a named demon, rather than a broad category) as
an irresistibly seductive she-demon with long hair (presumably worn
loose, a sure sign of wantonness) and wings. Terey wants us to be sure
to say that she's a succubus. She seduces unwary men, then savagely
kills the children she bears for them.
From this, she becomes the demon responsible for the death of babies.
In ancient times, one needed to protect against such demons; today, we
blame other factors for the death of infants. To guard against Lilith,
superstitious Jews would hang four amulets, one on the wall of each room
of a newborn babe, with the inscription "Lilith - abi!" ["Lilith -
begone!"] which some think is the origin, much later, of the English
word "lullaby." OK, that's legend one: a she-demon who kills babies.
Legend two: early rabbinic writings about Adam and Eve. There are
rabbinic midrashim, stories filling in the gaps in the text, that tell
of Adam and Eve after they leave the garden. Adam is angry with Eve for
causing so much trouble, so he leaves her, and is beset by demons
(called "lilith"; the name is still a generic category of demon). A
particular lilith called Penzai seduces Adam and becomes pregnant. Got
it? So that legend associates a lilith
with Adam. Legend three: an early midrash that puzzles about why Eve is created
from a rib of Adam, why not created equally with him? The midrash
suggests the creation of a prior "first woman" (unnamed) who doesn't
work out as a fitting companion for Adam. OK, so around a thousand years later (give or take a few centuries), the Alphabet of Ben Sira
creates the story we started with, tying together all three legends,
merging (1) Lilith the child-slaying night-demon story with (2) Penzai
the lilith who seduces Adam with (3) the "prior first woman" story. This mingling of legends provided a good Jewish context for the ancient
custom of making the Lilith amulets (thus exonerating the custom from
the taint of superstition or witchcraft.) That's why the legend of
Lilith as Adam's first wife doesn't emerge until medieval times,
although the strands of the story are much earlier. The Zohar, the great book of Jewish mysticism from the 12th Century,
adds yet another dimension. The Zohar generally doesn't mention Lilith
by name, but refers to her as the wife of Samael, the Angel of Death ...
and sometimes as the wife of Satan. She sleeps with men, causing wet
dreams, and she collects semen from the marriage bed. (Flowing semen is
a symbol of life, the white fluid, contrasted with flowing blood as a
symbol of death, the red fluid,
so the demoness who kills children collecting semen is symbolically
very neat.)
So that's the legend(s) and their origin(s). A little confusing, but demonology is not an exact science.
Now, a brief footnote in Modern Times. You can imagine that modern
feminists would latch on to the rabbinic story of punishment for
resisting male domination, and use Lilith as a symbol. It's a two-edged
symbol, of course, since Lilith as a demon who destroys newborns
pre-dates the medieval explanation of Lilith as a rebellious wife.
However, the modern use of Lilith as a symbol of oppressed womanhood remains
quite strong and with every modern interpretation of ancient history, a new legend is born.
