posted
Googling "Lilith" got me loads of very contradictory information, so I thought I'dask all you smart people instead.
What is the Lilith story and where did it originate? How much credence does it have in the Jewish world?
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posted
Like many if not most Jewish legends, it has its leakages into the Christian world as well. I seem to recall C.S. Lewis referencing it in several of his works.
Posts: 1631 | Registered: Sep 2001
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posted
I know who Lillith is, and could give you a somewhat jumbled account, but I'll leave it for one of our resident Jew-flaunting members. Basically, she's a demoness, and she was supposedly Adam's first wife.
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posted
Lilith was Adams first wife but she was too dominant even to the point of insisting on controling sex. she was cast out of Eden and a more submissive mate was crafted by God. Eve.
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quote:Soon afterward the young son of the king took ill. Said Nebuchadnezzar, "Heal my son. If you don't, I will kill you." Ben Sira immediately sat down and wrote an amulet with the Holy Name, and he inscribed on it the angels in charge of medicine by their names, forms, and images, and by their wings, hands, and feet. Nebuchadnezzar looked at the amulet. "Who are these?"
"The angels who are in charge of medicine: Snvi, Snsvi, and Smnglof. After God created Adam, who was alone, He said, 'It is not good for man to be alone' (Genesis 2:18). He then created a woman for Adam, from the earth, as He had created Adam himself, and called her Lilith. Adam and Lilith immediately began to fight. She said, 'I will not lie below,' and he said, 'I will not lie beneath you, but only on top. For you are fit only to be in the bottom position, while I am to be the superior one.' Lilith responded, 'We are equal to each other inasmuch as we were both created from the earth.' But they would not listen to one another. When Lilith saw this, she pronounced the Ineffable Name and flew away into the air. Adam stood in prayer before his Creator: 'Sovereign of the universe!' he said, 'the woman you gave me has run away.' At once, the Holy One, blessed be He, sent these three angels to bring her back.
"Said the Holy One to Adam, 'If she agrees to come back, fine. If not, she must permit one hundred of her children to die every day.' The angels left God and pursued Lilith, whom they overtook in the midst of the sea, in the mighty waters wherein the Egyptians were destined to drown. They told her God's word, but she did not wish to return. The angels said, 'We shall drown you in the sea.'
"'Leave me!' she said. 'I was created only to cause sickness to infants. If the infant is male, I have dominion over him for eight days after his birth, and if female, for twenty days.'
"When the angels heard Lilith's words, they insisted she go back. But she swore to them by the name of the living and eternal God: 'Whenever I see you or your names or your forms in an amulet, I will have no power over that infant.' She also agreed to have one hundred of her children die every day. Accordingly, every day one hundred demons perish, and for the same reason, we write the angels names on the amulets of young children. When Lilith sees their names, she remembers her oath, and the child recovers."
posted
Tante, I had a feeling you'd be the first to notice that. Come on, don't deny it. You know it's true.
Posts: 7877 | Registered: Feb 2003
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posted
You know... the Lilith Fair? all those singing succubi out there corrupting young men and women with their wild music and sensual costumes and... um... what was I saying again?
Posts: 3846 | Registered: Apr 2004
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posted
I've always been a fan of Lilith, so much more interesting than Eve. Or Adam, but that's kind of a given.
Yeah, pretty much Adam wouldn't let her be on top, so she was like "peace out". Yet another of the things the Catholic church decided they didn't feel like putting in the Bible.
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posted
She is not actually in Genesis. Her connection to Adam is first mentioned in the story posted above.
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quote:Originally posted by Samarkand: Yeah, pretty much Adam wouldn't let her be on top, so she was like "peace out". Yet another of the things the Catholic church decided they didn't feel like putting in the Bible.
Probably because the oldest text that contains this story dates to the middle ages (at least according to Wikipedia)
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posted
I like the "Intelligent Design" references to Lillith which describe a group of aliens as the Nephalim who descended on planet Earth and used genetic engineering to further along our evolution into intelligent workers. Supposedly, in this series of accounts, man was too ape-like and less intelligent, so one of the "goddesses" Lillith, wife of Enki was chosen to give birth to Adama or Adapa (different Gnostic references spell it differently) and this alien/human/genetically-altered creature had enough alien DNA to function like a civilized creature.
Most entertaining reading, to be sure :-)
Posts: 1870 | Registered: Mar 2003
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posted
Raia, I don't think I appreciate that term.
As for Lilith . . . well, many believe Ben-Sira's book is a forgery. Even among those who don't believe it to be a forgery, it's not considered the most reliable source. ( More.)
So I would say the story has (or should have, at least) absolutely no credence.
Posts: 32919 | Registered: Mar 2003
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quote:Originally posted by Ramdac99: Lilith was Adams first wife but she was too dominant even to the point of insisting on controling sex. she was cast out of Eden and a more submissive mate was crafted by God. Eve.
Not controlling. She refused to let Adam always be on top. When he insisted, she used the magic of God's name to escape. She was not cast out of Eden according to the story.
The story paints her as the original succubus, and blames her for wet dreams and crib death (the latter being her revenge). She's said to conceive from all of the semen ejaculated in wet dreams.
Neil Gaiman told the story in one of the Sandman books, and he added a wife in between Lilith and Eve. This nameless one was created while Adam was awake, and since he saw her being assembled, he was repulsed and refused to have anything to do with her.
I have no idea if he made this up or if there really is such a midrash. In either case, I've never heard any conjectures about what happened to her.
They're all midrashim, btw. Not necessarily to be taken literally even by the most religious.
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posted
Not midrashim at all. That is, there are midrashim that mention Lilith, but the tale of her being Adam's first wife is no midrash. It is from a book which may or may not have been written during the middle ages. (Quite possibly a later forgery.)
Never accepted by mainstream. Not midrash.
So never mind literal or not literal. Utter shtus.
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posted
Isn't Lilith in the apocrypha or something? I seem to recall my raised-Catholic father mentioning her, although it's entirely possible he learned of her in a lit class or something.
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quote:Originally posted by Alucard...: I like the "Intelligent Design" references to Lillith which describe a group of aliens as the Nephalim who descended on planet Earth and used genetic engineering to further along our evolution into intelligent workers. Supposedly, in this series of accounts, man was too ape-like and less intelligent, so one of the "goddesses" Lillith, wife of Enki was chosen to give birth to Adama or Adapa (different Gnostic references spell it differently)
Gnostic sources don't mention Adama/Adapa. He's mentioned in ancient Akkadian/Sumerian sources, and only by one name. The reason you sometimes see Adama and sometimes Adapa is that the cuneiform sign at the end of the name can be read as "ma" or as "pa". Some people want to read the name as Adama because it seems to be a connection with the biblical Adam. Some want to read it as Adapa to avoid such icky "coincidences", which could encourage fundamentalists to take over the earth.
It's a little like the mention of the Benjaminites in the Mari letters. If you have access to the Encyclopedia Judaica, go look up the Mari letters. In the article there, there's a fascinating little item.
See, in the Mari letters, there is reference to a tribe called the DUMU-yaminu. DUMU is the Sumerogram for "son" or "sons". When used this way, it is supposed to be rendered into Semitic. In Eastern Semitic, like Akkadian, this would be "maru". In Western Semitic, like Hebrew and Arabic, it would be "banu" or "benei". The tribe in question was located in what is now Israel, so you'd think it should be "banu". Right?
So here's what the Encyclopedia Judaica says on page 981 of volume 11:
quote:The names of the Israelite tribes of Levi and Benjamin also seem to have their parallels. Thus, the tribal designation at Mari, DUMU.MES-yamin(a), "Yaminites," bears the same connotation as Benjamin -- "son(s) of the South" (though it is preferable not to render the logogram for "sons" as West Semitic ba/inu, which would yield ba/inu-yamina, a form conveniently homophonic with the Hebrew Binyamin).
The dishonesty makes my skin crawl.
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quote:Originally posted by rivka: Not midrashim at all. That is, there are midrashim that mention Lilith, but the tale of her being Adam's first wife is no midrash. It is from a book which may or may not have been written during the middle ages. (Quite possibly a later forgery.)
Never accepted by mainstream. Not midrash.
So never mind literal or not literal. Utter shtus.
An awful lot of Yidden used to waste their times with amulets to ward her off. Where do you think they got it from?
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posted
But it makes such a great story that way! You should all read Sandman anyway, but Fables and Reflections, the collection in which the Lilith story is told, is the best of the lot. Three Septembers and a January, The Hunt, August, Parliament of Rooks (this is the one in which we hear about Lilith, and, best of all, Ramadan. The strongest stories in the whole collection, with the possible exception of the overall story arch, and all in one volume!
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posted
Thanks everyone (especially StarLisa and Rivka).
So, I've heard Lilith brought in to explain the "two creation stories" in the first two chapters of Genisis: instead of two seperate stories, there was one story and a chunk (Lilith) got taken out. Why is that if Lilith never was in Genisis? Just...people not checking their sources?
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posted
No, the thing is that initially it says that God created Man "male and female". Which someone reading it as a comic book could interpret as having been simultaneous.
Then, after the executive summary in the first chapter, the second chapter comes along and gives the details, which include Adam having been created, and then Eve having been created subsequently (I guess even God needed to start with a rough draft <grin>).
But the biblical text is multilayered. Check out the Torah 101 thread. All Torah literature is multilayered, and contains more than just surface meanings. So there had to be some reason (other than the obvious literary summary/detail reason) for the two statements. A reason that communicated some kind of moral or ethical lesson. I don't particularly approve of the moral lesson of the Lilith story, but as rivka pointed out, that's hardly an authentically Jewish story.
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posted
Moral lesson? Which part of "don't try to force a particular kind of sex on your wife" do you disapprove of?
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quote:Originally posted by King of Men: Moral lesson? Which part of "don't try to force a particular kind of sex on your wife" do you disapprove of?
Unfortunately, I think the "moral lesson" that was intended by the story of Lilith was that women should be subservient to men, and that those who aren't are lusty and murderous demonesses.
But I kinda think you knew that.
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posted
Ah, no. Actually, I read it as an uplifting tale of rebellion against an unreasonable god, much like Paradise Lost.
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"Unfortunately, I think the 'moral lesson' that was intended by the story of Lilith was that women should be subservient to men, and that those who aren't are lusty and murderous demonesses. But I kinda think you knew that."
The moral lesson or that women are demonesses? Posts: 4116 | Registered: Apr 2002
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posted
I think the lesson is that if you try to force your wife to have a particular kind of sex she just might fly up into the air and find someone else to do it with. Lilith seems to have taken that a bit far, though, what with the babies conceived from uh - unused sperm thing.
Oh another note: Whenever I see Sartorius' name I get this little thing in my head that goes "Sar-Sar-Sartorius!" Like "No-No-Notorius!" Mmhmm. My head is special.
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quote:Originally posted by rivka: Raia, I don't think I appreciate that term.
I'm sorry, I didn't mean to offend. I just meant that some people here are more clearly Jewish than I am, and it was kind of a joke. I'll delete it if you want.
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quote:Originally posted by Samarkand: I think the lesson is that if you try to force your wife to have a particular kind of sex she just might fly up into the air and find someone else to do it with. Lilith seems to have taken that a bit far, though, what with the babies conceived from uh - unused sperm thing.
Oh another note: Whenever I see Sartorius' name I get this little thing in my head that goes "Sar-Sar-Sartorius!" Like "No-No-Notorius!" Mmhmm. My head is special.
Is that anything like "Su-Su-Sudio"? Or am I just dating myself unnecessarily...?
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posted
Mazikeen! Elaine! And is Elaine okay? I swear, when they first introduced her, who would have expected her to try and take the throne of creation?
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I just meant that some people here are more clearly Jewish than I am, and it was kind of a joke. I'll delete it if you want.
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