VLVL2 (9.5): Lilith [was "This Is Important"]

[Tim Strzechowski]

from Charles Panati, _Sacred Origins of Profound Things_.  New York:
Penguin, 1996.

"In Eastern European folklore, the Angel of Death is married to Lilith, a
satanic female who seduces men, kills babies, harms pregnant women, and
causes labor pains.

"This female demon appears in Isaiah as one of the horrors of the Lord's day
of vengeance:

'Goat-demons shall greet each other; there too the lilith shall repose and
find herself a resting place' (Isaiah 34:14).

"Lilith probably became known to the Israelites through Zoroastrian
demonology, which is as rich and elaborate as its angelology.  In medieval
times, the Alphabet of Ben Sira elaborated on the tradition that Adam had a
wife before Eve and she was named Lilith.  It's Lilith who leaves Adam --
she flies away, deserting her husband because he has rejected her demand
that she be regarded as his equal.  Lilith is independent, self-reliant, and
she doesn't wish to bear children; the idea of motherhood bores her; she's
obsessed with her career (which happens to be doing evil).  She is the first
feminist, predating Eve.

"Male scribes created Lilith, probably as a literary balance to Eve, who is
docile, odedient (except for the apple incident), dependant on her husband,
Adam, careerless, and who begets children.  The scribes made Lilith a bitch,
who abandons her husband and spends aeons killing babies and causing
miscarriages" (pp. 85-6).


Also cf.

Jeffrey Burton Russell, _The Devil: Perceptions of Evil from Antiquity to
Primitive Christianity_.  Ithica: Cornell U Press, 1977.

Leonard Shlain, _The Alphabet Versus The Goddess: The Conflict Between Word
and Image_.  New York: Penguin, 1998.


>
>
> The story of Lilith is not actually found in any
> authentic Rabbinic tradition. Although it is
> repeatedly cited as a "Rabbinic legend" or a
> "midrash," it is not recorded in any ancient Jewish
> text!
>
> The tale of Lilith originates in a medieval work
> called "the Alphabet of Ben-Sira," a work whose
> relationship to the conventional streams of Judaism
> is, to say the least, problematic
>