"Eve did not have a separate function apart from Adam...see this insidious blog post about saving Christian women from work

Lilith was one of many pagan goddesses worshipped through the centuries. The theory is that as more places became converted to Christianity and a patriachal society the female aspect was overlooked, played down or condemned as wrong by those in power.
I suspect that linking the patriachal beliefs evolved over generations to accusations of witchcraft is a whole other thread....

Great. Mumsnet has just cost me £17 because I was daft enough to look at The myth of the Goddess on Amazon...
If you look in the Pagan/spiritual section of a bookshop you'll generally find some good books on Goddess mythology btw.
I do actually know someone who believes she is inferior to her husband because she is his 'wife', there's no talking to her about it though, she defers to him on everything and spouts the Bible (Proverbs I think) if you argue the point with her. I just feel sad for her really..

True.

DH reckons (FWIW) that Constantine being converted, and the Romans becoming officially Christian through the 4th century is probably where it went wrong for women

Sounds plausible - an ordinary woman's lot in those ancient agricultural societies was not a great one, and it seems like early Christianity promised a higher degree of freedom - not the sort of thing wanted in the new State religion.

I wonder if there's a link between having a really powerful empire/state and having a really shit attitude towards women?

Not just women - the peasants (ie c 95% of the population) were basically fucked over in every way until they died early.

DH reckons (FWIW) that Constantine being converted, and the Romans becoming officially Christian through the 4th century is probably where it went wrong for women ....Romans like naice, traditional, matronly women not scary, powerful ones.

(Not sure I believe this but he knows his stuff better than me, so it's possible.)

I wonder if there's a link between having a really powerful empire/state and having a really shit attitude towards women? Because this thread started out with a religious movement that is pretty popular in the US, didn't it? And I guess women didn't have the best deal in Victorian times, either.

What happened in the third century, do you reckon? It's odd, isn't it, being saintly comes later on to be associated with being a virgin, but obviously not for Theodora! I just looked her up and read she died of breast cancer, which somehow seems to bring her closer to us - obviously people always must have had the same illnesses we have, but so often you read about weird and wonderful diseases, and breast cancer's still one that feels familiar.

FWIW, the snake that tempted Eve used to be seen as female, too (though I'm not sure this is exactly what we want as a role model! ).

...and she got made a saint for her efforts :o

Also, if you look at the early church its extarordinary how many women, and how many powerful women there were, but it all got rammed down in the 3rd century.

And speaking of Femme Fatales, Theodora didn't quite do an Archangel but a Byzantine Emperor's not bad for runner up spot.....

Oh, yes, that makes sense - there's all the stuff about Adam needing to get his food by the 'sweat of his brow' from farming, which would fit in.

I'm rubbish at references, but there's meant to be a correlation between agriculture and nuclear families, and I guess Adam and Eve are a sort of model for that, too?

I like to think that women would bot have been so driven down if their original identity had not been the weak and subservient eve

That point makes me wonder if Lilith was a bigger figure in the pre agricultural era faith (or a scare lesson to later women about how bad it all was), and Eve was brought in as the Agricultural era model (it seems the subjugation of women really started when agriculture did)

Wow. Just wow. Having read the blog and looked at the pictures of Rebecca's "homecoming", I honestly don't know whether to laugh or cry. It beggars belief that people still think like this in the modern era. If they are genuinely happy, good luck to them. Personally I could find no happiness in the belief that my own life was without purpose, and that I only existed to support someone else's "vocation". Shocking!

The most incredible thing that will never happen, is that all the texts in the Vatican library were made public.

I'm concinced it could change the world.

Yes, I think that would have been interesting.

I would also like to know what would have happened if women deacons and perhaps priests had continued in the early church - or if, say, St. Paul's letters hadn't survived.

It's fascinating how much leeway people find to change the stories so they fit social codes.

To attempt to bring it back to the original subject though...

One if the reasons I first became interested in Lilith was because it made me wonder what the global view of women and faith would be like if her character had been left in.

I like to think that women would bot have been so driven down if their original identity had not been the weak and subservient eve.

Well you learn something new every day. The only Lillith I have ever heard of was Niall's first wife in "Frasier".

It is all fascinating. I just mentioned another thread because this stuff is very interesting but we're going way off the original topic but I don't want you to stop!

erm, very flattered, thank you!

Happy to start a new thread, but what subject? Femme Fatales? Heroine versus Anti-Heroine, Outcasts/Outsiders? or Ancient Goddesses?

blimey, blimey... not sure i should get started!

I think these days I'd be classed as an armchair-academic, but I used to lecture and write on this subject.

I have to say that my top Biblical heroine is Jael.

I find it hard to identify with this sort of fundamentalism, and I can't imagine how people could aspire to this life for their daughters. Horses for courses though.

mystery, I'm finding this fascinating so don't shove off ... if you want a thread on it I'd love it if you started one or got MNHQ to split this one? It's really interesting.

Do you work on this stuff, then? (nosy, no need to reply if you don't like).

Ooh! That's like the legends about red-haired men. There's a theory that in Celtic Britain, a red-haired man had to be sacrificed for good luck. There's a suggested link to king William Rufus, who was killed while out hunting. And it then follows through into people being afraid of red-haired people as they came to be seen as associated with the sacrifice, not the luck it brough - as scapegoats. And therefore in medieval superstition, jewish people are always shown as being red-haired (and are treated as scapegoats).

I think the relationship between scapegoat/hero/outcast is fascinating.

sorry!

I'll shove off in a sec!

Here's an MA thesis (not mine) that appears to have some of the key periods for Lilith in the chapters. No idea how good it is, but I'll go off and have a read:

Lilith Thesis

oh, and another theorist who is very interesting on the relationship between myth and religion (though not specifically on Lilith) is Rene Girard, who wrote Violence and the Sacred and The Scapegoat, which are fascinating studies of heroism/ the hero in religion.

He theorises that a hero is not a figure of priase, but an outcast or scapegoat, as what makes them outstanding is their "otherness". And, that a hero often loses in the end e.g Christ dies, or Lilith is exiled. It's an alternative to the Greek's hubris, which is quite compelling in this kind of context.

The Penguin version of the Epic of Gilgamesh is very good as an easy read of the narrative, the Oxford version has the poetic form, with facing pages showing the table the text comes from and different translations and interpretations.

There are lots of Jewish scholarly debates and texts that feature Lilith, but the Patai one mentioned above is most accessible.

Elinor Gaddon, a Harvard specialist in Women's studies has written a few texts on Goddess mythology that focus on artworks primarily (IIRC), and she has some focus on Lilith.

In literature, there's George MacDonald's Lilith which would make any feminist spit chips at its misogynistic portrayal of women, and for the antithesis of that... Angela Carter's The Passion of New Eve!

Victorian Web used to have quite a few articles about the Romantics and Lilith, but would take a bit of poking about to find, as both the painters and the poets were quite fixated on her.

That's one of the difficult things about researching Lilith in that she's not often the centre of a piece of work, but is discussed in relation to Eve or Inana, Ishtar, Shekinah etc...

What you can do, through tracing the fiction rather than the "fact" is see the evolution of the "femme fatale" in Lilith. She is ultimate woman of this type.

The version of the myth I like the most is Judaic in origin, where Lilith and Samael, and Adam and Eve are circling the world on the backs of two yin and yang-like dragons forever chasing each other's tails.

Ooh ... just found this link which seems to bring together her name and what you are saying, mystery, about the owls: www.dubiousdisciple.com/2011/04/isaiah-3414-15-lilith.html

I would love to learn more about this.