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

She is, depending how you translate, 80s. It's on the wiki link I put up.

Some versions translate the name simply as 'dark demon', or similar.

It's like most angel/demon names - there's lots that are both meaningful, and proper names (eg. lucifer, which means 'light-bringer').

Who is this Lileth? I've never heard of her. I studied the old testament for A-level and she is not in it!

Not ranty at all. Incredibly interesting and thought provoking though.

teitetua

When I first started researching Lilith about ten years ago, the Wiki entry was no more than a stubb. I'm quite surprised it's been a bit more populated recently, but it's not thorough.

As LRD states, there is no such thing as an original Bible - the version most commonly used now of the Old Testament was the work of many scholars over hundreds of years. Genesis at minimum was written in 500 BC, but it's very contradictory depending on which modern faith group you want to believe.

The first reference to Lilith features in the Epic of Gilgamesh which was written in approximately 1800 BC, though the main text that is preserved dates to the 1300 BC; both of which are significantly older than any of the core Hebraic texts.

It's not a flight of fancy or a pieced together fragment of a story; the Lilith myth pervades through multiple faiths of the central, middle and near East over a period of more than 4000 years.

There are stone statues of her, that carbon date correctly back through the Mesopotamian and Akkadian eras, as well as thousands of pages of writings through the various Hebraic periods, most significantly through the Zoharic period.

I don't believe she was ever real, but I don't believe God is, or Jesus or Shekinah or Eve, but I do believe that Lilith was a cornerstone of the development of what we know refer to as Christianity and find it remarkable and very pertinent to feminism that she has been written out of our cultural and religious history.

(apologies if I come off as ranty, but this is a subject I've rather passionate about!)

This thread is very timely for me. DD1 got a goldfish yesterday and insisted on calling it Lilith, "you know, after the first woman?". I had to google her (shame) but was proud that my 10 year old knew her.

This is a good, accessible intro to Lilith - The Book of Lilith

True, tei.

I suppose it is just so caught up with traditions, and extra-Biblical references, it is not so hard to trick people into believing things if you are sufficiently charismatic.

FWIW, it's not really correct to say there's such a thing as an 'original Bible' - this is a myth! There are many holy writings, and different faiths have different ideas of what amongst those writings constitutes 'the Bible'.

This is all mythology, the Bible and everything else, so what we believe, or believe people in the past believed, is a personal choice.

The Wikipedia entry contradicts the idea that in the King James Bible "all references to Lilith were removed" because when the original Bible was written, there weren't any references to Lilith at all, except the one in Isaiah which doesn't suggest anything like the concept of a pre-Eve figure.

A lot of this seems to me like people wanting there to be a Lilith figure, then applying lots of imagination to some vague ancient writing that could mean anything, and then hoping nobody ever looks at it with a critical eye.

Yes, I need to say thank you to everyone who sent me off looking for books too.

I feel the same sadness about these women who're looking happy with so little. It's not right.

I can't count the amount of threads which send me on a lenghty search on the internet to learn about topics referenced.

All this seems incredibly interesting, well outside my sphere of knowledge, so thanks.

I love the fact that I start this thread reading about oppressive regimes which manipulate women into thinking that their husband is their owner, and then I learn about Lilith and the king James bible. Bloody hell there are some clever women on Mumsnet

I have nothing profound to add other than deep sadness and anger. Those pictures - she looked so happy and thrilled to be away from work. How indoctrinated they are. And the child labelled a princess - all that potential that she will be forbidden to develop.

Oh, that's very cool!

But what is sad is that all of this we're discussing is apocrypha at best (of course), and myth at worst - and yet, so is what these women are being told is the truth, in the OP.

Lilith, not polity!

Yes, I think you're right about owls and cats.

The earliest literature about polity comes from the gilgamesh - she was his mother.

And lamia is lilith too. See Keats. the romantics were obsessed with her rossetti painted her and later so did others.

Thank you! I have the Marina Warner (and love it), but I must have forgotten or skimmed that bit. And I have Robert Graves.

I shall look up the others, you're a star.

The Myth of the Goddess sounds great.

I wonder about the KJB - as I understand it, both the medieval vulgate and the KJB are mistranslating here, and they think she's a dark demon/a 'lamia' (like the romantic poem). I looked at wiki and it's really interesting: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lilith

I wonder ... the devil in lots of medieval books is not allowed to be depicted, so he is scrubbed out, and sometimes a black cat is interpreted as his symbol ... I wonder if it's similar to the owl, since they're both animals associated with magic and sometimes with heresy. I would like to think so!

LRD

There are a few brilliant texts on this area; the most relevant for Lilith Judaic Goddess myths is Raphael Patai who is THE authority on the subject. Robert Graves covered some elements, but not as thoroughly as Patai.

There's also From the Beast to the Blonde by Marina Warner - a wonderful study of the feminine in fairytales, which of course touches into religious myth.

The best anthropological book I've found, is Anne Baring and Jules Cashford's The Myth of the Goddess. Lots of very detailed and beautiful images of relics, icons etc.

whatmeworry is the Zoharic history of Lilith, she did indeed... it was Samael aka Satan!

She gave birth to thousands of children which God had killed.

It used to be customary to put signs over the doors of newlyweds homes which said "Adam and Eve! Out Lilith!" as Lilith was blamed for impotency issues or for seducing the men in the night and taking them away from their Eve-like wives...

When the King James version of the Bible was written, all references to Lilith were removed and any single reference to her name was replaced with a creature, usually an Owl. There was one omission, she is mentioned in Isaiah 34:14

34:14 "And shall-meet desert creatures et (particle) jackals
the goat he-calls his- fellow
lilith she-rests and she-finds rest
34:15 there she-shall-nest the great-owl, and she-lays-(eggs), and  she-hatches, and she-gathers under her-shadow:
hawks also they-gather, every one with its mate.

She's such a tricky figure for Patriarchal religions, especially Christianity, to do with, so they omit her.

I didn't realise that this sort of thing happens in Western societies :S

It feels a little bit like they're being brainwashed. Like glosswitch said, there's nothing wrong with being a stay at home mum, but to celebrate male domination in this way is a bit vile and 'in your face'!

Ooh, I am liking Lilith!

The angels fell from grace before humans, is that right?

Where do you lot get your biblical myths, I obviously need to read up!

Didn't Lilith bugger off and bonk an Archangel, who then fell from Grace?

What a girl......

You know, it doesn't make me feel ashamed to be Christian. It has nothing to do with my beliefs at all, that's how far away I think it is.

I think it's a situation where culture and religion have become very closely linked. I wonder if it's a reaction against modern life, actually? It seems this sort of stuff is very popular in the US, almost as a backlash against modernisation.

Shocking.

This makes me feel ashamed to be a Christian.

None of this stuff is 'biblical' - it's all cultural- Pastor Bacon is spouting nonsense. Those poor women.
:(