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

[DillyTante]

"Eve did not have a separate function apart from Adam. Eve's function was defined perfectly in terms of Adam's function. When we understand what Adam was doing then we can understand why Eve was created...The purpose that God had in bringing Eve out of the side of Adam was so Adam would have a helper for his job, for his vocation...not a separate vocation of her own."

This from a speech in a blog post linked by excellent blogger Gloss Watch glosswatch.com/2012/08/09/bigging-up-the-office-in-the-name-of-choice/

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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!)

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

Agree with GetOrf, I have very little knowledge about all this stuff therefor my only argument against websites like the one linked are "it's just bloody wrong!"

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

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').

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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).

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.

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.

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!

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