In Jewish legend, the first wife of Adam; or, more generally, a demon woman.
Lilith is a female Mesopotamian night demon believed to harm male children. In Isaiah, Lilith (לִילִית, Standard Hebrew Lilith) is a kind of night-demon or animal, translated as onokentauros in the Septuagint, as lamia "witch" by Hieronymus of Cardia, and as screech owl in the King James Version of the Bible. Lilith also appears as a night demon in the Talmud and Midrash. Considering Adam to be an inferior being, Lilith left the Garden of Eden of her own free will. Adam then bid three angels to find Lilith and bring her back.
Etymology
Hebrew לילית lilith, Akkadian līlītu are female Nisba adjectives from the Proto-Semitic root LYL "night", literally translating to nocturna "female night being/demon".
Akkadian mythology
Kiskil-lilla
Lilith has been identified with ki-sikil-lil-la-ke4, a female demon in the Sumerian prologue to the Gilgamesh epic.
Kramer translates:
a dragon had built its nest at the foot of the tree the Zu-bird was raising its young in the crown, and the demon Lilith had built her house in the middle. [...] Then the Zu-bird flew into the mountains with its young, while Lilith, petrified with fear, tore down her house and fled into the wildernessWolkenstein translates the same passage:
a serpent who could not be charmed made its nest in the roots of the tree, The Anzu bird set his young in the branches of the tree, And the dark maid Lilith built her home in the trunk.Mesopotamian Lilitu
After these reliefs, there is a gap of about a millennium, and it is only from circa the 9th century BC that vampire-like spirits called the Lilu are known from Babylonian demonology.
The "Lilith Prophylactic" of Arslan Tash (Aleppo National Museum) has been suspected a forgery, but if genuine it would be a 7th century BC plaque featuring a sphinx-like creature and a she-wolf devouring a child, with a Phoenician inscription addressing the sphinx creature as Lili.
Lilith in the Bible
Isaiah 34:14, describing the desolation of Edom, is the only occurrence of Lilith in the Hebrew Bible:
Hebrew (ISO 259): pagšu ṣiyyim et-ʾiyyim w-saʿir ʿal-rēʿhu yiqra ʾakšam hirgiʿah lilit u-maṣʾah lah manoḫ morpho-syntactic analysis: "yelpers meet-[perfect] howlers; 470, 484) suggest that Lilith was a goddess of the night, known also by the Jewish exiles in Babylon.Hieronymus of Cardia translated Lilith with lamia, in Horace (De Arte Poetica liber, 340) a witch who steals children, similar to the Breton Korrigan, in Greek mythology described as a Libyan queen who mated with Zeus.
The screech owl translation of the KJV is without precedent, and apparently together with the "owl" (yanšup, probably a water bird) in 34:11, and the "great owl" (qippoz, properly a snake,) of 34:15 an attempt to render the eerie atmosphere of the passage by choosing suitable animals for difficult to translate Hebrew words.
Later translations include:
night-owl (Young, 1898) night monster (ASV 1901, NASB 1995) night hag (RSV 1947) night creature (NIV 1978, NKJV 1982, NLT 1996) nightjar (New World Translation, 1984) vampires (Moffatt Translation, 1922)Jewish tradition
A Hebrew tradition exists in which an amulet is inscribed with the names of three angels (Senoy, Sansenoy, and Semangelof) and placed around the neck of newborn boys in order to protect them from the lilin until their circumcision. There is also a Hebrew tradition to wait three years before a boy's hair is cut so as to attempt to trick Lilith into thinking the child is a girl so that the boy's life may be spared.
Dead Sea scrolls
The appearance of Lilith in the Dead Sea Scrolls is somewhat more contentious, with one indisputable reference in the Song for a Sage (4Q510-511), and a promising additional allusion found by A. The first and irrefutable Lilith reference in the Song occurs in 4Q510, fragment 1:
"And I, the Instructor, proclaim His glorious splendor so as to frighten and to te[rrify] all the spirits of the destroying angels, spirits of the bastards, demons, Lilith, howlers, and [desert dwellers…] and those which fall upon men without warning to lead them astray from a spirit of understanding and to make their heart and their […] desolate during the present dominion of wickedness and predetermined time of humiliations for the sons of lig[ht], by the guilt of the ages of [those] smitten by iniquity – not for eternal destruction, [bu]t for an era of humiliation for transgression. "
Akin to Isaiah 34:14, this liturgical text both cautions against the presence of supernatural malevolence and assumes familiarity with Lilith;
Another text discovered at Qumran, conventionally associated with Book of Proverbs, credibly also appropriates the Lilith tradition in its description of precarious, winsome woman – The Seductress (4Q184). Instead, the Qumran text utilizes the imagery of Proverbs to explicate a much broader, supernatural threat – the threat of the demoness Lilith.
Talmud
Although the Talmudic references to Lilith are sparse, these passages provide the most comprehensive insight into the demoness yet seen in Judaic literature which both echo Lilith’s Mesopotamian origins and prefigure her future as the perceived exegetical enigma of the Genesis account. Recalling the Lilith we have seen, Talmudic allusions to Lilith illustrate her essential wings and long hair, dating back to her earliest extant mention in Gilgamesh:
"Rab Judah citing Samuel ruled: If an abortion had the likeness of Lilith its mother is unclean by reason of the birth, for it is a child but it has wings." (Niddah 24b)
"[Expounding upon the curses of womanhood] In a Baraitha it was taught: She grows long hair like Lilith, sits when making water like a beast, and serves as a bolster for her husband." (‘Erubin 100b)
More unique to the Talmud with regard to Lilith is her insalubrious carnality, alluded to in The Seductress but expanded upon here sans unspecific metaphors as the demoness assuming the form of a woman in order to sexually take men by force while they sleep:
"R. (Shabbath 151b)
Yet the most innovative perception of Lilith offered by the Talmud appears earlier in ‘Erubin, and is more than likely inadvertently responsible for the fate of the Lilith myth for centuries to come:
"R. Eleazar further stated: In all those years [130 years after his expulsion from the Garden of Eden] during which Adam was under the ban he begot ghosts and male demons and female demons [or night demons], for it is said in Scripture, And Adam lived a hundred and thirty years and begot a son in own likeness, after his own image, from which it follows that until that time he did not beget after his own image…When he saw that through him death was ordained as punishment he spent a hundred and thirty years in fasting, severed connection with his wife for a hundred and thirty years, and wore clothes of fig on his body for a hundred and thirty years. (‘Erubin 18b)
Comparing ‘Erubin 18b and Shabbath 151b with the later passage from the Zohar: “She wanders about a night night, vexing the sons of men and causing them to defiles themselves (19b),” it appears clear that this Talmudic passage indicates such an averse union between Adam and Lilith.
Kabbala
In some passages of the Kabbala, as well as in the 13th century Treatise on the Left Emanation , Lilith is the mate of Samael.
In others, probably informed by The Alphabet of Ben-Sira, she is Adam's wife (Yalqut Reubeni, Zohar 1:34b, 3:19 )
Lilith as Adam's first wife
A medieval reference to Lilith as the first wife of Adam is the anonymous The Alphabet of Ben-Sira, written sometime between the 8th and 11th centuries. Lilith is described as refusing to assume a subservient role to Adam during sexual intercourse and so deserting him ("She said, 'I will not lie below,' and he said, 'I will not lie beneath you, but only on top.
Lilith then went on to mate with Samael and various other demons she found beside the Red Sea, creating countless lilin. Adam urged God to bring Lilith back, so three angels were dispatched after her. When the angels, Senoy, Sansenoy, and Semangelof, made threats to kill one hundred of Lilith's demonic children for each day she stayed away, she countered that she would prey eternally upon the descendants of Adam and Eve, who could be saved only by invoking the names of the three angels.
The Alphabet of Ben-Sira is the earliest surviving source of the story, and the conception that Lilith was Adam's first wife became only widely known with the 17th century Lexicon Talmudicum of Johannes Buxtorf.
In the late 19th century, the Scottish Christian author George MacDonald incorporated the story of Lilith as Adam's first wife and predator of Eve's children into a mythopoeic fantasy novel in the Romantic style.
Modern magic
An 18th or 19th century Persian amulet, a protective charm for a newborn boy, kept in the Israel Museum, Jerusalem, depicts Lilith in chains, with "Bind Lilith in chains" written under each arm.
Lilith appears as a succubus in Aleister Crowley's De Arte Magica.
Lilith in literature and popular culture
Literature Lilith is a book containing the character Lilith by the author George Macdonald - MacDonald had heavy influence on C.S. Feminism The title of the Lilith Fair was taken from the legend of Lilith as Adam's first wife, honoring her modern image as a feminist icon. Comic books In Neil Gaiman's long running comic book series The Sandman, Lilith is mentioned as Adam's first wife.For other uses of this name, see Lilith (disambiguation).
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