Lilith
- Origin
- Jewish tradition, drawing on a female demon known in many Middle Eastern cultures (Jewish Women's Archive). Her earliest known mention is a Dead Sea Scrolls text (Wikipedia); she then appears in late-antique incantations and the Babylonian Talmud, and on incantation bowls found in Iraq and Iran (Wikipedia; JWA). The Alphabet of Ben Sira, dated by scholars to the 8th-10th centuries CE, is the earliest known form of the story that makes Lilith the first wife of Adam (Humm, UPenn).
- How we treat it
- The label covers Lilith as she appears in Jewish texts (the Talmud, the Alphabet of Ben Sira, the Zohar, Kabbalah) and in the childbirth amulets still in use (National Library of Israel). It makes no claim that she exists, and it does not say she is binding doctrine: Maimonides and Menachem Meiri rejected her existence (Wikipedia). The modern feminist Lilith (My Jewish Learning) is a later reading, covered in the text and not by the badge.
- Routes out
- Jewish institutions first: the National Library of Israel on the amulets, then My Jewish Learning and the Jewish Women's Archive encyclopedia. Then the Alphabet of Ben Sira itself in the Stern and Mirsky translation (via Alan Humm, UPenn), and Wikipedia last for the full textual record.
Lilith is a female figure of Jewish texts and practice, feared as a threat to childbirth and newborns and, in a medieval telling, Adam's first wife. Childbirth amulets tied to her story are still used by women today.
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The Jewish Women's Archive encyclopedia says Lilith started out as a female demon known in many Middle Eastern cultures. It places her in Isaiah, in the Babylonian Talmud, and on incantation bowls found in ancient Iraq and Iran, and says she was seen as a threat to sex and reproduction, above all to childbirth. The National Library of Israel writes about three angels on Jewish childbirth amulets. It says an amulet of this kind is still used by women after giving birth, and that the Alphabet of Ben Sira made the angels well known, helped by pictures of them on many amulets.
Wikipedia gives the earliest known mention as a Dead Sea Scrolls text (4Q510-11), followed by Mandaean and Jewish incantations from late antiquity, from 300 AD on, that tell short stories about her. It lists Talmud passages that name her (Shabbat 151b, Eruvin 100b, Bava Batra 73a, Niddah 24b) and says the Zohar calls her "a hot fiery female who first cohabited with man". Jewish views differ: Wikipedia says some rabbinic authorities, Maimonides and Menachem Meiri among them, rejected her existence.
Lilith becomes Adam's first wife in the Alphabet of Ben Sira. Alan Humm of the University of Pennsylvania calls it the earliest form known of the Lilith story most people know, and says scholars place it in the 8th to 10th centuries CE. He says nobody can tell if the tale goes back further, though amulets of this kind are far older. The Jewish Women's Archive says the text has her disobey Adam and God and claim equality with Adam, which gave her demonic acts an origin story. In Kabbalah, it adds, she appears with Samael as an evil mirror of the feminine side of God.
My Jewish Learning calls Lilith the best-known demon in Jewish tradition. It says some sources make her the first woman, made before Eve, and many show her stealing newborn babies. Her name means night; she stands for its terror, sensuality and freedom. More recently, it says, feminist women have taken her up as a figure of freedom.
"The earliest known mention of Lilith is in the Dead Sea Scrolls (4Q510-11),[5] and afterwards in Mandaean and Jewish sources from late antiquity (300 AD onward), in historiolas – incantations that incorporate a short mythic story – that give partial descriptions of her.[6] She is mentioned in the Babylonian Talmud (at Eruvin 100b, Niddah 24b, Shabbat 151b, Bava Batra 73a), and in the Zohar § Leviticus 19a as "a hot fiery female who first cohabited with man".[7] Some rabbinic authorities, including Maimonides and Menachem Meiri, reject the existence of Lilith.[8]"
- Senoy, Sansenoy and Semangelof: the angels on Jewish childbirth amulets, National Library of Israel blog, via Wayback Machine
- Lilith: Lady Flying in Darkness, My Jewish Learning
- Lilith, Jewish Women's Archive, Shalvi/Hyman Encyclopedia of Jewish Women
- The Story of Lilith (Alphabet of Ben Sira, trans. Stern and Mirsky), Alan Humm, University of Pennsylvania, via Wayback Machine