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Question Title Posted By Question Date
Adam and Eve... "Lillith" story? Rosa Tuesday, August 24, 2004

Question:

Hey Brother, I've got a new one for ya. ^_^ I recently read this at a Catholic discussion community that I'm in, and I'd like your take on it. I'll copy and paste it here.

"Gen 1:27 God created man in His own image, in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them.

Gen 2:22 The LORD God fashioned into a woman the rib which He had taken from the man, and brought her to the man.

The Jews, way back in the day, saw this as two creations of a female, one on the sixth day and one on the seventh day. The first was a simultanious creation of Adam and someone else, they eventually called this someone else Lillith. There is absolutly no mention of her, so much was assumed. They supposed that she was created as an equal to Adam, but wouldn't submit sexually, so she was cast out as a demon and Eve was created the next day from Adam's rib so as to be submissive to Adam.

Keep in mind though, nothing is mentioned about her in The Bible or in Torah other than what I quoted in the beginning (The translation the Jews uses may of course be worded slightly differently).

I don't know what any official position on the matter is though."

Question Answered by Bro. Ignatius Mary, OLSM+

Dear Rosa:

The Bible says there is nothing new under the sun :). This one is not new but an apocraphal story that has been grabbed up by some New Agers for years.

The Lilith legend is nothing more than a old legend with no basis in fact or reality. From what I understand the Lilith story does not even originate with the ancient Hebrews but is an invention in a medieval work called "the Alphabet of Ben-Sira," a work whose relationship to the conventional streams of Judaism is doubtful.

In the book, Why Didn't I Learn this in Hebrew School, Eliezer Segal explains about the Alphabet of Ben-Sira:

The unknown author of this work has filled it with many elements that seem designed to upset the sensibilities of traditional Jews. In particular, the heroes of the Bible and Talmud are frequently portrayed in the most perverse colours. Thus, the book's protagonist, Ben-Sira, is said to have issued from an incestuous union between the prophet Jeremiah and his daughter. Joshua is described as a buffoon too fat to ride a horse. King David comes across as a heartless and spiteful figure who secretly delights in the death of his son Absalom, while putting on a disingenuous public display of grief. The book is consistently sounding the praises of hypocritical and insincere behaviour.

So shocking and abhorrent are some of the contents of "the Alphabet of Ben-Sira" that modern scholars have been at a loss to explain why anyone would have written such a book. Some see it as an impious digest of risqué folk-tales. Others have suggested that it was a polemical broadside aimed at Christians, Karaites, or some other opposing movement. I personally would not rule out the possibility that it was actually an anti-Jewish satire--though, to be sure, it did come to be accepted by the Jewish mystics of medieval Germany; and amulets to fend off the vengeful Lilith became an essential protection for newborn infants in many Jewish communities.

Eventually the tale of Lilith was included in a popular English-language compendium of Rabbinic legend, and some uncritical readers--unable or unwilling to check after the editor's sources--cited it as a representative Rabbinic statement on the topic. As tends to happen in such instances, subsequent authors kept copying from one another until the original error turned into an unchallenged historical fact.

God Bless,
Bro. Ignatius Mary


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