Her Name was Lilith

Her name was Lilith, and early Jewish folklore tells us that she was the first wife of Adam. This weaving together of folklore, legend and scripture became a way to explain the curious fact that in just the first two chapters of the Book of Genesis there are two separate versions of the creation of the first man and woman. Chapter Two relates the familiar version of Eve being formed from one of Adam’s ribs, but in Chapter One we are told that the man and the woman were created at the same time, and therefore independently of each other. This first couple remain unnamed, which is where folklore steps in and names the woman as Lilith.

Unlike Eve, who is something of a ‘second-generation’ product, from the very moment of her creation Lilith is an independent being, with equally independent thoughts and aspirations. As such she is clearly Adam’s equal, so it is unsurprising that when Adam expects his new partner to have a subservient role then Lilith is having none of it! She protests mightily both to Adam and to God himself that she is better than that, better than someone who must keep a respectful distance and walk behind her ‘master’, better than a mere servant who apparently is intended to keep Eden nicely cleaned and dusted while Adam lords it over her and busies himself with more important tasks like inventing names for all the animals.

We might imagine that both God and Adam were rather taken aback by this unexpected show of rebellion (as they saw it) on the part of the woman, and two bruised male egos must therefore have watched in dismay as Lilith stormed off into the night to begin her own independent existence. So unlike Eve who would come after her, Lilith was not expelled from Paradise, but kept the power to herself and left of her own accord. And so a new partner for Adam was created, this time out of Adam’s own flesh, and both God and Adam would make very sure that the second time around the woman would indeed be subservient to the man.

This is where the original folklore ends. So what happened to Lilith after she left Eden? What happened is that new folklore emerged, new tales were shaped, and a new Lilith was created out of them. But this was no longer the Lilith who was the strong and resourceful female. Lilith’s terrible (and as it turns out, bitterly unjust) punishment for doing nothing more than assert her equal gender rights was to be transformed by subsequent folklore from a strong, empowered and independent woman into a predatory and dangerous creature of the darkness, and there to be – quite literally –  demonized.

We now picture Lilith as a dangerous and predatory demon of the night, and, quite literally, give her horns and even fangs to the extent that she resembles a sort of female version of Satan. But this Lilith is essentially a male fantasy, an invention which almost seems deliberately calculated to put the upstart Lilith in her place once and for all. Such a pity, because it is clear that the original version of who Lilith actually was and what she really was like is a Lilith who is needed now more than ever. Perhaps this is the task of our own age: to redeem Lilith, to restore her in all her original empowered femininity, so that a measure of balance also might be restored to our own troubled times.