Asking as a simple question, but have no doubt it will turn into a debate because of its religious nature.
In a discussion I had today, we were talking about how the book of Genesis appears to be “cut and pasted” from several authors, and actually contains parts of several crteation myths.
I was intrigued when my friend told me that Adam actually had 3 wives. He rejected the first two, and Eve was God’s third attempt.
The first one was Lilith, who was actually Adam. Adam started out as a Hermaphrodite apparently and God seperated him/her into two people so he’d have company. Apparently he didn’t get along with himself.
I don’t know who number two was, and what the problem was there, but apparently it didn’t work out, so God took a rib and made Eve.
My friend says that the people Adam, Eve, and their descendants deal with later on are actually descendants of the first two wives, and only the descendents of Eve became the Chosen people.
Please don’t come here and tell me that this is a myth and didn’t actually happen. I know that. I’m interested in the origins of the myth and where I can find more info on the precursor myths to Genesis, and on hearing the arguments pertaining to those origins.
Nearly every public library will have a copy of Genesis A New Translation with Introduction and Commentary by E. A. Speiser. I think it was completed in the sixties. You can also pick up a used copy from one of the on-line sellers for under $20.00. It does the double job of describing how the Hebrew Bible was formed and where the mythological stories of Genesis came from as well.
William Foxwell Albright’s From The Stone Age To Christianity was written in the 1940 and reprinted with minor changes in the mid 1950s. Classical approach and maybe more than you’d ever want to know about the precursor myths, people, languages and how they all blended together.
Probably the best source would be used books again.
Any legends or myths of Adam’s other wife, are just that, and are not supported by the Bible. “Lilith” never shows up in the bible at all, except, perhaps, in Isaiah, where she is mentioned as a demon. Probably Isaiah did not mean “Lilith” as we think of here, but was writing about a Canaanite demon called “Lilitu”. The Lilith demon was 1st depicted as a nite slayer of babies & pregnant women, ie the absolute last thing from a feminist “icon”.
It was not until medieval times, with “The Alphabet of Ben Sira”, that Lilith was thought of as Adams 1st wife. Later legends were added to the Talmud, something that CMK or others will certainly elaborate on.
The Lilith entity would very easily fit the mother goddess niche for the proto-Hebrews, a deity niche that everybody around the Mediterranean from the cave painters of Lascaux to the earliest farmer at Catal Hoyuk seemed to have had. With the onset of exclusive patriarchial monotheism, such a deity would have been exorciated, demonized and generally given a bad rap.
I suppose, but I’ve been looking for an excuse to use this ever since March.
When mankind was created, it was Adam and Eve, not Adam and His-Own-Rib-Dressed-up-to-Look-Like-a-Chick-Except-I-Guess-It-Was-and-Doesn’t-That-Mean-That-All-Heterosexual-Coitus-Is-Really-Gay-Transvestite-Onanism?
I don’t know much about Lillith…
The only things I know of her have come from my Role Playing.
She plays a fairly big part in the Vampire history and how they supposedly came about.
The “third” wife (actually second, if my memory is correct) has her origin in Jewish Rabbinical thought. Now, this is all from a rather hazy memory, and I am hardly an expert in Rabbinical thought, but with that caveat:
The Bible mentions that God created Eve from Adam’s rib while Adam was asleep. The question is, why while he was sleeping? The answer that these Rabbis arrived at was: God had created another wife for Adam (after Lilith) earlier, but he did so while Adam was awake. Adam saw her body “being assembeled” and was revolted by the sight of her organs, meat, etc. Adam could not overcome this revulsion to mate with her, so God put Adam to sleep and created Eve.
I do not recall what was supposed to have become of this second wife.