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Dark Mirrors of Heaven - Lilith
Dark Mirrors of Heaven - Lilith
With this translation from theKing James' Version(KJV), most people believed that thisnightmonsterwas a female
demon. TheNew Jewish Publication Society(NJPS) is more explicit in mentioning Lilith.
Wildcats shall meet the
hyenas,
Goatdemons shall greet
each other;
There too thelilithshall
repose
And find herself a resting
place.
Isaiah34:14 (NJPS)
There are no other mention of Lilith in the Old Testament. Nor are there mentions of Lilith in any of the apocryphal
and pseudepigraphal writings.
Many scholars now believed that the Genesis has 2 different versions of about the Creation. The style of writing in
Genesis 1 is different to that of Genesis 23. Genesis 23 is written in more storytelling style, being more dramatic
than the 1st chapter. It would seem that Eve was created from Adam's rib, after the 7th day of Creation in Genesis
2:2024. Genesis 1:2628, on the other hand, had both man and woman on the same day the 6th day. It make no
mention of Eden, the creation of man out of earth, and woman out of man's rib. The fact that they were never named
in Genesis 1.
So could this unnamed woman from Genesis 1 actually be the 1st wife of Adam?
Of course this is only impression or interpretation of the text. It is not substantial evidence of the existence of Lilith.
Just because woman is unnamed in Genesis 1, doesn't mean she is Lilith. But the fact that the woman is somewhat a
mystery, Jewish scholars during the Second Temple Period have speculated on the identity of the mystery woman,
enough so to produced a narrative of just that Lilith being the 1st woman.
The rabbinic text that I had mentioned, comes from what the Jews calledHaggada, was used to explain or interpret
the narratives of the Bible. TheHaggadacomprised of the legend from the Creation to Esther. So the Haggada was
actually extracted from JewishTalmudand some part ofMidrash, but without dealing with Jewish law. Writing of
theHaggadabegan in 5th century BC, and continued well into 4th century AD.
The accounts of the Creation and Adam, is actually longer than what is found in the Torah's or the Bible'sGenesis.
Lilith reappeared in Chapter III of the Haggada, where it listed the descendants of Adam and Lilith.
After the murder of his son, Abel, by his elder son, Cain, Adam refused to sleep with Eve. Adam deserted Eve, rather
than fathers another child that would die. During the nights, Lilith visited him and mated with him while he slept, and
she bore him countless demons that would beset the world.
toBook of Jubilees, Adam had nine other sons after the fratricide, including Seth. Unlike the Genesis, theJubileesalso
mentioned a couple of daughters of Adam wn (eldest) and Azr; there are most likely to be a number of other
daughters, but we are not certain of number nor their names. Cain took wn as his wife, while Seth married Azr.
It was said that after the translation of Enoch to heaven, God's favourite patriarch became an archangel, named
Metatron; it was left to Methuselah, his son, to get rid of all the demons that were descendants of demons that Adam
had unknowingly begotten on Lilith.
Methuselah had used the sword with God's name etched on the blade. Methuselah slay 94 demons, before Agrimus, the
firstborn demon of Lilith, surrendered to the great patriarch. Methuselah placed all the demonkings in iron fetters,
while the lesser demons or imps fled and hid in the deepest ocean.
As you can see, the TalmudicHaggada, contained many details that were not included in theGenesisof the Hebrew
Torah and in Christian Bible. There are other references to Lilith.
According to theHaggada(vol. 2, chapter 3) about Job, it was Lilith who killed his oxen and his asses, when Satan
went to test Job's piety and loyalty to God. The text referred Lilith to as the Queen of Sheba.
In volume 4, chapter 2 (in regarding to Joshua), Lilith was mentioned with another shedevil Mahlah. Who is Mahlah,
I have not yet being able to determine, but I did find that she can go by her full name Agrat bat Mahlah.
In the Haggada (volume 1, Naamah, daughter of Lamech, sister of TubalCain, and descendant of Cain, was one of the
women who had copulated with Shamdon, one of the Fallen Watchers (seeEnoch & the Watchers, where you will find
more detail about Naamah), the angels that had come to earth to take mortal women as wives. Naamah became
mother of demon Asmodeus.
And in chapter 5 (vol. 4) about Solomon, he suspected that the Queen of Sheba was a demoness. When the Queen of
Sheba looked at the floor, she thought the king had a throne sitting on water. The Queen lifted her dressed and walked
towards the king's dais, and the glass on the floor revealed that she has hairy feet a sign of demoness.
Lilith also resembled the cannibal monster, known asLamia, from the Greek myth, who preyed on children at night.
She was a lover of Zeus, but went insane when Hera killed her baby. Lamia snatched other babies from their cribs,
before devouring them.
Sources
InternetSacredTextArchive
Haggada
TheLegendsoftheJews(Haggada)
trans.byLouisGinzberg,1909
InternetSacredTextArchive
ThistextisknowninHebrewastheHaggada.TheHaggadaispartoftheTalmudicliterature
containingthenarrativefromtheCreationtothetimeofEsther.Mostofitisparalleltothe
narrativeoftheHebrewBibleandtheChristianOldTestamentBible.TheHaggadafollowed
closelytotheGenesis,butitcontainedalotofinterpretationthatcanbeusedtosupplement
detailsorextralegendthatarelackingintheGenesis.ItisintheHaggadathatwecanfindthe
legendofLilith.
Bible
InternetSacredTextArchive
Bible:KingJames'Version
NJPS/index.htm"target="_blank">NewJewishPublicationSociety
(HebrewBibletranslationofTanakh)
Herearethefollowingtextsusedfromthisbible:
Genesis14
Isaiah34.14
GoodNewsBible:TodayEnglishVersion
UnitedBibleSocieties
1976reprinted1986
Herearethefollowingtextsusedfromthisbible:
Genesis14
Isaiah34.14
Genesis
Tanakh:ANewTranslationoftheHolyScriptures
AccordingtotheTraditionalHebrewText
TheNewJewishPublicationSociety1985
Genesis14
Isaiah34.14
TheApocryphaandPseudepigraphaoftheOldTestament
trans.byR.H.Charles
Oxford:ClarendonPress,1913(2vols)
ThoughtherearenomentionofLilithanythesetext,theBookofJubileehasgenealogythat
mentiondaughtersofAdamandEve,aswellaswivesofmanypatriarchs.
Fortunately,copiesofthesetranslationscanalsobefoundinacoupleofwebsites.
AtWesleyCollege,Ihaveusedthefollowingworksasmysourcesfromtheabovesite:
BookofJubilee
BookofEnoch(1Enoch)
BookoftheSecretsofEnoch(2Enoch)
GilgamesandtheNetherworld,p142143
TheEpicofGilgamesh
trans.byAndrewGeorge
PenguinClassics,1999
TheantecedentofLilithcanbefoundintheSumerianpoemsofGilgamesh,inGilgamesandthe
Netherworld.
MythsFromMesopotamia
StephanieDalley
Oxford'sWorldClassics,1989
Gilgamec,Enkiduandthenetherworld
trans.byKrecher,JoachimandJagersma
TheElectronicTextCorpusofSumerianLiterature
TheAlphabetofBenSira
translatedbyNormanBronznick
fromLilith(http://ccat.sas.upenn.edu/~humm/Topics/Lilith/lilith.html)
(TherearealsoanothernumberoftranslationfromdifferentsourcesaboutLilith.)