Lilith? Myth or Fact?

[laureenoluv8]

Hey everybody. I've been a Christian for about 2 or 3 years, but recently I've considered myself to be a Christian-seeker...because I'm almost at the point where I do not know what to believe anymore.

Anyway, my non-christian friends said something about the first book Genesis. According to them, Eve was not the first woman.

Lilith was created before Eve. And I guess she was evil in some way I don't know, but also she got sent to hell because she tried to be equal with Adam. In other words, woman was trying to be equal with man! There is a show on the History channel...I think it's called "Stories left out in the Bible", and it mentions this woman being left out! People say that Christians left it out of the Bible because it would throw off the whole religion..I mean, God said that He loves everybody, but yet why wouldn't he accept both man and woman equally? It sounds unfair to me. That's probably why Christians didn't put it in Genesis. It was too contradictory to God's promises. Maybe Lilith was "bad", but wasn't she trying to do the right thing?

Plus, everywhere in the Bible women are always treated lower than men. It's like..what, does God favor men more than us women? I'm just so confused.


I know my facts may be all wrong, because I got this from a couple of my non-Christian friends. But for the whole time I've been a believer I have been suffering in doubt and confusion, to the point where I feel like I want to be agnostic and almost forget the whole thing. It's just too hard to follow God if the Bible seems so flawed and how SO MANY PEOPLE say that it's just a carbon copy of other pagan religions. I feel singled out and confused all the time because I'm a Christian.

Eh..anyway...my main questions are this:

1.) Was Lilith actually created before Eve?
2.) If so, what was the story and why was it taken out of the Bible?
3.) If not, where did it come from and why do people believe it to be true?
4.) Why did(does?) God allow women to be treated so unfairly?

I pray that my faith can grow through all this doubt...

 

[ebia]

Hey everybody. I've been a Christian for about 2 or 3 years, but recently I've considered myself to be a Christian-seeker...because I'm almost at the point where I do not know what to believe anymore.

Anyway, my non-christian friends said something about the first book Genesis. According to them, Eve was not the first woman.

Lilith was created before Eve. And I guess she was evil in some way I don't know, but also she got sent to hell because she tried to be equal with Adam. In other words, woman was trying to be equal with man! There is a show on the History channel...I think it's called "Stories left out in the Bible", and it mentions this woman being left out! People say that Christians left it out of the Bible because it would throw off the whole religion..I mean, God said that He loves everybody, but yet why wouldn't he accept both man and woman equally? It sounds unfair to me. That's probably why Christians didn't put it in Genesis. It was too contradictory to God's promises. Maybe Lilith was "bad", but wasn't she trying to do the right thing?

Plus, everywhere in the Bible women are always treated lower than men. It's like..what, does God favor men more than us women? I'm just so confused.


I know my facts may be all wrong, because I got this from a couple of my non-Christian friends. But for the whole time I've been a believer I have been suffering in doubt and confusion, to the point where I feel like I want to be agnostic and almost forget the whole thing. It's just too hard to follow God if the Bible seems so flawed and how SO MANY PEOPLE say that it's just a carbon copy of other pagan religions. I feel singled out and confused all the time because I'm a Christian.

Eh..anyway...my main questions are this:

1.) Was Lilith actually created before Eve?
2.) If so, what was the story and why was it taken out of the Bible?
3.) If not, where did it come from and why do people believe it to be true?


I pray that my faith can grow through all this doubt...

Lilith doesn't and (so far as we can possibly tell) has never appeared in the bible. She's a character from Mesopotamian myth who makes an appearance in some streams of late Jewish folklaw, but there's no evidence that she was ever a character in the bible and there's really no cohesive way she could have been. It's quite fashionable at the moment to pretend that the bible has been heavily editted, but that's simply not true in the sense the popular talk of our time would have people believe.

4.) Why did(does?) God allow women to be treated so unfairly?

The whole middle-east of biblical times is very male-centred. The biblical texts actually to a lot to subvert that notion at time - most notable right at the beginning, when Genesis 1 says that both male and female are created in the image-of-God. If we took that single verse seriously that would subvert all mysogenism. Other key point at which the bible subverts the traditional roles of women is the Gospels. Jesus allows Mary to sit at his feet in the role of a trainee-rabbi where only a man should be and repremands Martha, who is scandalised by this, for objecting to it. And, in a world (Jewish and Greco-Roman) where women were not counted as witnesses at all, Jesus choses a woman to be the first witness of the most important event in the entire history of creation (his resurrection). (And, in the process, arguably upstages Miriam over Moses.) There are lots of places where the New Testament narratives subvert understood gender roles, but because they are narrative occasions there are both powerful and subtle at the same time.

It's just too hard to follow God if the Bible seems so flawed and how SO MANY PEOPLE say that it's just a carbon copy of other pagan religions. I feel singled out and confused all the time because I'm a Christian.

The people that say that are using a misleading half-truth. The bible does occasionally borrow from someone else's story to tell its own truth subverting the original, but that's not carbon copying, its doing what writers do when telling stories. When it comes to key points the Judeo/Christian bible stands quite unlike its surrounding cultures telling a very different story and very different set of truths. The myth, say, that the Jesus story is substantively borrowed is a myth created by taking a few surface similarities, creating a few extra surface similarities by manipulation and half-truth, creating a few more by outright lying, and ignoring the substantive differences.

 

[Elder 111]

Hey everybody. I've been a Christian for about 2 or 3 years, but recently I've considered myself to be a Christian-seeker...because I'm almost at the point where I do not know what to believe anymore.

Anyway, my non-christian friends said something about the first book Genesis. According to them, Eve was not the first woman.

Lilith was created before Eve. And I guess she was evil in some way I don't know, but also she got sent to hell because she tried to be equal with Adam. In other words, woman was trying to be equal with man! There is a show on the History channel...I think it's called "Stories left out in the Bible", and it mentions this woman being left out! People say that Christians left it out of the Bible because it would throw off the whole religion..I mean, God said that He loves everybody, but yet why wouldn't he accept both man and woman equally? It sounds unfair to me. That's probably why Christians didn't put it in Genesis. It was too contradictory to God's promises. Maybe Lilith was "bad", but wasn't she trying to do the right thing?

Plus, everywhere in the Bible women are always treated lower than men. It's like..what, does God favor men more than us women? I'm just so confused.


I know my facts may be all wrong, because I got this from a couple of my non-Christian friends. But for the whole time I've been a believer I have been suffering in doubt and confusion, to the point where I feel like I want to be agnostic and almost forget the whole thing. It's just too hard to follow God if the Bible seems so flawed and how SO MANY PEOPLE say that it's just a carbon copy of other pagan religions. I feel singled out and confused all the time because I'm a Christian.

Eh..anyway...my main questions are this:

1.) Was Lilith actually created before Eve?
2.) If so, what was the story and why was it taken out of the Bible?
3.) If not, where did it come from and why do people believe it to be true?
4.) Why did(does?) God allow women to be treated so unfairly?

I pray that my faith can grow through all this doubt...

You have made the right in becoming a christian but spend some more time reading the bible for yourself and praying for God's guidance. We are in a battle and it is not physical. Eph. 6:12 For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high [places]. These stoties and thothers you will hear are satan;s way of getting us to doubt God and the bible. If he can do that then we have no way to gain salvation.
Read Genesis again for yourself and you will see that Eve was taken from the rib of Adam. His side, she was to be his helper, not slave, she came from his side, giving the idea of being equal. But sin changed things as you read you will see that she became subject to him because of sin. This does not mean that women were to be treated as some were but again this and all other evils were because of sin.
The bible is truth. No woman was before Eve. Think about it, and you will see that what Eve did was worst, and if she could be included would anyone else be excluded. Secondly God would have everyone saved, so why sent her alone to hell and no one else. Eph. 1:5 Having predestinated us unto the adoption of children by Jesus Christ to himself, according to the good pleasure of his will, John 3:16 For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.

This and aii stories like it come from satan, believe them and he will have you burn with him. John 8:44 He was a murderer from the beginning, and abode not in the truth, because there is no truth in him. When he speaketh a lie, he speaketh of his own: for he is a liar, and the father of it.
It is a hard fight to serve God, but the truth will set you free. we can only over come by the word of God. Please know it. REv, 12:11 And they overcame him by the blood of the Lamb, and by the word of their testimony; and they loved not their lives unto the death. If death is invoved you know how serious this is.
One last thing to consider. Friends, Can two walk together, except they be agreed? If you are for God Walk with God seekers.

 

[laureenoluv8]

Does anyone have any facts about the Lilith story? like where it came from and why it's considered to be true?

 

[ebia]

Does anyone have any facts about the Lilith story? like where it came from ?

Like most stories it evolves. The roots are in babylonian myth as a storm demon, somewhere along the track Jewish folklaw (not mainstream Jewish religion) picked up the name and adjusted the character over and over - mostly in the middle-ages. The story you're referring to first appears in a Jewish text called the Alphabet of Ben Sira, which dates to around the 8th -10th century AD (ie long after the Christian canon had been closed).

and why it's considered to be true?

Does anyone think it's true? It's the stuff of folk-tales and occult mumbo-jumbo, not mainstream religion. In any case its got nothing whatsoever to do with Christianity or pre-Christian Judaism.