00:00Hey, I'm Jordan, and this is the Bible and Archaeology podcast, the place for conversations and questions about the Bible, its lands, civilizations, and archaeology
00:08Today, Mary Kate and I are joined once again by Dr
00:11Peter Miller for a wide-ranging conversation about Lilith
00:15While Lilith is commonly associated with Adam as his first wife and identified as the woman created in Genesis 1, Lilith isn't actually mentioned in Genesis and may not be mentioned in the Bible at all
00:26So, where and when does the Lilith tradition come from? Does she ever show up in the Bible? What fears does she address? How does her role change over time? And why does she have such cultural staying power? We talk about all this and more
00:41Remember, for weekly bonus… Episodes, early access to ad-free video podcasts, and exclusive bonus content—consider joining us on Patreon at patreon.com
00:52And so now, settle in, and I hope you enjoy our conversation with Peter all about Lilith
01:02Peter, thank you so much for coming back to join us for a conversation that we teased last time when we were talking about demons
01:07It's taken a while for us to come back
01:09You have to understand, Peter's a very busy man, teaching a full load of classes, doing research, all the things—and very good classes, and your students really like you, so you're always busy
01:18I appreciate you taking the time to come back to follow up on Lilith for us today
01:22I can vouch for that
01:24Yeah, well, Lilith is one of my favorite characters who might be in..
01:29The Bible, we can discuss quite where that comes from today, but it's a pleasure to be here and get to engage with one of the most fascinating mysteries in biblical interpretation, and talk about some of my favorite medieval texts
01:42I think tagging it with "Mysteries" up front is very good because this is a Thing
01:47If you're trying to go down the YouTube rabbit hole, the podcast rabbit hole of Lilith, there are things that are out there, some of them better than others, let's say, in identifying some of this because it is a mysterious origin story and identity
01:59So, if we could start for someone who maybe has seen some of those things before or is coming into this blind and has no idea what this name is in the first place, who is Lilith? Where does she come from? Which is a huge question
02:13But for just the person who's maybe like, I have no idea what this is—who is Lilith? Lilith is, by some popular accounts, Adam's secret missing first wife, a mother of all kinds of demonic entities, and someone who is antagonistic to the human race, particularly to the point of assaulting pregnant women and infants, against whom certain wards and protective spells must be taken
02:43All of that is wrapped up in the idea that if she shows up in the Bible, her name only appears once in a very weird passage—full day's job
02:51So, where does she show up in relation to the Bible? The key text to really understand where Lilith comes from, in this interpretive tradition, is this very odd little text
03:08Called the Alphabet of Bener, whose title is already incorrect because it's two alphabets—one that starts with Aramaic Proverbs and then later the one we care about, which is the Hebrew alphabetic Proverbs
03:23In the context of these alphabetic Proverbs, we get our first real description of who and what Lilith is
03:32In the Alphabet of Bener, we learn that God, as seen in Genesis 1, creates man and woman, but the woman is not named Eve
03:44It is, in fact, Lilith, made like Adam, at this moment of simultaneity
03:55Before we go on, we should note that the alphabetic Bener is a text we're not sure how seriously to take
04:04It is a collection of folk tales, somewhat humorous and almost comic in style
04:13Aphorisms, um, and so it's hard to take it as serious theology, but it certainly seems reflective of Jewish expectations, Jewish tropes, Jewish culture around, say, 800 to 1100 CE or so
04:35We won't get into the weeds on dating, but needless to say, we're a little bit after the composition of Genesis
04:41There is a gap, which is one of these moments we'll come back to; there's a real history of development connected here
04:47But you mentioned the Genesis 1, Genesis 2 problem
04:51So, how, I guess, a question I would ask is: with Ben Sira coming in here and looking at this, how big of a problem is this for people? Does Ben Sira providing the smoothest answer? Is the Genesis 1, Genesis 2 opening up different doors? Like, why reach for..
05:07Lilith, because other people now reach for different explanations for how Genesis 1 and 2 go together
05:14Well, I mean, the most common modern explanation you'll probably hear is this notion that, like, God did in fact create the world in seven days—um, well, six plus a day off—and then, on day six, in making humans, we get this like telescoped-in view, and that's what's starting in Genesis 2, chapter 4 or chapter 2, verse 4 onward
05:36But there are some very quick problems that a careful reading elucidates, as they almost always do
05:44A careful reading is always a problem—stirring up reading, yes, very much so
05:48And so, there are two major issues that come to the fore, one of which almost no rabbi has a problem with, and that is the question of..
05:59Plants you see in Genesis 2’s account: God makes man before there are plants, but that was like two or three days ago in Genesis 1, when there should already be plants everywhere
06:12So we have that issue
06:15The second major issue is where and when woman comes into the picture
06:24In Genesis 1, God makes both man and woman in His image, gives them the command to be fruitful and multiply, and gives them dominion over the creation
06:35That’s not quite how it goes in Genesis 2
06:38We have Adam made from the clay and given the name Adam, in a way that suggests it’s just a man in Genesis 1
06:44Then God needs to make a partner because Adam is lonely
06:51So God goes through making all the animals and checking to see if a hedgehog works— is this what you..
06:58Need now, how about a platypus and just working down the line? It's not until each of them has presented to Adam and been given a name by Adam that God casts a sleep over Adam and makes the woman—um, who I'm going to call the woman because she's not given the name Eve until the punishment in Genesis three
07:21And so, we have this wife who, uh, becomes a companion, drawn on as the Bible says, from Adam's own flesh and bone
07:31We get this etiological, this origin story for where marriage comes from—really two people reuniting as one flesh
07:38This is where this comes from
07:42And so, for a lot of readers, that's not an issue, to have these discrepancies; these stories are different parts of oral tradition, they're telling different..
07:51Things, they're different stories, one of which is about the ordering of the universe and mankind as the pinnacle of God's creation, and one of which is creation starts with man and ends with his partner
08:04We're concerned about where marriage and partnership come from
08:11But if you want to read these texts in order, insisting that every part of it is literally and factually true, God made man and woman at the beginning
08:26In one, and all of a sudden, Adam is now lonely in Genesis 2
08:29Where did the first partner go? Right, and as far as we can tell, the ancients were asking the same question
08:38It is in this gap, after the composition and literary tradition of Genesis is established, that we see Lilith stories start to take shape
08:53I'm hesitant to use the name early on because there might be some complications around that
09:01Complications of what kind? Well, not least what exactly Lilith is, and I think maybe returning now that we have this background to the alphabet of Ben Sira to see how, with a couple hundred years, some authors tried to make sense of this, to try to read these literally
09:21The author of Ben Sira has an explanation for where this woman went to, and he gives her the name Lilith
09:28He says that she wanted to invert the normal order in sex; she wanted to be on top during sex, which is then a big problem
09:41Yes, so there's this assumed patriarchal hierarchy: right, a man is on top, he is the active agent
09:49We see this in Greek literature, we see this in..
09:51Roman literature, we see it in ancient Near Eastern literature: men are supposed to be on top and active, women are supposed to be on the bottom and submissive
09:59And here is a woman saying, "I was made as an equal partner to you
10:04I should get to be on top sometimes." If we're in a partnership, no one's in charge
10:09This is very much connected to the Genesis 1 creation account, where they are created together—yes, in fact, directly invoking that idea
10:16Yeah
10:23And Adam says no, invoking what we could call this kind of Genesis 2 hierarchy of man over woman, though it hasn't been established narratively yet
10:30And Lilith says, "Screw this, I'm out," and she flies away
10:39No previous description of her flying, but here we are
10:43That's always a point I find
10:45Interesting, she says no and she's condemned, but she grows wings
10:49Yeah, she flies, and we'll talk about where I think there's some ancient Near Eastern precedent, some background mythology that might be informing this
10:59But she flies away, and God wants to intervene and sends three angels after her, and tries to have this negotiation, saying, "Why don't you come back and submit to your husband like you're supposed to?" And she says no
11:15Then she's threatened with the punishment that a hundred of her children will be killed every night
11:23I didn't know she had kids—a lot of children, quite a few
11:27But it turns out there's a reason she has so many, because when she refuses, she's then described as going off and sleeping with men while..
11:37They are asleep and giving birth to these wind spirit demons, these entities that can pass through a birth canal very quickly, but she becomes this mother of antagonistic spirits, a hundred of which are killed every night, but the remainder continue to exist in the world
11:59This is one of the accounts in a medieval Jewish text about where evil spirits, these demons, are coming from
12:06So she's addressing a number of issues on the one hand, from Genesis 1 and Genesis 2, but also looking toward later concerns in this later text
12:15Yeah, and she's also addressing other medical concerns of the time, too
12:20All of this is situated with the titular character, Lilith, allegedly at the court of King Nebuchadnezzar, who has a..
12:28Sick son, and who is being asked? "Hey, why is my son sick?" And this is the story he tells
12:38Then he goes on to explain that this is why certain talismans and amulets used to ward off Lilith are part of Jewish practice, because she hates Adam, she hates his new wife, and she hates that Eve gets to be the mother of humankind
12:57She attacks children and pregnant women, and in this, we see these invocations of protective amulets providing a mechanism to explain things like infant mortality and the risks of pregnancy
13:11But given this shape of an antagonistic agent, who you can take steps against by getting these amulets or these invocation bowls outside of Genesis 1 and Genesis 2, which doesn't make a direct reference to her
13:28But is one of these places? I'm assuming we'll probably get a question down in the comments if we don't address it about the Isaiah reference or not reference, because we're saying is there a name that we should be calling it, is there a biblical reference to it, what's going on with the Isaiah 34 reference—in air quotes—to Lilith or not, and should that be considered a reference here? What is that? So, the Isaiah 34 passage is this really awkward piece; it's part of a larger decrying of Edom, and in this, there's a description of what's going to become of the kingdom
14:06It's going to become this ruin, and we're going to know it's a ruin because there are going to be all these kinds of oddities that will take place there, and things only..
14:15Associated with the wilderness, with a lack of civilization, will take its place, so you get wild cats
14:23Though what kind of cat is not super clear, you get hyenas, um, you get some goat demon things, and we'll talk about how translation tries to manage this
14:39But we've got these wilderness entities that pop up, um, and it's here that Lilith shall find a place to rest
14:51Yes, now this could be the proper name Lilith; we've got her right there in Isaiah
14:57It surely can be, but when we look at the Septuagint translation—how a Greek-speaking Jewish author tried to make sense of this—we get other things populating this, not least we get the erasure of some of the animals and an insistence that these are the collective of the daimonia, the like demonic
15:24Entities, these plural of the demon, the spirits, um, but the thing that's going to find rest is not Lilith anymore, and in fact, it seems to be what they're trying to wrestle with—these goat demons, as um—and they call them by the Greek word "onós," which means something like donkey centaurs
15:33It's a very bizarre choice
15:43I think they're having fun
15:48Yeah
15:52What are they reaching for? We don't know what this is, what it comes close to
15:56We don't
15:59Um, now there are plenty of people who want to argue, like, oh, goat demons— they must mean Sátyrs, but Sátyr is a Greek word
16:05One would assume a Greek speaker could spell Sátyr with an S-E, if they needed to
16:10And this is one of the debates that always happens with when the Septuagint varies
16:14Why is it varying? Do they not know what..
16:16To do or are they trying to do something different, so there can be a wide variety of opinions that you might see on something like this, but they do a number of different things around this text outside of just her potential reference
16:27They do, and when you dig into the Hebrew words behind these animals, I think what we're seeing is a poetic convention of trying to be overly fancy with your words
16:38The example I go to is, if I'm trying to create a list of things I see on a walk but I want to be very fancy with it and I just casually mention seeing a Samoyed
16:52Well, if you are someone who knows dogs and dog breeds, you recognize, oh, that's a white, big, fluffy thing
16:58But if it's a dog breed you haven't heard of and I've given you no context, that..
17:03This is if you're me and you're sitting here right now going, "Is that a type of demon?" I don't know what that is
17:09My dad works in the crane industry; I got that right away
17:13I know what a Samoyed is because a couple of my friends happen to have a Samoyed named Heimdall, and thus I know very deeply what kind of dog it is
17:24But it was the first time I’d been introduced to it, and the first time I heard the term, it was this bizarre thing
17:32Now, coupled that perhaps with trying to be fancy and very specific, along with the fact that ancient categorizations of animals do not cleanly map onto our modern scientific delineation, so, right, we can't even say, like, part of the reason we say "wild cats" is because we don't know if they mean things like certain kinds of..
17:52Lions—we're talking about the West Asian tiger population
17:58Is this some kind of panther or some other big cat? But we know they're broadly construed as cats
18:07You find similar things in Hellenistic Greek poetry, where in an attempt to sound incredibly learned and make this wise literature, writers end up using very obscure, specific terms
18:15These terms can be so on the nose that, even with a few years of context, no one really knows what you're talking about
18:27It might be something similar happening with our Lilith here, because these might be a kind of lost word—depending on our ancient cognates—to describe some kind of owl or some kind of aerial wind creature
18:44It could be haunting these desert ruins, but she does get connected with some of these ideas
18:53The desert space in her fleeing out, and that's kind of where that bridging comes from, or is it just the word looks similar to this name that we know, and we're doing the identification
19:01I have to say, the word in the alphabet of Ben-Hur is the same as it is in Isaiah
19:10Yes, so the alphabet of Ben-Hur word is the same
19:14Are they finding this and trying to figure out what the heck is a Lilith? Not least because it's taking singular verbs after this
19:24It's not a collective Lilith, or L, or something like this, but it's plural
19:31It's the singular thing that is making actions
19:39So, on the one hand, we have to think what the author of Isaiah had in mind, and it could be this
19:45And the screech owl, the vulture, will rest here; we'll find its place
19:54But I don't want to just say Buzzard, that's really boring
19:56I want to have word choice, um, and so I go for this hyperspecific thing, but then also our later readers, perhaps the alphabet of Ben Sira, perhaps some of these other texts
20:09Um, we start finding this connection of this mysterious Lilith to things like our Greek Damona, to these different spirits
20:22Um, and given it's this feminine word, given that it is filling this odd place, um, of the desert as being tied to these semi, these demonic figures, um, maybe what we're seeing is the grafting on of Lilith lore
20:37Maybe it's established by the time of the Septuagint
20:39Maybe we're seeing elements flickering in as it's building and growing
20:44Um, one of the challenges with Lilith is, we don't really know
20:51Where it comes from because she might be as old as Gilgamesh itself
20:54So, onto that, where does she show up in other cultures, other Mesopotamian cultures? The big one is Gilgamesh because we have a figure, and I've brought the transliteration here, so pardon my pronunciation—any ancient Sumerians who might be listening
21:14But in the Tree of Inanna, we have this Kil; we have this thing
21:25Now, the astute will hear the Lil part, LIL, Lilith coming, perhaps cognate
21:34We're not sure about the linguistic connection here
21:36It might be just convenient enough to be a plausible explanation for 18th, 19th-century scholars, and then we in the 20th and 21st century just said, 'Yeah, that sounds good.' But whatever this Leil is, it's..
21:52Sitting in this tree alongside a serpent and a sacred bird, which is another thing we don't fully know what it is, but it's a sacred bird of some kind
22:05I like the sound of that
22:08But we can see we've got this thing called a Leela K, a sacred tree next to a snake, also maybe associated with bird symbolism
22:23Depending on how you interpret famous art history, like the Bernay relief, which might depict Lilith, Nana, or another prominent deity, what you have is a feminine creature, visibly human throughout, except with bird feet— which will become a common trope in medieval Jewish depictions of demons, showing bird feet
22:36Interesting
22:50Now, I'm not saying there's a direct line here by any means, but certainly, it's thought-provoking to try to figure out
23:03Out what's going on, because we know that ancient Israelites and ancient Jews were influenced and were thinking along with their neighbors, and when we have stories like this Gilgamesh account, we have one possible line of origin for where Lilith might come from, and why, perhaps, in association with sacred trees and serpents, she gets readily read into the Genesis account, which quite famously has a sacred tree and a serpent
23:37So, it seems like a ripe crossover ground if you're looking for connections, if you're looking for references
23:43The name is close, some of the imagery is close in these parallels
23:49Do they pick up some of the similar styles of concerns that we get in the Alphabet of Ben Sira with what she is connected to in...? These other traditions, whether it's Gilgamesh or some of the outside archaeological attestations to her, or is it just a similarity in style or attestation? Well, there are these other categories of spirits called the Lilu in Akkadian, and these Lilu or Litu are where we start to see, not a direct parallel, but an odd proximity to some of these other ideas of spirits attacking pregnant women, attacking infants
24:30 Interestingly, the Lilu and Litu, whose leader is the god Pazuzu, have an antagonism toward the goddess Lasa, who is an evil deity
24:47Lasa is known for attacking and ripping open the bellies of pregnant women and devouring infants
24:56She's a horrific creature
25:05And it is statues and apotropaic talismans invoking Pazuzu and his wind spirits, which, broadly, are not good—these are Pazuzu brings plague and disease and famine with these winds
25:14But also, it is what you need to hold off, lash to the enemy of my enemy
25:23Exactly
25:32Um, but again, we have this odd potential linguistic link of the Lev-L linking perhaps to Lilith and having these associations with the need to ward against supernatural attacks, especially against children and vulnerable periods of the reproductive cycle for women
25:41Um, again, not a direct line, but it's so tantalizingly close—it’s hard not to want it to be true
25:49So, you mentioned the warning or the need to ward off—what did warding off these spirits look like in the ancient world? So, when it comes to say wording off Lamashtu, we get just statues of Pazuzu, a broadly masculine figure with four wings, kind of a bird face
26:07He will be put up in doorways and the like
26:10But as we see from the alphabet, there are traditions of warding off Lilith in similar ways
26:19The alphabet mentions this is why you write the names of the three angels and these other figures as protective wards to be worn by the child or worn by the mother
26:29You'll also see incantation bowls, often drawing somewhat crude but recognizable images of a feminine figure identified as Lilith, with the goal of trapping her under the bowl or warding her in it, otherwise preventing her from crossing it, like a threshold to keep, say, a nursery or a..
26:51House with a pregnant woman safe, um, and so this kind of apotropaic, protective, magic tradition around these periods of great vulnerability—there is little as potentially horrifying as a pregnancy in the ancient world
27:08Um, and yet, what we have are these traditions that emerge that seek to do anything to help protect these women and the children that res, result
27:16Yeah, absolutely, rightly so
27:25Um, and so we see there is explicitly Jewish practice, we see there is explicitly Mesopotamian practice, and there's some amount of continuity in this
27:33Um, perhaps we're seeing, you know, Jews from the Babylonian exile who remained in Babylon being influenced by depictions of these deities, depictions of these things
27:45Incorporating them into their own stories, or finding justification for how these things can exist through their own creation myths, through their own understandings, or perhaps this is an entirely internal Jewish grappling with how to read our texts
28:02The answers they're coming to are informed by some of the cultures around them and how these other cultures have explained such things
28:09But there is a deep grappling with this that continues through the medieval period, and that Lasha concern, that worry about the health of women, gets explicitly grafted onto Lilith by the period of the composition of the Zohar
28:25Yes, where this horrific attacking motion, this hatred of humanity, becomes explicit
28:31This mystical treatise—what is the social context of this as well? Because we talked about a lot of grappling with women's health and concerns
28:42Why are these concerns so heavy? That is a very large question
28:49I mean, from a raw medical standpoint, there is the reality that there is concern for the well-being of women, whether that is for their own sake, which I would hope is often the case
29:03But as we see in a lot of ancient texts, concern that a woman who struggles with pregnancy is a threat to the family line or inheritance rights, and we should, you know, be aware of and grappling with that
29:15But also, we need to be aware of things like Lilith becoming a danger if she is in some ways a subversion of or threat to Eve
29:26The established patriarchal order as the alphabet of men wants to point to her being, um, and this notion that she can birth demons, um, is often, you know, perhaps linked to medieval succubus tradition
29:41But broadly, it seems to be an explanation for nocturnal emissions, for men having wet dreams and waking up with an expulsion of semen
29:52Um, and this visitation by Lilith and the birthing of demonic children becomes an explanation for why a man who did not have sex still has produced sexual emissions
30:02Um, and so, through this, we see an attempt to just grapple with all these weird pieces of biology and social construction that just find ready purchase to take root in this very, initially vague but growing Lilith mythology that develops
30:24Through these texts and their interpretation, it feels like she's taking on so many different types of fears and concerns
30:32Depending on what you've heard about her before, you might have only heard, "Well, there's Lilith and there's a succubus tradition," and that's what Lilith's role is, which maybe is or maybe is not part of this, depending on how you see these connections
30:44But something like the concern here for childbirth—depending on how you read that—is: is that a patriarchal concern for heirs, or is that a welfare concern for individuals? She's picking up tons of different types of fears over time, for different communities and in different ways
31:02Can we see that being wrestled with back and forth? Like, do they feel like they're..
31:07All are happy to share her, or are they trying to pull her just into addressing my concern and my fear? This is what her real identity is, and they are pushing other traditions out of the way
31:17It's an interesting kind of conglomeration of things
31:21I think the idea of Lilith, because she's so nondescript in the central sacred texts that people focus on, there's ample room to share all of this
31:32You'll see certain traditions want to tamp down the notion of the first wife of Adam; that doesn't always play well
31:43But this spiritual enemy, this antagonist of mankind, gets pushed very far—so much so that if you go to the Sistine Chapel and look at Michelangelo's painting of the Temptation..
31:59The serpent is a woman from the waist up because of a tradition that Lilith either convinced the serpent to do it or was the serpent in the first place, and this finds a parallel in a Jewish tradition that she becomes the female companion of Samael, the leader of the demonic angels, the head of the Satanic forces, depending on exactly how you want to translate this
32:24She becomes this partner in crime to the evil figure
32:27The partner in crime is a great way to put it
32:32Yeah, yeah, and she's this massive figure who has such a vacuous center because there's so little said about her in the text
32:40She can be whatever you need her to be, and there's not a lot of concern about contradiction in her entity because, what else would a mother of..
32:51Demons may be but a containment of eternal potential
32:54Lilith becomes this vessel into which you can fit whatever you're anxious or worried about, or in some modern takes, whatever you want her to be—as a champion of women and resistance to subjugating structures
33:08So, what does her modern depiction look like now? How is her tradition, her legacy, if you can say that, carried on? Well, she certainly has a storied tradition in modern media
33:26She is almost always portrayed as a seductress of some kind, linked to the succubus tradition in particular, being a woman who craves and desires sex, especially sex in which she has a certain amount of control
33:44This lends her to the notion of being a woman who threatens good
33:51Morals are good, good, righteous men would never, if it weren't for Lilith
33:57And, of course, it wasn't for Lilith running around
34:01Yeah
34:06Um, and of course, part of the problem is the way she dresses, because if you look at modern depictions of Lilith, she almost always just looks like a dominatrix
34:10Yeah, she is in very tight-fitting black leather, very revealing clothing, usually an exposed midriff of some kind, if not just fully topless with a convenient piece of scenery blocking the breasts in some way
34:24Um, but she is always a seductress, but always dangerous in some way, like she is a threat but a threat that invites you in, because a lot of the depictions, at least in which they're emphasizing the danger of Lilith, are, you know, this kind of..
34:46I think a lot of, like in the Batman universe, Poison Ivy is this pheromone-using entity who lures men into their doom
34:54Um, I find a lot of similar expressions where she's luring men into their doom, into their demise
35:01Um, but they willingly do it because she is so beautiful, so seductive, or has, you know, lied to them in just the right way
35:10Um, but it also often finds expression that she devours these people in some way
35:15There's a lot of consumption, cannibalism, threat, of, you know, not to play it out too much, but it's like the song "Maneater" — she’ll chew you up, right? Uh, it's this just depiction of the female who threatens the household
35:22Yeah
35:30Um, and in a lot of ways, that modern depiction feels really in line with some of these ancient traditions
35:38Where Lilith is just kind of the inverse of the depiction of Eve as the good and proper wife
35:44Yeah, um, if Eve is the one who is subject to Adam, if she's the one who listens, if she's the one who does what she's told, then, and Lilith is the one who defies these, and the one time Eve gets punished is the time she tells Adam what to do and Adam listens
36:06Yeah, the one time Eve acts like what medieval tradition will call a Lilith-like action, um, we see Eve is punished, and she's punished with painful childbirth, a thing that we know Lilith doesn't suffer if she's birthing hundreds a night
36:23Yeah, um, she is this odd foil to Eve in this way; she's everything Eve isn't, which sometimes men want and other times men know brings their ruin
36:31But either way, it's..
36:39A very male-centered reading of the spectrum of what women can be in relation to them, out of the spread of traditions, roles, or concerns
36:48What is it within her that gives her such staying power all the way into the modern period? These depictions you're talking about now, she still has staying power and an image and a name that gets recognized
37:02Is there something that you think is a central element to her that allows that to be? Because that's not common for everyone, especially some of these vague characters that you get from biblical or non-biblical traditions
37:15From the Epic of Gilgamesh, they're not all still floating around in social circles
37:18I think one of the most interesting things that makes Lilith perennial is..
37:23This flirtation with danger, um, like, you know, there's this sense that she's dangerous but in a pleasing way, um, that I think draws people in and keeps it in the mindset
37:36And realistically, just generation after generation, people are always worried about sex and specifically the kind of sex their children might be having
37:46Um, and with Lilith, you get this embodiment of whatever the sexual taboo is
37:53Lilith does it in these early stories; it's refusing the missionary position, it's saying no, the woman should be on top once in a while
38:02Um, in more modern depictions, she's usually flirting with violent or dominating taboos
38:10She is, in some ways, exploring these dark areas of the sexual psyche, exploring these ways in which people want things
38:21That aren't what society tells them they should have or that explore these things
38:25I think you particularly see it in the modern world, like Lilith will often be depicted as pursuing men but also now women, and Lilith as an increasingly Sapphic or lesbian character has become more common in the last several years
38:43This is perhaps because people are grappling with issues like the legalization of same-sex marriage after the Obergefell v
38:50Hodges decision and in the debates leading up to it
38:54I mean, heck, I drew a comparison to Poison Ivy earlier, and Poison Ivy and Harley Quinn have become a canonical couple in certain depictions of the Batman universe
39:05I don't think it's an accident that that kind of character is finding new exploration
39:10These kinds of taboos around, um, these certain concerns, these especially sexual concerns
39:17Um, but it's also worth remembering that Lilith isn't only remembered as a negative thing anymore
39:23Um, between Lilith as a magazine, Lilith Fair, um, Lilith has become a powerful icon for feminist agendas against patriarchal structures
39:37Um, she has become a kind of rallying point, a figure to be invoked as the woman who first refused the patriarchy and was demonized by male authors in a very literal sense
39:49For this, um, and so, for many people, Lilith is not something to be terrified of
39:59Lilith is especially for women struggling with power brought down from male-centered hierarchies
40:08She is a rallying cry, she is an icon of what you can do, and she..
40:14She is the subject of a very important 1970s piece of Jewish feminist writing, specifically about taking flight and using the Lilith story to empower women to leave dangerous or abusive marital situations, refuse the male patriarchy, and take liberation into their own hands
40:39In that context, Lilith becomes far from a demon, but a very inspiring figure
40:49Part of why she remains significant is because, perhaps, not everything she stood for—when grappled with in the modern world—is something we want to continue thinking of as evil
41:00 Yeah, can I circle back to something—speaking of taking flight—that we didn't totally get to? How does she get wings? Because we didn't come back to that
41:09Taking flight made me remember, let's come back— is it the bird connection? Where do Lilith's wings and her flying abilities come from? Yeah, um, I do not have a clean answer for you
41:21I can tell you what kind of answer I think there is
41:23So I, I think that the author of the Alphabet needed a reason that Lilith left the Garden, but if the Garden is a guarded thing, she has to have a way out
41:36And these other notions of these Liu Liu, like all of these things swirling around in the background, potentially other Semitic language cognates to what Lilith might be, all of them invoke birds of some kind
41:55And maybe the person knows this pun, or maybe they just know about the Litu, they know about some of these other bits, but they also..
42:04Just need her to go, and broadly speaking, throughout quite far, quite fast, um, and across a lot of these ancient traditions, demons broadly are most associated with the element of air
42:18Yeah, and so if she is going to end up as a demonic entity, and the initial refusal of Adam's demand is this first step on that path, there I think it's very natural that in this she would become more aerial in some way
42:38Um, now what's interesting is, and I would need to reread the passage here, it says she flies away
42:47I don't know that it cleanly says she gets wings, um, yeah, because that could mean fly, as in just to flee if you're using it loosely, or literally
42:58Is she going to fly? Um, but I think the underlying word here is one of flight
43:02Okay, but, um, I..
43:05I think it's one of flight in the sense that you know you don't need wings to fly
43:07You can, you know, just like Superman, fly away
43:10You can hover and levitate
43:13There are a variety of ways that, especially if you are a being not bound by physics like we are
43:21If she is beginning this process of transformation or already was this, whatever the case may be, again, the alphabet is not trying to give us a taxonomy; it's telling us a story
43:33But whatever it is, she's able to fly, and she does so after saying God's ineffable name, which to me suggests she refused Adam, and then she committed blasphemy
43:50Now she's got this kind of dark power derived from that, like she is rejecting the hierarchy of order here, and in so doing, becoming like what she will give birth to
44:09Later in these aerial things, um, so I mean I think there's like an internal diegetic explanation, but I think part of the reason she ends up flying specifically is because of this aerial association, whether they know it's an owl pun of some kind, which again I don't know for sure—it's an owl
44:31I'm convinced that Lilith is an owl or something similar, um, because you meet an owl in the wilderness at night, and you have no idea; that's about the scariest thing I can imagine
44:42Um, it's quite horrifying to actually encounter, especially some of these larger Asian owl species
44:47But you get some of these creatures, um, associated with wind, and these are the same kinds of creatures that Hazu is associated with, that the Lilitu are associated with
44:58You get perhaps links back to this Zub bird, um, all of these lead back to flying in some way, which links back to broader associations of the demonic with the aerial, um, which lets Lilith fly, I think
45:16Yeah, so the context is there, even if the direct line, again, like with a lot of this, the direct line may not always be there for us, but the ground from which it all emerges is plentiful, and the traditions are about, yeah, it is
45:27Um, if you've ever had to try to replant and rehang one of those vining spider plants, my gosh, like what Lilith is, is a knot of, like, eight of these, and you're trying to find and trace just one of these at a time, and it just refuses to give
45:45That's a good way to phrase it, that's you kind of know where all the roots and stems are
45:51Coming from, but you don't exactly know when and how everything actually became the knot you're holding
45:53Yeah
45:55Um, it's very challenging
45:57Well, I appreciate you trying to help us walk through some of that mess to find the roots that lie underneath
46:05We really appreciate you taking the time to come and talk about Lilith today
46:08If you have questions about Lilith that we didn't get to, because inevitably there's a lot that we didn't cover, you can leave them down in the comments
46:16We can bother Peter again, if they are willing in the future, to maybe come back and talk more about Lilith, or if there's a connected tradition you'd be interested in
46:24As you can guess, Peter is an expert on things that you might associate with the other realms
46:29Otter fringes of some of this territory, Peter probably knows the answer
46:34Oh, most definitely
46:35So, if you leave it in the comments, send us an email, we might be able to get Dr
46:39Miller back to talk about that
46:42But for today, Peter, thank you so much for taking the time
46:43Thank you both for having me
46:45It’s always a pleasure to come talk about some of the delightful esoterica that I get to teach in classes
46:51And, at the very least, if I don’t know the answer, I promise to at least find an interesting story to explain why, and another great sales pitch for why you should take classes with Dr
46:55Miller
46:58This is the kind of stuff you get to do
47:02So, if you’re interested in this, hey, take a look at the course calendar
47:03Look at Iowa, and you can come take some classes
47:05With Dr
47:07Miller, I'm just saying they're great classes
47:09Well, for everyone here today, that's our sales pitch is done
47:12We appreciate you sitting through, like and subscribe wherever you find us
47:15It helps us, hopefully it helps you, and supports great people like Dr
47:17Miller
47:19But for today, I'm Jordan, for Mary Kate and everyone here at Bible & Archaeology
47:23Until next time.