Lilith

I LOVE this name and the myth associated with it. Lilith was willing to become a demon if it meant not submitting to Adam and that is something I truly admire about her. And the name Lilith itself sounds so beautiful, elegant, and unique. I would 100% name my future daughter this.

Please note: Lilith was never in the bible. It has nothing to do with Christianity.

Named my daughter this and see a lot of talk here about the Jewish myth (alluded to but not explicitly in the Bible) and no mention of the fact that the name is actually older than that. Goes back to an ancient Sumerian goddess who, like many religious figures, was coopted into the later mythology. Not many of the 'old gods' are going to be well treated in newer mythologies - if they are a winged goddess of night they're gonna be a demon in a later story so that those doing the missionary work can more easily distance the converts from the source material.

Lilith was not the first wife of Adam. She is the innocent snake who accidentally ate the fruit of knowledge. She was the first demon, a sinner. She insulted Eve because Eve always followed Adam. She hypnotized many people.

This name doesn't belong to Judeo-Christian legend. Lilith is a figure in Jewish mythology, but doesn't appear in Christian texts.

Okay people. Lilith was Adam's first wife in CERTAIN cultures' mythologies. In Christian mythology they believe Eve was Adams first wife, except in Babylonian and a few other cultures they believe that Lilith was Adam's first wife. First of all, Lilith was not really evil, she wanted to be treated as Adams equal and when he rejected her request, she left. Adam told god, who sent 3 angels/saints. She refused to come back. Since she was a Succubi she had many demon offspring, so god started killing them off. She in return started killing many humans. The people who believe Lilith is evil, you are wrong. She's only ever wanted to be treated as Adams equal. Everyone portrays her as evil. Yes, she is a creature of the night, but she was fine until god started killing her children.

Concerning "Lilith", my impression of the the reason she was left out of or Demonized by the Christian/protstant Bible, the St. James Version, to be specific, was that it clearly states in Genesis that she was created equal to Adam and created at the same time and out of the same substance. To keep women subservient, the male rulers/priests, etc. had to play up the story of Eve and get rid of Lilith, to keep women in line and from feeling they were equal. This subtle and not so subtle conspiracy has been going on for thousands of years. Sometimes I wonder if the male ego will ever be able to accept women as their equals.

As a Muslim, I've never heard nor read of a Lilith as Adam's first. Eve was the only companion of Adam mentioned in the Quran.

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Either way, it's a very lovely name.

Lilith (as Adams wife) does not exist in Islam or the Quran.
Laila(f) or Leil(m) means Night in Arabic. [noted -ed]

I originally learned of the story of Lilith in a "Women in Judaism" class that I took in high school. It was supposedly stories that were taken out of the bible when it was first published (King James time) because the men didn't want stories where women were portrayed as strong. It was pretty much what most people have previously said. She was the first woman, made the same way as Adam and expelled from Eden when she wanted to 'be on top'.

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I've also read "The Book of Nod", which is where, I think, the vampire mythology comes from. This is a vampire book in which she and Cain mate with each other and other various creatures and create vampires at the Red Sea.

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Personally, I like the name Lilith. But I wouldn't call her Lili for short.

1. Being made in the same manner as someone else does not make you equal to them. Being made differently does not make you inferior. Otherwise Cain, Abel, Seth, and all their siblings would have been inferior to their mother, and each generation would be inferior to the one before it, thus eliminating the need for parents, teachers, and all manner of mentors. We don't want that, do we?
2. Eve was taken out of Adam's side, not his butt or heel. This is symbolic not only of the "one flesh" concept denoting the sanctity of marriage, but also of the fact that woman is to stand at man's side as his equal and his support.
3. To say that the Bible mentions two females being created in Genesis is so Greco-Roman. Jews wrote in the same manner that we might put together a jigsaw puzzle; the framework, followed by the details. Daniel and Revelation are also written this way. In fact, the only single-author books written completely chronologically in the Bible were written by a Gentile. Ancient Jews rarely wrote chronologically, and Moses was no exception.
4. On that note, most editions of the Old Testament are translated directly from the original Hebrew, not the Septuagint. William Tyndale started this trend.
5. Lilith comes from the same root word as 'night,' which is why the name is translated 'night demon' in some versions of the Bible. The words for night are 'layil,' 'lel,' and 'layelah.'
6. The word 'female' in Genesis is 'neqebah,' which comes from a word meaning 'to pierce.' When God removed the rib from Adam's side to create Eve, He had to pierce his flesh. In the same way, the 'second' Adam, Jesus, was pierced in the side for the sake of His bride the church.
7. The word 'male' in Hebrew is 'zakar,' from a word meaning 'remember.' This makes sense, as 99% of God's commands in the Bible are given to men to remember and teach their families.

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To sum it all up, Lilith is not mentioned necessarily by name in the Bible, and she's certainly not described as being created alongside Adam in Genesis. Lilith is just a legend, or worse, a demon. Personally, I agree with CS Lewis, who theorized in his book "Magician's Nephew" that Lilith was a giantess, which, in that context, would make her one of the Nephilim. The Nephilim were a class of fallen angels that seduced men, and may have even been able to reproduce. Who knows, Jezebel might also have been related to her. Can you imagine Jadis and Jezebel as cousins?

Lilith was Adam's first wife chiefly according to The Alphabet of Ben Sira. Before this, or the Talmud, or the Bible, she was an infertile, beautiful demon of storm and disease who seduced men, or came to them when they were asleep. Later she was said to have refused to lie underneath Adam, because God had made them both of clay (equal) some sources also say she also laughed at his sexual crudeness - and left of her own accord. Abrahamic people were surrounded by matriarchy-leaning cultures at this time, the figure of Lilith looks like an assertion of what they did not want in a woman. I think the name itself is beautiful.

Lilith denotes "night demon" - the Hebrew word for "night" is laila (lie-lah), akin to the beautiful name Leila and its spelling variants.

Lilith was Adam's first wife who didn't want to succumb to him. I think that this was the people who wrote the Bible's way of saying that men are in charge. I also read in a book that Lilith was the mother of Lucifer. Whether that is true or not, I can't say. Also, just to clear things up, if you carefully read the beginning of Genesis, Eve was not around when God told Adam not to eat from the tree of knowledge. So it is just another example of men trying to make women look bad.

Eve was the first "Woman" to be created, not Lilith. You see, Lilith was made of earth just as Adam was (and was, technically his equal). After Lilith was expelled for refusing to submit, Eve was eventually made out of Adam's rib (thus making her a piece of him and, technically, belonging to him); in the Bible it is explained that Eve's kind was given a name that means "of man". Therefore, arguably, Lilith wasn't a woman at all.

In the King James Version of the bible, her name is replaced by the term screech-owl.
"The wild beasts of the desert shall also meet with the wild beasts of the island, and the satyr shall cry to his fellow; the screech owl also shall rest there, and find for herself a place of rest."

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Rough morpho-syntactic translation of the original Hebrew:
"the yelpers will meet the howlers; the hairy-ones will cry to their fellow. Liyliyth will repose, and there she will acquire a resting-place."

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Liyliyth's name is variously replaced with the terms:
night-owl (Young, 1898)
night monster (ASV, 1901 AND NASB, 1995)
vampires (Moffatt Translation, 1922)
night hag (RSV, 1947)
Lilith (Jerusalem Bible, 1966)
Lilith (New American Bible, 1970)
night creature (NIV, 1978; AND NKJV, 1982; AND NLT, 1996)
nightjar (New World Translation, 1984).

From what I read, I do think there is a conspiracy to this whole "who was the first wife of Adam." To make things clear, the bible IS NOT folklore, it's history. Now when I was a child I read the first pages of the Bible and from what I remember it read "God created them, both man and woman" then a few sentences down it states "God put Adam into a deep sleep and took a rib from Adam and made a companion for him, Adam called her woman, for she was taken out of man." Now to me that was confusing it sounded like God created TWO women. Remember the Bible was not a book to begin with, books in ancient times were called scolls and there were many books (scrolls) that were left out and selected the most appropiate books to form the Bible. Then the Bible was translated from Hebrew to Arabic to Greek to English. So much translation that words get the wrong meaning or misinterpreted. I believe that somewhere during this translation someone left out an important piece from the manuscript either by accident or on purpose, there were some scholars that thought some of the writings from other scholars and prophets as blasphemous. There is a "possibility" that Lilith did exist. She saw herself as an equal because she was made from the earth just like Adam so she thought why was she considered lower than he. She also represented the first divorce when she left Adam, and like all men cried and wanted her back, but she refused and to make Adam happy god created Eve.

I read that Lilith means "dark, night" and in history, she would either take kids away or kill them. I can't really remember what it said, but I know it had to do with children.

The word "woman" literally means "taken out of man." If Lilith was created in the same manner as Adam, she would not be a woman. In fact, she would be a man, because the word "man" literally means "red earth." (See a Hebrew-English dictionary on the name Adam.)
In CS Lewis' "the Lion the witch and the wardrobe," Lilith is the ancestor of Jadis. But I'm not sure if Lewis actually believed Lilith existed. Lilith could simply be one of the Assyrian gods Israel had been forbidden to worship, but did anyway. I personally think her inclusion in Jewish myth was the result of the disobedience that got them exiled in the first place.

I always thought they would say this is a combination of Lily and Elizabeth.

She would not submit to him because she was made separately from Adam. She challenged his authority as head of the household and when Adam refused to compromise, she left and Eve was made from Adam's rib so there would never be any question of man's superiority.

Lilith's children were supposed to be Incubus and Succubus, not vampires.

From what I understand (and keep in mind that I'm not Catholic or Jewish, for all that I went to Catholic school for six years), Lilith was the first wife of Adam in the Talmud. She was banished from Eden. Eve was Adam's third wife. (I think he saw the second one being made and was disgusted.)

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She's also a character in various Marvel comics.

Lilith first appears in 'Gilgamesh and the Huluppu Tree' (written from pre-existing oral tradition around 2400 BCE, this part of the epic broke off and is not physically in the original but is often included to help what is left of the text for this section to make sense), and the story of her as Adam's first wife seems to first appear in 'The Alphabet of Ben Sira', if anyone is looking to read the origins of her story.

Christianity does not recognise the myth of Lilith. Only Judaism and Islam do.

The claim that Lilith was the first wife of Adam and the original vampire is so ridiculous I cannot help but laugh! Can't you distinguish fact from folklore?

The entire Bible is folklore, not fact. Most people seem incapable of distinguishing.

From what I know, and I looked a bit for information about Lilith (first wife of Adam) is that all she wanted was to be Adam's equal partner. Because she didn't want to submit to him, Adam, like all stupid, vain men, understood that she wanted to be on top.

In some mythologies it is believed that Lilith was the mother of all vampires after she was thrown out of Eden.

People used to believe that Lilith, the evil demoness, would come and try to rob children from their beds at night. This is why the English word "lullaby" is derived from Hebrew words meaning "Lilith go away".

No, "lullaby" has NOTHING to do with "Lilith". You can look up "lullaby" in any dictionary and see it comes from Old English not Hebrew and the "lulla" part is from "lull", for lulling a baby to sleep.

Greta-elisif said before (rather rudely) that the name Lilith had nothing to do with "Lullaby". How do you know that it's from the Greek origin, hmmm? The Israeli phrase "Lilith Go Away" is Lilith Abi. Lilith Abi= Lullaby?