Description

In Armenian literature

The poem “Lilith” by the renowned 20th century Armenian writer Avetic Isahakyan is based on Jewish legend.

Isahakyan wrote:

 His heroine was a creature who emerged from the fire. Adam fell in love with Lilith, but Lilith was very indifferent, sympathy being her only feeling for the latter because Adam was a creature made of soil, not fire.

In German literature

 Adam’s wife, his first. Beware of her.
 Her beauty’s one boast is her dangerous hair

 When Lilith winds it tight around young men
 She doesn’t soon let go of them again.

 1992 Greenberg translation, lines 4206–4211

LILITH is a figure in Jewish mythology, developed earliest in the Babylonian Talmud (3rd to 5th century AD).

 SHE may be linked in part to a historically earlier class of female demons (lilītu) in ancient Mesopotamian religion, found in cuneiform texts of Sumer, the Akkadian Empire, Assyria, and Babylonia.

In Jewish folklore, from the Alphabet of Sirach (c. 700–1000 CE) onwards, Lilith appears as Adam‘s first wife, who was created at the same time (Rosh Hashanah) and from the same clay as Adam—compare Genesis 1:27. (This contrasts with Eve, who was created from one of Adam’s ribs: Genesis 2:22.) The legend developed extensively during the Middle Ages, in the tradition of Aggadah, the Zohar, and Jewish mysticism.^[2] For example, in the 13th-century writings of Isaac ben Jacob ha-Cohen, Lilith left Adam after she refused to become subservient to him and then would not return to the Garden of Eden after she had coupled with the archangel Samael.

© Rana Lotfi, all rights reserved for all countries.