The fact that there were two first women is mentioned in the mythologies of various peoples. One of the oldest literary monuments in the history of mankind, the epic "On Gilgamesh", written in Sumer 2000 years ago, first mentions the name Lilith. There she appears in the form of the first demon woman who lived in the hollow of a divine tree. Lilith is the name of a woman who, according to myths and even the Bible, was created before Eve.
Creation of a wife to Adam
In the old Testament of the Pentateuch of Moses, the first book of Genesis describes the creation of the world and the first people. The appearance of a woman is actually mentioned twice there. About the sixth day it is written: "And God created man in his own image and likeness, just as he created them man and woman." And only after the description of the seventh day, the Bible tells the story of a woman whom God created from the rib of Adam. “And God made Adam fall asleep in a sound sleep and he took one of his ribs and with his body closed his place and the Lord God turned this rib taken from Adam into a woman and brought her to Adam”. It turns out that there were two women: created on the sixth day and on the seventh.
The priests believe that the first accounts of the creation of the world do not belong to one author, but consist of statements by two, or even three different people. This is what explains this discrepancy. The Jews officially recognize the existence of Lilith. For example, there are memories of her in the main book of the Kabbalah - Zohar, written in the 2nd century BC. e. and the Book of Torah - 6th century BC e. In Jewish mythology, the central figure is the demon Succubus - the strangler of newborns, this is Lilith. She became like that after she switched to the side of the dark forces.
Each Jewish family practiced certain rituals to protect their child from the demonic Lilith, who could come at night and mercilessly kill the child. Also, the demon was a danger to teenagers, Lilith seduced them.
Historians date the first amulets against the seductress Lilith in the 8th century AD. The most common of them is the image of a palm with magic words written on it. Such ritual practices acquired a special scope in the Middle Ages. In the Middle Ages, in Jewish families, young men who reached the age of 13 did not have the right to spend the night alone in order to avoid being tempted by Lilith, to whom rumor attributed extraordinary beauty, along with the presence of hooves, webbed wings and other demonic attributes.
The most complete version about Lilith appears in one of the most famous Hebrew texts - the Ben Sira alphabet, written around 700-1000. n. e. by a man named Ben Sira. These are two sheets of aphorisms and sayings, 22 of which are written in Aramaic and 22 in Hebrew. The Ben Sira alphabet describes the first adultery in history: Lilith exchanged Adam for one of the demons. Although Christianity inherited the sacred letter of the Jews, the representatives of the Orthodox Church completely deny even the assumption that there could have been any other woman before God created Eve.
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The Ben Sira alphabet has no meaning for Christians. In their opinion, this document cannot be considered an ancient text at all. Recently, American scientists from the Institute of Population Genetics made a new discovery. Researchers have tried to figure out how genes are passed down the maternal line from generation to generation of genetic relatives. With the help of computer technology, scientists reduced the number of ancestral lines of all women living today to two maternal clans, and not to one, as was previously believed. Thus, it was possible to prove that Adam had two wives - Lilith and Eve, and from both of them comes humanity. Although scientists from other countries are rather skeptical about the discovery of the Americans.
The name Lilith has long become a household name, but the meaning is often different. For some, this is a night demon, born of the underworld. For others, it is a symbol of a woman's individuality and independence. So who is she really, this Lilith?
Adam's first wife
As you know from the Old Testament, the progenitor of the human race had one wife - Eve. However, in a number of non-canonical texts, there is another version: Adam had two wives, and Eve was the second. This statement is found in many medieval apocryphal, that is, not recognized by the official church, works, as well as in earlier Hebrew texts. However, in the Bible you can still find a mention of the name Lilith. In one of the translations, it means a night bird, in another it is interpreted as one of the demonic names. But most likely this name comes from the Hebrew word "layla" - night. According to the apocryphal legend, God created a wife for Adam and named her Lilith. It is noteworthy that, unlike Eve, the second wife, he created this woman not from the thigh of the first man, but just like Adam - from clay. For a while, Lilith and Adam lived together. However, gradually Lilith was overcome by pride. She could not come to terms with the idea that a woman should obey a man and obey him in everything. Lilith believed that she was much smarter than her husband and should, if not dominate the family, then at least be equal to Adam. There was a conflict between the first two people, and Lilith fled from paradise. Three angels were sent for her, who were supposed to convince Lilith to return to her husband. They overtook her supposedly at the Red Sea. Three angels were sent for her, who were supposed to convince Lilith to return to her husband. They overtook her supposedly at the Red Sea. Three angels were sent for her, who were supposed to convince Lilith to return to her husband. They overtook her supposedly at the Red Sea.
Creation of the devil?
All the efforts of the angels were in vain - Lilith was absolutely not going to stay in paradise anymore. Moreover, she told the messengers that she would now become a spirit of vengeance, turning into a demoness who would choke newborn babies and seduce men, appearing to them in a beautiful guise. True, the angels were able to force Lilith to take an oath that she would not enter the house in which she would see themselves or their names. She also took upon herself the punishment: from now on, a hundred of the children she will be able to give birth will die every day. Having accepted the terms of the contract, Lilith was the first of humanity to leave paradise for a sinful world. Unlike Adam and Eve - voluntarily. At first glance, this version seems somewhat implausible. After all, Lilith's rebellion against her husband took place even before the Fall, which means that she, like her husband, did not yet know good and evil. So why did Lilith dare to rebel against God, who prepared her the fate of the first man's wife?
Experts in mythology believe that any legendary character should be considered exclusively in conjunction with all known myths and legends about him. And only then the picture will become more or less clear. This is the case with the image of Lilith.
The reason for her fall and transformation from a man into a demoness can be understood from another apocryphal text dating back to the early Middle Ages. According to him, Lilith was not created by God, but by his eternal adversary - Satan. Satan created Lilith on the mountain to people in the form of a beautiful and seductive, but her soul was similar to her creator. And since then, two types of people began to live on earth: the evil and cruel were the children of Lilith, and the kind and merciful were the children of Eve. The same text states that Cain killed not his own brother, but his stepbrother, since Abel was the son of Eve, and Cain was the son of Lilith. The ancient author of the Apocrypha clearly tried to solve the most difficult philosophical problem in this way - the nature of good and evil in people.
The progenitor of monsters
However, at the voluntary exodus of the proud Lilith from paradise, the story of her relationship with Adam does not end. After following her, Adam and Eve had to leave Eden and settle on the land spoiled by their fall, Lilith wished to return to her husband. He accepted her, and their further cohabitation lasted 130 years. Let such a long time not surprise the readers. All the characters in the first books of the Old Testament lived for a very long time. So, about Noah it is reported that he built his ark for 500 years. At the same time, there is a hypothesis that in fact the Bible does not mean years, but lunar months. So it is quite possible that Lilith and Adam lived together for only 130 lunar months. Although this, of course, is also a solid marital experience.
As the apocryphal legend says, from Adam Lilith gave birth to a tribe of monsters and unclean spirits, of which, as a result, a great many bred on earth. Perhaps this part of the legend should be understood allegorically: from Adam, Lilith did not give birth to demons, but just vicious and cruel people. But some experts are of the opinion that the authors of the apocryphal meanings put into their words a literal meaning: after all, in many mystical texts, various kinds of evil spirits - demons, vampires, werewolves - are often called the children of Lilith.
By the way, Lilith herself has many of the features inherent in these terrible creatures. Like vampires, she sucks blood from newborn babies. In the manner of werewolves, she can take on various female guises, and turn into animals - most often a cat or a goose. Well, in this case, it should be understood that the immigrant from paradise passed on her qualities to the creepy offspring at the genetic level.
How long did Lilith live?
About how many years Lilith lived, nothing is said in the legends. Also, none of them says anything about how and where she died. However, some researchers of ancient occult and religious texts believe that Lilith did not die at all, but lives to this day. In the mythological tradition - and Christianity is no exception here - for some especially significant characters it is customary to make an exception to the general rules.
So, for example, the prophet Elijah did not die, but was taken up by a chariot of fire to heaven. Agasfer - the Eternal Jew, cursed for insulting Christ, is forced to wander homelessly until the Last Judgment. So what happened to Lilith? It is known that her husband Adam has died. Moreover, theologians believe that he was buried under the very same Calvary where the Savior was crucified. The blood of the murdered Christ sprinkled on his remains - that is why a skull is often depicted at the bottom of the crucifix.
However, by her renunciation of paradise and her husband, Lilith, as it were, took herself beyond the borders of mortal destinies and became a demonic creature. In the Christian tradition, it is believed that demons, unlike angels, are mortal, but nothing is known for certain about their lifespan. So why doesn't Lilith stay in our world to this day? Even if not in the body that she originally possessed.
In one of the legends, which was undoubtedly influenced by the ideas of Kabbalah about the transmigration of souls, it is said that Lilith is born again from century to century in one of her offspring. And this will continue until the Last Judgment.
Bride of Antichrist
The revelation of John the Evangelist is a polysemous, extremely difficult to interpret canonical biblical work. Again, some theologians believe that everything written by John should be taken literally. For others, the numbers and symbols of the Apocalypse are mostly metaphors.
One of the most notable characters in John's Revelation is the Babylonian harlot. There is a wide range of opinions as to who or what is hiding behind this image. A number of religious thinkers believe that this is a generalized symbol of the fall and corruption of the world before the end of the world. According to others, this will be the name of the country - "the empire of evil" in which the Antichrist will rule. However, there are those who are sure that the Babylonian harlot is the very same Lilith who neglected God and paradise.
The grounds for the latter hypothesis are by no means groundless. To understand why, we need to turn to Iranian and Babylonian mythology. In Iranian mythology, Lilith is the progenitor of Ahriman - the supreme evil deity, the doctrine of the nature of which was developed in some detail by the prophet Zarathustra. In many ways, Ahriman fits the description of the Antichrist from the Revelation of John. In Babylonian mythology, there is a deity Lilitu, whose functions include seducing men and killing babies. And in the authoritative kabbalistic text, Lilith is called the Whore, the Treacherous,
Unholy and Black. Comparing all this information, we get the figure of the Babylonian harlot.
The famous mystic writer and philosopher Daniel Andreev adheres to the version that Lilith is the very Babylonian whore. In one of his books, he says that Lilith will become the bride of the Antichrist during his short reign on earth before the Last Judgment.
Feminism symbol
At different times, people developed a completely opposite attitude towards Lilith. So, in the Middle Ages and in the Renaissance, disobedient children were scared by the name of Lilith, women of easy virtue were called her daughters, and husbands caught in adultery wrote off everything to the obsession of a night demoness.
But the era of the Enlightenment came - and the perception of this mythological character began to change. Lilith began to be seen as a symbol of female passion, unbridledness and at the same time mystery. She turned into the first "fam fatal" sung in literature - a femme fatale who makes others suffer, but at the same time suffers herself. A vamp woman who is irresistible and at the same time, due to her craving for independence, is doomed to tragic loneliness. Lilith was contrasted with Eve - an ordinary and stupid woman who thinks only about maintaining the economy and in everything obedient to her husband.
In the XIX-XX centuries, the image of a night demoness was repeatedly used by many famous writers and poets. Among them are the Scotsman John MacDonald (the novel "Lilith"), the French classic Anatole France (the story "The Daughter of Lilith") and our Marina Tsvetaeva (the poem "Attempt at Jealousy", where Lilith, made of fire, is just opposed to the fleshly, everyday Eve).
Paradoxically, the image of Lilith was adopted by the current feminists.
Even one of their societies, the representation of which I managed to find on the Internet, is named after her. In the manifesto of society, Lilith is praised as a heroine who managed to say "no" to a man who did not want to recognize her as equal and did not appreciate all her virtues.
“… It is not entirely correct to call her“the first woman.”She is a kind of feminine spiritual principle, moreover, of a destructive nature. This principle has firmly adhered to Adam from the moment of his creation. Even, more precisely, clung to him. Since the time when Khava stood out into an independent being, Lilith “lagged behind” Adam and is in the spiritual worlds, “bombarding” a person with the main idea, which finds expression in egocentrism, arrogance and relativism (“there is no truth, everything is relative”).
The Book of Zohar says that Lilith will disappear "with the destruction of Rome", that is, if we translate the terminology of the Zohar and the Talmud into a language we understand, at the end of the messianic period, when "the final results will be summed up."
Then in all Creation there will be no place for Lilith: “And on that day there will be a unity of the Most High and His Essence” (the prophet Zechariah, ch. 14, v. 9).
Quote from Wikipedia: “Lilith is the first wife of Adam in Kabbalistic theory. Mentioned in some of the early apocryphal of Christianity that were not included in the biblical canon. In the Hebrew text of the book of Isaiah, which tells about the desolation of Idumea after the Divine judgment (Isa. 34:14), the appearance of a night ghost (lilith) is predicted. Mentioned in the Dead Sea Scrolls, Ben Sira Alphabet, Zohar.
According to legend, after parting with Adam, Lilith became an evil demon that kills babies (this character is also present in Arab myths). In Mesopotamia, a similar name is given to a night demoness who kills children and mocks sleeping men (men “lilu” are also mentioned)”.
The Bible mentions that before the flood: "The sons of God (angels) saw the daughters of men that they were beautiful, and they took them as their wives, whatever they chose." They gave birth to Nephilim children (translated as “those who make others fall”). Given Lilith's demonic origins, the myths about her probably emerged after the flood. In the Bible itself, nothing is really mentioned about Lilith.
ADAM AND EVE
Recently, the media has been constantly repeating information, misunderstood by non-specialists, that scientists have proven that all of humanity descended from one man and one woman who lived many years ago in East Africa. In fact, this is nothing more than a myth. In fact, man had much more than two ancestors.
These hypothetical ancestors are traditionally called "mitochondrial Eve" and "Y-chromosomal Adam". So, those who claim that the mother of all mankind was one woman refer to studies of the DNA molecule of mitochondria (organelles that produce energy for cells). Indeed, at one time such showed that this molecule is similar in all people. And since mitochondrial DNA is transmitted only through the female line (in any zygote, mitochondria are always maternal, since only the nucleus penetrates from the sperm cell into the egg), then a somewhat strange conclusion is made further - it means that all of humanity is the descendants of one single woman.
With Adam the same story - the only difference is that here they refer to data on the study of the sex Y chromosome, which is peculiar only to men. As if it is the same for all representatives of the stronger sex, and this only means that the male population of the planet comes from only one ancestor (since, as you understand, this chromosome is transmitted exclusively through the male line).
It should be noted that creationists are especially zealous in repeating this statement. They believe that they have at their disposal another argument against evolution and in favor of the biblical version of the creation of man. Moreover, as you yourself understand, this argument has a very serious scientific evidence base. Some of the creationists sometimes even write that, they say, now scientists do not doubt that Adam and Eve really existed, and only one thing follows from this - that everything was named as described in the biblical Book of Genesis.
To be honest, this logic seems somewhat strange to me. Agree, even if you admit that all of humanity descended from one woman and one man, this does not at all prove that these first ancestors were created by a certain demiurge, and did not descend from monkeys in the process of evolution. However, let's forget about logic for a while, especially since creationists have always had problems with it. More importantly, in fact, none of the geneticists have ever claimed that you and I descended from the same human couple. And the terms "mitochondrial Eve" and "Y-chromosomal Adam" themselves do not mean specific people, but genetically homogeneous groups of our ancestors.
Let's start with Eve. As mentioned above, it was identified by examining only the DNA of mitochondria. The American geneticist Rebecca Kann and her colleagues engaged in these studies suggested that since this molecule does not undergo recombination, changes in it can occur exclusively through rare random mutations.
Well, if this is so, then by comparing the sequence of mitochondrial DNA and the mutations that have arisen in it over time, one can not only determine the degree of kinship of living people, but also approximately calculate the time required for the accumulation of mutations in one or another population of our ancestors. Which, in fact, was done. True, the research did not cover all human communities that are now living on our planet. As a result, it turned out that, indeed, the DNA of our mitochondria is very similar, which suggests that we all have a common ancestor in the female line.
However, using the molecular clock method, it is possible to accurately calculate the epoch when there were no mitochondrial DNA mutations, that is, to determine the lifetime of that same genetically homogeneous ancestral population. And in 1987, these calculations were made - it turned out that the population where the desired Eve lived existed between 140 and 280 thousand years ago. A comparative analysis of mitochondrial DNA also indicated the habitat of this group - it turned out to be East Africa.
But what was the size of this ancestral population? Scientists cannot say this for sure, but they assume that at least two thousand people, based on the fact that with a lower population the very existence of the human species is generally problematic (due to the very high mortality rate from diseases, injuries and difficult childbirth). Accordingly, although the majority of living people today received mitochondrial DNA from one woman from this population, this does not mean at all that she lived in splendid isolation.
Most likely, the situation developed as follows - for quite natural reasons, the descendants of other representatives of the fairer sex in the straight female line of the same ancestral population either did not survive to this day, or lost their maternal mitochondrial DNA. After all, if a woman does not have a single daughter, then her hereditary molecule from the mitochondria will not be passed on to the descendants of her own son. If, for example, a friend of "mitochondrial Eve" had a son who later married Eva's daughter, then the mitochondria of their children will contain the DNA of Eve, not another grandmother.
Roughly the same story happened with "Y-chromosomal Adam" - he was not alone either. By the way, in this case we are talking about a completely different population - she lived in the same East Africa 60,000 - 90,000 years ago. That is, unlike the characters in the biblical legend, the real Adam and Eve never met - they were separated by somewhere between 50-90 thousand years. And one more difference - in fact, Eve appeared before Adam, while according to the biblical version, God created first a man, and then a woman.
Alas, the contemporaries of "Y-chromosomal Adam" and the men who lived before him, although they had a different Y-chromosome, but their genus in the male line was cut off over time, thus, Adam's descendants in the male line eventually ousted other Y- chromosomal variations. Well, after they met with the descendants of the "mitochondrial Eve", then the very picture arose that is now observed by geneticists.
However, as with Eve, it cannot be argued that modern humans inherited the entire genome of Adam. We are talking only about a common Y-chromosome, but other chromosomes could well have been inherited from Adam's tribesmen. Take at least the same X chromosome, which is present not only in women, but also in men, although it is transmitted only through the female line of offspring. And the rest of the DNA could well have been the same story.
As a result, when later scientists were able to decipher the human genome in full and estimate how many ancestors we had with you, they came to the conclusion that at least twenty thousand ancient people who lived in Africa contributed to the formation of a complete set of modern human DNA. something from 300 to 50 thousand years ago. Perhaps, in fact, there were even more early ancestors - just some combinations of genes were lost after their last carriers died. So, as you can see, it is impossible to talk about any two progenitors of all mankind - there were very, very many of them …