Etymology
Hebrew לילית lilith, Akkadian language lîlîtu are female Nisba adjectives from a Proto-Semitic root lyl "night", literally translating to nocturna "female nightly being/demon". Sayce (Hibbert Lectures, 145ff.), Fossey (La Magie Assyrienne, 37ff.), & others reject a root etymology of lyl "night", & indicate a origin of Lilitu was as a storm demon; & this see is supported per cuneiform inscriptions quoted by these scholars. A association by using "night" might however exist as due to early popular etymology. A corresponding Akkadian masculine lîlû shows no Nisba suffix and compares to Sumerian (kiskil-)lilla.

Akkadian mythology

Kiskil-lilla
In the Sumerian prologue to the Gilgamesh epos, a female demon known as ki-sikil-lil-la-ke_Quartet has been identified sustaining Lilith by translators:

Kramer translates: Wolkenstein translates a equivalent passage: The Burney relief
The Burney Relief, ca. 1950 BC. A Gilgamesh passage quoted above has successively been applied by a few to the Burney relief (Norman Colville collection), the sculpture of the woman by having bird talons, flanked by hooter, dating to ca. 1950 BC.

A key of this identification lies in a bird talons & the bird of night. When a relief will depict a demon Kisikil-lilla-ke of the Gilgamesh passage or even a second goddess, identification sustaining Lilitu is additional tenuous & belike influenced per "screech owl" translation of the KJV. a super similar relief dating to about the equivalent cycle is preserved in the Louvre (AO 6501).

Parallels of bird goddesses are found inside e.g. Athena and also in the neolithic Vinca culture.

Babylonian Lilitu

When these reliefs, there is the gap of just about a millennium, & these are single from either ca. a 9th century BC that vampire-like spirits called the Lilu are known from Babylonian demonology. These female demons roam when you took a hours of darkness, hunting & killing newborn & pregnant women. Akkadian Lilitu forms a triad sustaining Ardat Lili, & Idlu Lili. When declared above, it will st& originated when storm demons, and a "night" association can be the Semitic popular etymology.

A "Lilith Prophylactic" of Arslan Tash (Aleppo National Museum) has been suspected the forgery, however in case echt, it would exist as a 7th century BC plaque featuring a sphinx-prefer animal & the she-wolf devouring the infant, by using a Phoenician inscription addressing the sphinx animal when Lili.

A association by having a owl is difficult up to now, & can be due to the bird with been seen as a blood-sucking nighttime spirit. Elements of the cult spread to Ancient Greece, and may be traced in the Erinyes and Hekate.

Lilith in the Bible

Isaiah 34:14, describing the desolation of Edom, is the only occurrence of Lilith in the Hebrew Bible:

Schrader (Jahrbuch für Protestantische Theologie, One. 128) & Levy (ZDMG Ix. 470, 484) indicate that Lilith was the goddess of the nighttime, known likewise per Jewish exiles in Babylon, although evidence for Lilith existence the goddess instead of only the demon is lacking. Isaiah dates to the 6th century BC, and a presence of Jews around Babylon would indeed coincide with a documented information to the Lilitu inside Babylonian demonology.

A Septuagint translates onokentauros, apparently for lack of a better word, since besides the sturmarbeiteilung`iyr "satyrs" earliest in the verse come translated by using daemon onokentauros. A "wild beasts of the island and the desert" come omitted altogether, & a "crying to his fellow" is as well handle the fiend onokentauros

Christian Bible
Hieronymus of Cardia translated Lilith with lamia, in Horace (De Arte Poetica liber, 340) a witch world health organization steals toddlers, similar to the Breton Korrigan, in Greek mythology described as a Libyan queen who mated by owning Zeus. When Zeus abandoned Vampire, Hera stole Lamia's youngsters, & Vampire took retaliation by stealing more women's babies.

A screech owl translation of the KJV is without precedent, & apparently together sustaining a "owl" (yanshuwph, probably a waterbird) inside 34:11, & the "great owl" (qippowz, properly a snake,) of 34:15 an attempt to render the eerie atmosphere of the passage by finding suitable beast for hard to translate Hebrew words.

Late translations include: night-owl (Young, 1898) night monster (ASV 1901, NASB 1995) night hag (RSV 1947) night animal (NKJV 1982, NLT 1996)

Jewish tradition

There was the Hebrew tradition of placing an amulet around a neck of newborn boys, inscribed by using the list of deuce-ace angels who come to protect a babies from either the lilin until their circumcision, lends weight to a argument that Lilith had existed inside earliest Hebrew mythology & is non the creation of late mediaeval authors. There exists besides the Hebrew tradition to hold off the piece prior to the son's hair is cut and and then when to attempt to trick Lilith into thinking a tike occurs as girl so that a son's life can be spared.

Dead Sea scrolls
Lilith's title as well appears inside the listing of diabolical animals in the Dead Sea Scrolls (4Q510 frag. Xi.Four-6a; frag. Tenner.1f), within the passage on to Isaiah 34:14.

Talmud
A word "lilith" appears many days in the Talmud. In Nidda 24b it refers to a winged homo, when within Erubin 100b it refers to something with hanker hair.

Erubin 18b says that when a expulsion from either either Eden, Adam was separated from Eve for 130 years, when you took which instance a seed he lost created "ghouls, demons and lilin". We. e. within Talmudic tradition, non Lilith however Adam engendered a lilin, a connection that can be the origin of the in the future association of Lilith & Adam.

Kabbala
Within a bit of passages of the Kabbala, when well as in the 13th century Treatise on the Left Emanation [http://ccat.sas.upenn.edu/~humm/Topics/Lilith/jacob_ha_kohen.html], Lilith is the mate of Samael.

Around others, probably informed by The Alphabet of Ben Sira, she is Adam'sMarried woman (Yalqut Reubeni, Zohar 1:34b, 3:19 [http://ccat.sas.upenn.edu/~humm/Topics/Lilith/origin.html])

Lilith as Adam's first wife

A passage around Genesis 1:27 — "So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them" (prior to describing the mate existence processed of Adam's rib and being known as Eve around Genesis 2:22) is another time forwarded as an indication that Adam experienced the married woman prior to Eve. This is non necessarily implied all a same, since there are ii accounts of creation around Genesis One & Two, beyond the double mention of the creation of human within each Genesis 1:26 & 2:7.

a mediaeval information to Lilith when the foremost married woman of Adam is the anonymous The Alphabet of Ben-Sira, written sometime between a Eighth & Eleventh centuries. Lilith is described when refusing to accept the subservient role to Adam in the period of sexual intercourse and so deserting him ("She said, 'I will not lie below,' and he said, 'I will not lie beneath you, but only on top. For you are fit only to be in the bottom position, while I am to be the superior one.'").

Lilith so went in to mate by owning Asmodai and various other demons she detected beside a Red Sea, creating countless lilin. Adam urged God to bring Lilith back, and so trey angels were dispatched after her. Whilst a angels, Senoy, Sansenoy, and Semangelof, made threats to wipe out of these hundred of Lilith's hellish tikes for every day she keep one's eyes off, she countered that she would prey forever upon a descendent of Adam & Eve, world health organization can be economized lone by invoking a list of the iii angels. She did non go to to Adam.

A background & purpose of A Alphabet of Ben-Sira is unreadable. These are the collection of stories astir heroes of the Bible and Talmud, it may stand been the collection of folk-tales, a refutation of Christian, Karaite, or more breakaway movements; its content seems then offensive to contemporary Jews that it was potentially suggested that it can be an anti-Jewish satire [http://www.acs.ucalgary.ca/~elsegal/Shokel/950206_Lilith.html], although, in any case, a text was accepted per Jewish religious mystic of mediaeval Germany.

A Alphabet of Ben-Sira is a earliest living source of the story, & the conception that Lilith was Adam's foremost married woman became lone widely known by having a 17th century Lexicon Talmudicum of Johannes Buxtorf.

In a late 19th century, the Scottish Christian creator George MacDonald incorporated the story of Lilith when Adam's 1st married woman & predator of Eve's toddlers into the mythopoeic fantasy novel in the Romantic style.

A role of Lilith when Adam's unfaithful married woman has parallels by using a ideas all about Eve herself in the Unification theology of Sun Myung Moon.

Modern magic

An Eighteenth or even 19th century Persian talisman, the hard charm for the newborn son, saved in the Israel Museum, Jerusalem, depicts Lilith in chains, by owning "Bind Lilith in chains" written under every arm.

Lilith appears as a succubus in Aleister Crowley's De Arte Magica.

Lilith in popular culture
See Lilith (disambiguation).