Lilith: Between Genesis and Myth

The Legend of Adam’s First Wife in the Light of the Bible and History

Was there a woman before Eve?

The question does not arise from a single text or a single moment in time. It moves across centuries, reappears in different forms, and is often attributed to writings that never posed it in this way. Between what is written and what later came to be told, a space opens—and it is within that space that legend takes hold.

This book traces the emergence and development of this idea through the very texts and traditions that shaped it. It begins in the ancient world, where names associated with night, wilderness, and desolation belonged to the religious and ritual imagination of the Near East. It moves through ancient and late-antique Judaism, where warnings, household practices, and scattered references give meaning to certain terms. It then reaches the Middle Ages, when a late literary narrative establishes a connection absent from the biblical texts. Finally, it arrives in modernity, where this construction is often read as though it had always been there.

Along the way, biblical passages frequently cited are read with close attention to their context, their original language, and their place within the text. Translations are considered not as technical details, but as decisions that profoundly shape interpretation. Later traditions are placed in their proper time, without being carried back into periods that never knew them.

The focus remains constant: to understand what ancient texts actually say, how certain readings emerged over time, and why particular ideas continue to be repeated even when they find no support in the sources.

This book is for readers who wish to read carefully—without haste and without shortcuts—distinguishing what belongs to Scripture, what arises from tradition, and what takes shape much later, in the realm of imagination and reception.