Tool Beta
The Gods of the Bible
Every named divine being in Scripture, what the text calls it, and what the ancient world thought it was.
Lilith, Adam's first wife
A medieval story, not a biblical one.
Isaiah 34:14, in every translation this tool compares.
The story is medieval, not biblical. It comes from the Alphabet of Ben Sira, written in Iraq somewhere around the ninth or tenth century. The argument now attached to it, about two different creation accounts, is more recent still.
See the Lilith entry. The story is medieval, from the Alphabet of Ben Sira (ninth or tenth century, Abbasid Iraq, per Yassif), and the two-creation-accounts argument now attached to it is a modern addition. The Talmud already knows Lilith as a night demon centuries before that legend (Eruvin 100b; Niddah 24b; Shabbat 151b), and Bava Batra 73a makes her the daughter of Ahriman, the Zoroastrian adversary. Isaiah 34:14 is her only biblical mention, and even that is disputed in translation: the LXX renders her onokentauros, "donkey-centaur," Aquila transliterates the name, and Symmachus and Jerome's Vulgate both give lamia (DDD s.v. "Lilith," 520-521).
- Isaiah 34:14
- M. Hutter, DDD s.v. "Lilith," 520-521
