Genisis

[Mitch555]

Hello everyone,

Im a catholic school student and during my lessons in Studies of Religion I've heard of different characters in the creation story in the bible

For example, Lilith who according to mythology is the mother of all vampires (pfft lol)

I was just wondering if I could get a brief description of the characters in genisis other than Adam and Eve?

- Cheers :)

[DavidObeid]

Hi Mitch555,

Thanks for the question.

First things first, your Studies of Religion teacher has done a woeful job! The Lilith legend is not in the Bible. It is a pagan/radical feminist idea to dispel the natural order introduced in Genesis that teaches that men and women are complementary and that their ***uality is ordered for procreation and relationship, not for hedonism or abuse.

The main characters mentioned in the Bible at the start of the human race are:

Adam and Eve (our first parents), their sons Cain (Genesis 4:1), Abel (Genesis 4:2) and Seth (Genesis 4:25) and then other sons and daughters (Genesis 5:4) who aren't named.

Does that help?

[Stephen Spiteri]

The Lilith story also stems from Jewish folklore and legend, but not from their tradition.

Catholic Answers deals with the question this way:


Q: While visiting at the home of a Jewish friend, I was thumbing through the magazines on her coffee table and was curious about one titled Lilith: The Independent Jewish Women’s Magazine. My friend said the title comes from the name that Jewish tradition gives to Adam’s first wife. Who was Lilith, and was she really Adam’s first wife?

A: It is not quite accurate to say that the story of Lilith comes from Jewish tradition; rather, the story is more aptly described as Jewish folklore or legend.

Although the Jewish story of Lilith has its roots in the anonymous medieval document The Alphabet of Ben-Sira, some Jews interpret the Bible’s mention of the wife of Adam in the first creation story (cf. Gen. 1) to refer to Lilith and the Bible’s mention of the wife of Adam in the second creation story (cf. Gen. 2) to refer to Eve. Such an interpretation is unsupported by Jewish rabbinic tradition and can be considered an instance of eisegesis (i.e., reading into Scripture what one wishes to find).

The story of Lilith originally comes from Mesopotamian mythology, in which she is a night demon believed to prey upon children. As the story later became incorporated into Jewish legend, Lilith became the runaway wife of Adam who vowed revenge upon the descendants of Adam and Eve. Out of pious superstition, some Jews, past and present, put amulets around the necks of their children to protect them from Lilith’s murderous designs.

Because legend holds that Lilith refused to be subservient to Adam, she has been adopted by some Jewish feminists as a heroine of religious egalitarianism in modern Judaism. - http://www.catholic.com/thisrock/2005/0511qq.asp

[DavidObeid]

Thanks for that Spirit Magnus. My eyes played a trick on me and I thought the question was about "the daughters of Lilith", a concept dealt with by Donna Steichen in her book on radical feminism infiltration in the Church called "Ungodly Rage".