Adam's FIRST Wife?

[DeplorableWord]

I don't understand the part in the LWW book when the Pevensie kids are at the Beaver's house and Mr. Beaver is explaining Jadis, the White Witch to them. He says, " She comes of ... your father Adam's first wife, her they called Lilith. And she was one of the Jinn. That's what she comes from on one side."

I don't understand this. What do they mean by "first wife"? Is Lewis just saying this to make the story about Jadis more interesting? Because I well know that Adam married Eve.

[onlymystory]

I'm not sure about the original story but I believe Lewis got it from George McDonald and his book Lilith which actually tells the story of Adam's first wife. the story is of course false, adam married eve. but it is an interesting idea.

[masterofmonks]

I think the best way to explain this is to quote Wikipedia.

The passage in 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" (before describing a mate being made of Adam's rib and being called Eve in Genesis 2:22) is sometimes believed to be an indication that Adam had a wife before Eve.

A medieval reference to Lilith as the first wife of Adam is the anonymous The Alphabet of Ben-Sira, written sometime between the 8th and 11th centuries. Lilith is described as refusing to assume a subservient role to Adam during 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 promptly uttered the name of God, took to the air, and left the Garden, settling on the Red Sea coast. As a side note, this places Lilith in a unique position, for she left the Garden of her own accord and before the Fall of Man, and so is untouched by the Tree of Knowledge. However, she also knows the true name of God, which makes her even more powerful.

Lilith then went on to mate with Asmodai and various other demons she found beside the Red Sea, creating countless lilin. Adam urged God to bring Lilith back, so three angels were dispatched after her. When the angels, Senoy, Sansenoy, and Semangelof, made threats to kill one hundred of Lilith's demonic children for each day she stayed away, she countered that she would prey eternally upon the descendants of Adam and Eve, who could be saved only by invoking the names of the three angels. She did not return to Adam.

The background and purpose of The Alphabet of Ben-Sira is unclear. It is a collection of stories about heroes of the Bible and Talmud, it may have been a collection of folk-tales, a refutation of Christian, Karaite, or other separatist movements; its content seems so offensive to contemporary Jews that it was even suggested that it could be an anti-Jewish satire [3], although, in any case, the text was accepted by the Jewish mystics of medieval Germany.

The Alphabet of Ben-Sira is the earliest surviving source of the story, and the conception that Lilith was Adam's first wife became only widely known with the 17th century Lexicon Talmudicum of Johannes Buxtorf.

In the late 19th century, the Scottish Christian author George MacDonald incorporated the story of Lilith as Adam's first wife and predator of Eve's children into a mythopoeic fantasy novel in the Romantic style.

[onlymystory]

thanks masterofmonks. i knew there was more to it.

[InstantRamen]

woah i never caught tht!~
:eek:

[masterofmonks]

It is easy to overlook, I had infact forgotten the reference untill DepolrableWord mentioned it.

[Deeper_Wonderment]

I have a book called "The Magical Worlds of Narnia" by David Colbert. In it he discusses a lot of Narnian trivia, explains where the ideas and such came from. Lilith and the Deplorable Word are two of the things he discusses. It was a great book (apparently he's written one for Harry Potter and LotR too), and you can get it at Borders if you're looking for a simple read to fill you in on some of the things that only people who've studied "The Classics" would know. I had certainly wondered about Lilith before I bought the book.

[kirke]

ever since i saw that in a game about angels and demons i wondered where lilith came from. that is very interesting, though i think just a tale. its nice to actually know where it came from now, and why it was used in the book

[DeplorableWord]

Wow, thanks a lot everyone!!! :p

Masterofmonks thank you very much for the story. As you can probably imagine, it answered a lot of my question. :D

[georgeknarnia]

yeh, i'v always thought it was an ingenious origin for the white witch. gives her her human form (and her claim to be human and queen of narnia) and is a really interesting idea.

[inkspot]

It begs the question though: as a descendant of the jinn, on earth, how did Jadis get to Charn?

[PrinceOfTheWest]

I think I've seen that listed as one of Lewis' "untied threads". Mr. Beaver gives that toss-off line in Lion, but later the more thorough background of Jadis, including the Charn origins, doesn't seem to square with that. Unless someone wants to write some kind of connection between the djinn and Charn, that question may have to go unanswered.

One thing Lewis did tie down - in a parenthetical comment in Nephew (which I can't find right now), Lewis makes reference to "giantish blood in the royal houses of Charn."

[inkspot]

I do recall that. There's a story in there, somewhere, if someone wants to tackle how the daughters of Lillith got from earth to Charn ...

[PrinceOfTheWest]

Perhaps they were exiled there! In Arabic mythology (very close to Jewish, as you'd expect), the great Sulieman ben Daoud (Solomon son of David) was a great wizard, who spent a lot of time corraling the djinn ("genies", as they were translated to English). Some he bottled up in lamps & such that he drowned in the ocean, others he exiled. Maybe he figured a way to exile them out of our universe altogether!

btw, these "bottled up" djinn were the source of the old "genie in the lamp" stories. The idea of one granting three wishes for being released is a rather santized version - in the original legends, if you were so foolish to break a Solomon's Seal and liberate one, you would be lucky to escape with your life.

Now, if we could just figure out how they'd be able to mate with giants...

[inkspot]

I thought the giants were the offspring of the sons of heaven mentioned in the Old Testament and human women ... so I guess a djinn could take a wife ... and I like your idea of Solomon banishing them right out of our universe!

[PrinceOfTheWest]

That's the version that crops up in Jewish legends, but every serious Scripture scholar I've ever heard on that issue interpreted it to mean the "sons of God" were the the men descended from Shem, while the "daughters of men" where from the line of Cain, and the resulting "giants" were men who were political "giants", in the sense that we'd use the term "strongman" or "warlord". Nimrod was one of these, and according to legend the motivator behind the Tower of Babel. The "giants" were the first to wage war and to enslave their fellow men.

However, I do find it interesting that every single legendary tradition on earth has a giant component. Very interesting.

[Deeper_Wonderment]

Isn't there a tradition that says that Jinn come from another world anyway, and are only summoned here when their lamps are rubbed? Or am I just thinking of the children's conversation in PC when they realized they've been summoned out of their world and how one never thinks of how it must feel like for a jinn?

Anyway, I think it's totally possible that Lilith (who apparently knew the Deplorable Word because it really had to have been passed down from somewhere), could have summoned a Jinn her self and ordered that she be taken to another world where she could rule as queen.

[inkspot]

Yes, I hadn't thought of that. good thought.
Welcome, Deeper Wonderment. I didn't see you post before.

[DeplorableWord]

Huh, those are very interesting concepts and ideas, so thank you everyone, this is turning into a very ineresting and worth- while thread! (For me, anyway! :p )

[PrinceOfTheWest]

Isn't there a tradition that says that Jinn come from another world anyway, and are only summoned here when their lamps are rubbed? Or am I just thinking of the children's conversation in PC when they realized they've been summoned out of their world and how one never thinks of how it must feel like for a jinn?The children did some speculation along those lines, but I think the idea was that the djinn were summoned from "another place" - which was where Sulieman (or whoever) had banished them.

Anyway, I think it's totally possible that Lilith (who apparently knew the Deplorable Word because it really had to have been passed down from somewhere), could have summoned a Jinn her self and ordered that she be taken to another world where she could rule as queen.Well, according to the legend quoted at the start of this thread, the djinni were Lilith's children, and thus less powerful than she. I don't know much of the legend of Lilith, though it is deeply tied up with the Kabbalah. As long as we're making up stories, maybe we could have one of Solomon's lieutenants corner a djinn and a giant in a cave and seal them in. Then the djinn tries something with some charm she's been entrusted with and ends up in the Wood Between the Worlds. There she and the giant try a pool and end up in Charn when it is a world of petty feudal states. They ally with one of the ruling families and proceed to create the Empire of Charn. They breed with each other but not with any of the citizens of Charn, whom we'll presume to be human (somehow), and ultimately by physical strength and black magic end up ruling the place. Plus, maybe the elements of the Deplorable Word are graven on the charm, and the djinn kills herself trying to decipher them. Then her children...

Oops, got carried away there. Wonder what Charn Tim would think of this?

[DeplorableWord]

Oops, got carried away there. Wonder what Charn Tim would think of this?

Ha, ha! Ya!

That story is really interesting! I think you should turn it in to get it published as the "lost part of the story about Lilith" :D !

[PrinceOfTheWest]

Let me see what I can throw together. I've already posted something over in the Professor's Notebook, but nobody seemed to notice.

[TimmyofOz]

That's the version that crops up in Jewish legends, but every serious Scripture scholar I've ever heard on that issue interpreted it to mean the "sons of God" were the the men descended from Shem, while the "daughters of men" where from the line of Cain, and the resulting "giants" were men who were political "giants", in the sense that we'd use the term "strongman" or "warlord". Nimrod was one of these, and according to legend the motivator behind the Tower of Babel. The "giants" were the first to wage war and to enslave their fellow men.

However, I do find it interesting that every single legendary tradition on earth has a giant component. Very interesting.
I always favored the spiritual warfare idea of the "sons of God". To make them just the decendeds of Shem is a recent idea out of the reformation to play down angels. I'm not Catholic POW, like you are, but there are interceding angels for good and for bad.

[PrinceOfTheWest]

Oh, certainly, certainly (we're the "guardian angels" guys, remember?) The scholars I heard make that point weren't trying to play down supernatural beings, but trying to explain that particular Scripture in that context.

[TimmyofOz]

All through earlier Jewish writings (Book of Enoch and Josephus) the Sons of God are believed to be angels. This idea of just descendents of Shem, like I said, is a modern idea. Going with the Traditional idea seems prudent in that that is how it was read by people closer to that age. :)

[slideyfoot]

Very interesting quotation from Wikipedia, masterofmonks - I've alwayed enjoyed mythology, Christianity being a rich source (anyone who has read Neil Gaiman's The Sandman knows how effectively they can be used in a fantastical narrative, and obviously Narnia utilises some of that too).

If Lewis heard the full story from MacDonald, and would therefore (I'm assuming) have been aware of this:

Lilith promptly uttered the name of God, took to the air, and left the Garden, settling on the Red Sea coast. As a side note, this places Lilith in a unique position, for she left the Garden of her own accord and before the Fall of Man, and so is untouched by the Tree of Knowledge. However, she also knows the true name of God, which makes her even more powerful.

Would that explain the 'Deplorable Word'? That in fact the family of Jadis knew (or rather, used to know then hid, according to the quotation below) the 'true name' of god from their ancestral mother, and could employ it in horrendously destructive spells? I know there is discussion of it elsewhere on this forum - comparison to atomic bombs and the like - but if Lewis knew the story of Lilith quoted above, then might it be based around that?

"...She even knew that I had the secret of the Deplorable Word. Did she think - she was always a weakling - that I would not use it?

"What was it?" said Digory.

"That was the secret of secrets," said the Queen Jadis. "It had long been known to the great kings of our race that there was a word which, if spoken with the proper ceremonies, would destroy all living things except the one who spoke it. But the ancient kings were weak and soft-hearted and bound themselves and all who should come after them with great oaths never even to seek after the knowledge of that word. But I learned it in a secret place and paid a terrible price to learn it. I did not use it until she forced me to it. I fought to overcome her by every other means..."

[Aradia]

That's right. Lilith was Adam's first wife.
I have a big text about Lilith, but it is on serbish and I can't translation that on english.

[Rhyanidd]

wait a second one question...
1.Where does it say in the Bible that Adam had a "first wife"? because that verse that simply says "He created them Male and Female" really doesnt imply to me that there was a first wife. Rather it says to me "this was put here before they tell you about the creation of Eve because that is how God wanted it and why He wanted it that way is not importent or He would have told us!" Also there is another verse that says "There was no suitable mate for Adam found in the Garden" so are you saying that that took place after Lilith took off? And if Lilith left before the knowledge of good and evil fruit was eaten she would have been innocences itself, so you cant call her evil!It wasnt until after the Fruit was eaten that they knew what wrong was and that there was sin in the world, so IT would be sin for Lilith to have been defyint of her husband, the Bible commands women to defer to their husbands, and that couldnt have been because there was no Sin till after Eve and Adam ate the fruit! And God would have Kicked Lilith out of the Garden if she had eaten the fruit herself. He couldnt allow Sin in his perfectiess Garden!

I think in this case you guys are reading waaay too deep into Lewis' world.

Sorry I cant fine my moms Bible, or else I would put refernces up!

[PrinceOfTheWest]

It doesn't say that in the Bible. That's Jewish and Arabic legend, and justified by the fact that there are two references to the creation of man and woman. Don't worry, Lewis meant nothing by it.

[EveningStar]

The reference in question is from a book of Jewish mysticism called the Kabbalah.

I don't want what I am going to say to be misconstrued in any way as bigotry, for it is not. But there are certain religious traditions that epitomize man's quest to leave no loose ends. These traditions collect scholarly studies, church father rulings, and committee decisions together into quasi-scriptural libraries upon whose weight wars have been waged and families bitterly divided.

While I venerate some of the great thinkers of the past, I believe there will always be a gap between the least of God's revealed wisdom and height of mankind's greatest contemplations. I honor that gap as one of God's imperfect children forgiven and nurtured by his perfect love. I also believe that part of our spiritual journey is not just absorbing truth, but the quest for truth itself. It is the struggle which defines us. I do not believe that God intended anyone to have all the facts presented to them by another. We were meant to explore, designed to ask, built and equipped to discover.

The place of the Church Fathers, the great Rabbis, the sages of old, is to inspire us with their zeal, touch us with their devotion, and when we don't know where to begin with one of life's difficult questions, see what worked for another person in our position. I can not be certain what worked for St. Augustine or Thomas Aquinas would work for me, but I am open to what they say, and I respect them for the diligence and prayer they put into their work.

This said, like many people Jewish and Christian, I give the Kabbalah no credence whatever. We must all make up our own minds on this matter based on our independent observations. I am much more prone to accept Neo Platonic thought than Kabbalistic musings, but that is just me.

[PrinceOfTheWest]

Who ever heard of a neo-Platonist badger?

:D

[inkspot]

Yeah, all the badgers I know are into Kabbalah, for sure. Chakal is probably an outcast among his own kind ... but he is welcome here, regardless of his beliefs.

[she-elfwarrior19]

A what a whata?

[Rhyanidd]

alright alright....SORRY for blowing up....but well....I just didnt see the proof!

[Aradia]

I remember just that Lilith was feminist and she left Adam because he think that woman should be on 2. place, if you understande what I want to say.

Lilith is protector of all womans and feminist.