Dear Belinda:

I recently read something about Lilith concerts being named after Adam's first wife. It is my understanding that he only had one wife -- Eve. I don't even see Lilith mentioned in the Bible. Do you know anything about this?

Shocked in Seattle

Dear Foolish Reader:

No, Lilith is not to be found in the Bible. But since when has that stopped anyone? I find the story of "Lilith" an interesting example of how it is not enough to just believe that which is made up in "what is written" - there is still more fun to be had in making up tangential stories that aren't written anywhere. Hence, the invention of Lilith, Adam's alleged first wife, and purportedly the first Kennedy to purchase a Papal annulment.

Believing that it was not enough to saddle a female with simply the fall of all humanity (Eve), early Biblical embroiders gave Lilith some rather annoying habits, such as haunting (a rather effective early manifestation of stalking -- I admire that) and homicide. And while I am not an Airline Waitress, and therefore do not object to pandering to other people's special dietary needs, I did half-heartedly raise one eyebrow when I read that Lilith enjoyed eating young children (which is why she is purported to have gotten a cheap giggle out of going into a Dead Sea Shoney's and asking for the "Children's Menu").

Lilith came about as a result of inconsistencies in the Creation stories in Genesis I and II. To me, the ready explanation is that they were written hundreds of years apart. I have read that Genesis II derives from a Sumerian story, while Genesis I was written later by the Hebrew Priesthood (created by the Deuteronomic School around 700 BC), which never met a story that they thought couldn't be tweaked for nomadic focus groups. They sent the whole Genesis passage into "Development/Re-write Hell." Some of it came out as the "new" and "edgier" Creation Story, while the rest appeared much later off-Broadway as "Nunsense II."

In the first chapter of Genesis, the order of creation is recounted. Fish and fowl are created. Odd, that "every living creature that moveth" was created on one day, and cattle were created the next day. Perhaps cows were more inert back then. Or maybe this is that the reference is to things that moveth in the water (so perhaps Lilith was into synchronized swimming). And then - after the cattle are created - God created Man and Woman, to have someone to cut them up into little pieces, so that E Coli bacteria could fulfill it's dream of travelling.

In Genesis II, God forms man from dust, which would seem to require few additional ingredients or efforts. Then, God decides that man needs help so God forms "every beast in the field" and "every foul of the air" (I don't think this is a reference to Los Angeles), and brings them to Adam for the seemingly tedious task of coming up with names for everything (hand it to God; being all Wisdom, She knows when to delegate a horrendously monotonous job!). Genesis II treats the creation of Eve as an afterthought because Adam was not finding the cattle as helpful as they might have been (no doubt, being the very earliest instance of the utterance of the cliché "good help is hard to find" and, perhaps, "Not tonight I have a headache").

There appears, as they say in reference to most Bruce Willis movies, to be a "continuity problem." In Genesis I, God creates the animals and then man; whereas in Genesis II, he creates Man first. Perhaps sensing this as an entreaty to disregard plausibility altogether, some have taken such a conflict as an opening to create the story of a "Lilith, the predecessor wife of Adam" out of whole cloth.

I have it on the very best Authority that the whole apple/serpent/banishment thing was completely misinterpreted. What had actually occurred is that Lilith got the Garden of Eden as part of the Divorce settlement, which was handled out of court, and naturally she didn't want that naked home-wrecker, Eve, to be on her property. Besides, Lilith knew that Eve's children, Cain and Able, were nothing but trouble.

You asked for it,

Belinda