Lilith: Was Adam's First Wife a Vampire?

Three angels tracked down Lilith. They carried a message from God that she must return to Eden. Lilith outright refused. So they issued a dire incentive. So long as she remained out of Eden, away from Adam, defying the will of God, she would suffer.

In shades reminiscent of Hera's punishment of Lamia, Lilith was forced to devour one hundred of her own children for every day that she stayed away. She loved her children. Compelled by the divine might, she had no way of stopping herself doing it. Except going back to Eden.

(Here the story still follows the original laid out by Jesus ben Sirach, the author of the Alphabet bearing his name. But it has been developed much further over the centuries.)

Lilith still refused. Each day, she consumed one hundred of her own children. Each day she birthed more. Presumably these were fathered by her older sons. Thousands were born daily. The world was becoming populated by Lilith's children, no longer according to God's great plan.

Enter Eve. If Lilith wouldn't comply, then she would be replaced.  Moreover God limited the number of children which could be born at any one time, in this new version of a human female. It safe-guarded against the future possibility of another Lilith raising a rival people.

Furious, Lilith issued her own threat. For every 100 of her children that she was still forced to devour, she would do the same with the children of Adam and Eve. However, that involved re-entering Eden, or getting them out.

It should be mentioned that Eve was not alone with Lilith throughout the exchange. Adam was standing right alongside her.  But it was Eve who plucked an apple from the tree and bit into it first. She handed it to her husband.

What could he do? He might have been born and lived within the sight of God, loyal even when it meant the loss of all. But he had his wife and ex-wife sharing insights right next to him; and they now knew more about everything than he did. He ate the apple.

Lilith knew that God would not countenance such defiance in His perfect couple, nor could He bear the intelligence they'd thus gained. She anticipated perfectly that Adam and Eve would be ejected from paradise.

God was furious. He issued three curses. The first condemned the serpent to eternally be the enemy of mankind, the 'lowliest of all creatures', as its form had been used by Lilith. It would henceforth be forced to crawl in the dust. Secondly, He damned the very ground, because Adam worked as its caretaker. From now on, plants could fail or be poisonous.

Finally He uttered the Curse of Eve, which was excruciating agony in childbirth, as well as menstruation. The latter symbolized life-blood dripping into the dust. (Even after the crucifixion of Jesus Christ allowed women to be welcomed into God's presence again, Eve's original sin was the only one not forgiven. The punishment goes on.)

Lilith was allowed to leave. She had subsumed all that had been thrown at her and still come back fighting. She had undermined the Divine Will twice, both times with humanity as its witness. God backed away for now. But He would not let her get away with it.

Besides the cursing of the ground gave Lilith an even bigger arsenal. She would use the poisons now available to create diseases. From a certain point of view, Lilith could be seen as the Mother of Germ Warfare. Through her viral attacks, epidemics were unleashed upon Adam and Eve's descendants.

Three angels visited Lilith again. A deal was negotiated. It's unclear what Lilith gained from the bargain, as we only know what she conceded. She would only suck the life-force or otherwise devour Eve's babies until they reached a proscribed age.  For boys, this was eight weeks. For girls, it was twelve.

Moreover, Lilith would avoid any infants directly blessed by the three angels present. To signify their favor, an amulet bearing the names of Senoi, Sansenoi, and Sammangelof would be placed upon those children. Maybe Lilith was merely ensuring that a second human race could thrive. After all, feeding upon them was now her sustenance.

We do know that the angels tried and failed to force Lilith to enter captivity. We also know that she was issued a threat. If she didn't comply, then God would raise the Red Sea. Her home-land would be flooded. Her children would all be drowned.

She pretty much told them to do it, if they dared. She was going nowhere.

God threatened to wipe the slate clean. He would kill all life on Earth and start again with more compliant First Parents. Lucifer disagreed and several celestial beings supported his point of view. The ensuing debate turned into open defiance, then actual War in Heaven.

The Archangel Lucifer was eventually defeated and expelled from the celestial city, with all his supporters with him. It was only after all this had occurred that God could return his attention to the mess down on Earth.

However, He had been persuaded by some of the points raised by the rebel Archangel, even if He couldn't countenance the challenge. A descendent of Adam and Eve was allowed to make arrangements for the survival of his blood-line. Loyal to his divine maker, Noah was given prior warning of the Deluge. He was able to build his ark and save enough species to repopulate the Earth after it had been washed clean.

Lilith's brood, nor the hybrid race, were given no such warnings. The Great Flood was intended to drown them all.

Lilith herself has to have been immortal. While Adam and Eve are spoken about as ancestors only, she surfaced again. She's been called Queen of the Demons, Satan's consort in Hell.

Her descendents became those Hellish demons. Others remained on Earth, as monsters creeping from the shadows to plague humanity. They carried with them their mother's lust for vengeance and the need to feast on human beings.

They are never mentioned again in religious sources, but their mother is. She scores a name-check after the desolation of Edom, as outlined in the Book of Isaiah. Those events took place well after the Deluge, when Lilith should have long since been dead.

Descended from Esau, the Edomites were engaged in a series of wars with the Israelites. Edom eventually ceased to exist as a separate nation state, presumably through warfare and a final defeat, though this is not made clear.

Lilith's children on Earth originally accounted for all manner of nightmares.

Increasingly, in popular culture, these monsters in general have started to come into a sharper focus. The devouring of humans has become the sucking of blood or imbibing of life-force. Lilith's line is vampiric.

This legend explains why some human beings are locked out of Heaven after death. God wants nothing to do with them. Jesus died for Adam and Eve's line only.

Thus Lilith's descendants are doomed to join the ranks of the Undead, rising from their coffins to plague the living. They are the vampires of myth and legend; even those whose genealogy is so diluted, that they do not know that they are descended from Lilith. They thought they came from Eve.

It's a story embraced by writers of vampire fiction, including a notable appearance in the fifth season of True Blood (as pictured above). But it's not a retelling which has gained much credence amongst serious religious scholars.

Then again, the whole Lilith legend is not one with much of a foot-hold in mainstream Judaism, Christianity or Islam. She exists on the outskirts, her story dismissed by some as the dodgy ravings of a 10th century writer of Jewish apocrypha. To them, she was not air-brushed from the Creation story. She was never in it.

The serpent was just a serpent. The Deluge was a show of divine might, designed to discourage evil amidst humanity. The figure spotted in the ruins of Edom was just one of those random insertions for which we've lost all context. Perhaps some kind of animal. A snake.

It's only as a vampire that Lilith takes flight now. Still feasting on children, spreading disease, unleashing her demonic host in defiance of God's dominion. It's been a long war that she's wrought against the constraints of Eden. Adam should have let her go on top.