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That Adam had two wives is a common belief of certain commentators on the Book of Genesis, because of the double account of the creation of woman. They take the sentence, "Male and female created He them," in Genesis first chapter and twenty-seventh verse and in Genesis second chapter and twenty-second verse we read: "And the rib which the Lord God had taken from man made he a woman and brought her unto the man."
Baring Gould, in his legends of the Patriarchs and the Prophets holds this opinion. In Webster's dictionary we have this account: "Lilith or Lilis is a finely dressed woman who lies in wait for and kills children." This was a popular belief of the Hebrews and the older Rabbis turned Lilith into a wife for Adam. Burton in his "Anatomy of Melancholy" says: "Talmudists say that Adam had a wife called Lilis before he married Eve and by her begot nothing but devils."
In Goethe's "Faust," Lilis figures in the Walpurgis night as the famous witch of the Middle Ages. Browning represents the two women, Lilith and Eve sitting with Adam during a thunder shower and both being frightened into telling him the truth. Liiith according to this story had a lover before she met Adam. Perhaps it was Eblis, of whom Baring Gould says: "Lilith, the supposed wife of Adam, after she married Eblis, is said to have ruled over the city of Damascus."
It was in the year 1885 that D. Lothrop and Company published a little book, a poem, by Ada Langworthy Collier. The cause of the separation of Adam and Lilith, given by Mrs. Collier was that Adam set up for the head of the house. Lilith would not agree to this. She claimed they were equals—made of the same sort of clay. Eve, being made of the clay after it had become flesh and bone kept in mind her ancestry, and was submissive.
According to this story Lilith may be said to have been the first apostle of equal rights for the sexes.
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