Friday 24 November 2017

Lilit

A Jewish man describes an evil place as:

"'An abode of Lilit.'"
-SM Stirling, The Desert And The Blade (New York, 2016), Chapter Thirty-One, p. 798.

Is "Lilit" the same as "Lilith"?

We have encountered Lilith on:

this blog here (scroll down);
Personal And Literary Reflections here;
Comics Appreciation here.

Lilith is not big in the Bible but she gets around.

5 comments:

Sean M. Brooks said...

Kaor, Paul!

I did some quick looking up and found out "lilith" or "Lilith" occurs only once in the Canonical Bible, Isaiah 34.14. Apparently referring to some kind of wild animal. St. Jerome, in the Vulgate, rendered the word as "lamia," which the first English translations and then the Catholic Douai-Reims kept. In yet another of its unsatisfactory renderings, the Anglican AV rendered it as "screech owl."

But, Lilith's associations with the demonic gradually developed in Jewish folklore from the Babylonian Talmud of the third to fifth centuries AD.

Sean

S.M. Stirling said...

Sean's right about that; it's a post-exilic development in Judaism.

Sean M. Brooks said...

Dear Mr. Stirling,

Thanks! And I read of how "Lilith" has even somehow drifted into New Age and neo-pagan speculations, of all things!

Sean

paulshackley2017@gmail.com said...

Lilith lives!

Sean M. Brooks said...

Kaor, Paul!

The real Lilith, according to Isaiah 34.14, was some kind of wild animal. (Smiles)

Sean