New video!: The Origins of Lilith
Added 2023-10-14 11:15:40 +0000 UTCI always try to publish a "spooky" episode every October. This year it's Lilith...the notorious demon from Jewish folklore.
This is one of those videos that I started assuming that I already knew all there is to know about the topic. But I actually learned a ton during the research phase...mostly realizing that Lilith, for much of history, wasn't conceptualized as a singular entity. Most mentions of the word "lilith" refer generically to a type of demon. This is especially true in the evidence from late antique Mesopotamia—a huge corpus of incantation bowls. Reading through these incantations, liliths are almost always a species of demons, and many have their own names.
Her famous appearance in medieval Jewish folklore as the first wife of Adam really replaces this understanding of "liliths" in modern discussions about the figure.
