Pod Insights Betwixt The Sheets: The History of Sex, Scandal & Society Who Was Lilith? The Semen-Stealing First Wife Of Adam About this episode Lilith's story goes back 4,000 years, and she's still making an impact today.
She takes on different forms, depending on where you're looking, but a popular one was that she was the first wife of Adam, long before Eve, and was expelled from the Garden of Eden to go and live as a promiscuous, baby-killing, semen-stealing demon. As you do.
In short, she's embodies a lot of male anxieties about sex and women.
What are her true origins? What's with all the semen-stealing? And what's her connection to mermaids?
Joining Kate today is historian Sarah Clegg, author of Woman's Lore: 4,000 Years of Sirens, Serpents and Succubi https://www.amazon.co.uk/Womans-Lore-Sirens-Serpents-Succubi-ebook/dp/B0B1RJJZ39, to help us get to know this fascinating woman better.
This episode was edited by Tom Delargy and produced by Stuart Beckwith. The senior producer was Charlotte Long.
All music from Epidemic Sounds/All3 Media.
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0:00 Kate Lister? Do you want even more shocking and scandalous history? Like why the ancient Greek statues had such small manhoods? Or what went on behind closed doors in the Georgian era? Well, sign up to History Hit, where you can see me discover the scandalous side of history, as well as hundreds of hours of original documentaries, plus new releases every week, covering everything from prehistoric Scotland to the Treaty of Versailles. Sign up to join me in locations around the world and explore the past. Just visit historyhit.com/subscribe.
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2:29 Kate Lister? Hello my lovely Bertwixters, it's me Kate Lister and you are listening to Bertwixter Sheets. But before we can continue on our little merry adventure together, I have to tell you, this is an adult podcast spoken by adults to other adults about adulty things in an adulty way. I would rather age adult subjects and you should be an adult too. Oh my god, do I have to keep saying that? I suppose I do because more people are turning up and they might be easily offended. So if that's you, this is your chance to sod off now and leave the rest of us to crack on with it. Right, on with the show.
3:10 Kate Lister? Deep in the Garden of Eden, a spat is unfolding. It's somewhat killing the idyllic vibe that they've got going on, but let's listen in a little bit more closely. Oh, okay, there's Adam waltzing around like he's God's gift. Which actually, I suppose technically, technically he was. But there's also Lilith, his first wife and also God's gift. Who was around long before God plucked a rib from Adam and created Eve. Oh, oh, oh. It seems like they're arranging a romantic evening and Lilith is rightly pointing out that she is every bit as equal to Adam and doesn't want to, what was that? Do it with him in the missionary position.
3:55 Kate Lister? Hmm, okay, bit of a reverse cowgirl fan, well yeah, exactly, you do you, Lil. But what she's doing here is much more than just trying to get hers. The fundamental point here is that she's refusing to be subservient to Adam. And that will result in her being expelled from the Garden of Eden and living the rest of eternity amongst the demons. I mean, I love, I love her principles, but wow, okay, that's a hell of a price to pay. But what other stories do we know about this original badass? Do we find out? Let's do it.
4:36 Speaker 04 What do you look for in a man? Oh, money, of course.
4:39 Speaker 05 You're supposed to rise when an adult speaks to you.
4:41 Speaker 04 I make perfect copies of whatever my body needs by just turning it on and pushing it.
4:54 Speaker 05 Yes, social courtesy does make a difference. Goodness, what beautiful time. Goodness has nothing to do with it, Darren.
5:05 Kate Lister? Hello and welcome back to Betwixt the Sheets, the history of sex scandal in society with me, Kate Lister. You might be listening to this and thinking, "I've never heard of this Lilith, Kate." Well, it's pretty remarkable that for someone who was first spoken about thousands of years ago in Mesopotamia and Babylonia, Lilith actually feels incredibly modern. She's been held up as a seaman-stealing demon, responsible for wet dreams, and she's also spoken about as Adam's first wife, who was every bit his equal. What are the different ways that Lilith has been seen throughout history? And what does this tell us about views on equity a thousand years ago? And did she really refuse to have sex with Adam in the missionary position?
5:48 Kate Lister? Helping us get to know this remarkable, albeit mythical, woman is Sarah Clegg, author of Woman's Law: A Thousand Years of Sirens, Serpents, and Succubi. Well, I don't know about you, but I'm certainly ready for more. Let's do it.
6:05 Kate Lister? Hello and welcome to Betwixt the Sheets. It's only Sarah Clegg. How are you doing?
6:11 Speaker 06 I'm doing very well. Thank you so much for having me on.
6:14 Kate Lister? I'm so excited you're here because you are here to talk to us about, how would you even describe her? She's not a real person. She's a mythological, but not like a unicorn, but Lilith. You're here to talk to us about Lilith.
6:31 Speaker 06 I am. Just the best demoness going.
6:33 Kate Lister? Demoness, that's the word. That is a fantastic word. I know bits and pieces about Lilith. I know she's not quite in the Bible, but she's kind of biblical. And then she's in sort of older Jewish sources here and there, and she's generally, there's something naughty about her. But can you tell us, just for people who are listening who are like, "I have no idea who this is at all", could you give us a sort of a potted history of who? Who is Lilith?
7:04 Speaker 06 Yeah, so she is actually part of one of kind of the longest folkloric traditions.
7:11 Kate Lister? Wow.
7:12 Speaker 06 That we have. She stretches back kind of about four thousand years. And obviously, over that time, she's gone through kind of loads of different iterations and has appeared in different cultures. And depending on who was kind of trying to ward her off or telling a story about her, then she takes on different forms. But the story that I think most people are vaguely familiar with is that she is the first wife of Adam. Who is is kicked out of the Garden of Eden or leaves it of her own free will. Because Adam won't acknowledge their equality and goes off and and becomes a demoness and murders babies and and women.
7:51 Kate Lister? Completely natural reaction, by the way.
7:54 Speaker 06 Yes, absolutely, and has sex with with everyone going. So I think that's kind of the story that we know about her now, kind of the most familiar one.
8:03 Kate Lister? Yeah, that's how I've heard of Lilith is that she was Adam's first wife, which in itself raises a lot of questions. Like, I'm sorry, pardon, what? What? I haven't I haven't heard. I haven't heard this. If that's the case, why isn't she in the Bible? Then she renounces him because she's like, on your bike, mate. I think you'll find that that that we are equals. But the one that I've heard is that specifically she said, oh, well, screw you then, because he wanted to have sex in the missionary position.
8:30 Speaker 06 Yes.
8:30 Kate Lister? Is that? That's right. That's not just some random nonsense I've heard.
8:33 Speaker 06 No, no, no, this is absolutely right. This is actually the first story, first version of this story that we have. So up to this point, she's been a demoness who kills babies, kills kind of pregnant women.
8:49 Kate Lister? Of course.
8:49 Speaker 06 And will cause complications in labour. And then on the other side of it, she will also appear in the night and steal your semen.
8:56 Kate Lister? Right, as you do.
8:57 Speaker 06 As you do. It is actually very natural, very natural is probably the wrong way of saying it. There is actually a reason for this in that she is this combining of two different ancient Mesopotamian demonesses. One is called Lamash Tu, and she is this this demoness of kind of. Infant death and death in childbirth. And the other hand, you've got Lilith, who is the ghost of a girl who died before she could have sex. And she seeks out mortal men and enacts her passions on them in the night. She's not really a very important or terrifying demoness. She's mainly the one who gets blamed for wet dreams. And like, there are a few illnesses that involve like continuous erections and maybe that's her.
9:42 Speaker 06 But she's not that big of a deal and gradually the two kind of combine. Until by the end of, the end of ancient Mesopotamia isn't quite the right way of saying it, but getting into kind of late antiquity. She has very much become this single demoness who will have sex with you. Whether you want to or not, who will seduce you, who if you're a man will appear in the night and steal your semen. And if you're a woman, might appear in the form of a man or might not and sleep with you in the night. And will also kill babies and their mothers. And she is there just in this form, maybe linked with Adam. There is this story that we have.
10:22 Speaker 06 So after the incident with the apple, then supposedly Adam and Eve had a bit of a breakup.
10:32 Kate Lister? This all got left out.
10:34 Speaker 06 Yeah, well, so there is quite a long period of time. There's about a hundred years in between the sort of canonical birth of Cain and Abel. And then the canonical birth of their next child.
10:47 Kate Lister? Right.
10:47 Speaker 06 The explanation for this was that they stopped having sex with each other in this period. And added to this was that Adam was actually having sex with demons and or having his semen stolen by demons. To create a whole new race of demons and that is very Lilith code of behaviour. No one ever says it's Lilith, but if your semen has been stolen by a demon, she's who you're looking at. So that's where you are and then you have this manuscript called the Alphabet of Ben Sira. The Alphabet of Ben Sira, I have to say, it's one of my. Favorite ancient sources, it is the weirdest thing. Um, satirical is how it's normally described.
11:31 Speaker 06 Ben Zira was a respected Jewish scholar. He lived a few centuries before this manuscript was written. In the alphabet of Ben Zira, then he is a mystically wise toddler. Who his father and his grandfather is the prophet Jeremiah. Because Jeremiah publicly masturbated into a fountain. And then Jeremiah's daughter bathed in it and conceived Ben Zira.
11:57 Kate Lister? What in the Jerry Springer shit is that?
12:00 Speaker 06 It is, it is incredible. I mean, the whole manuscript is written like this. So, so it follows Ben Zira as he solves problems for the king of Babylon, Nebuchadnezzar. That in itself is likely part of the joke. Because Nebuchadnezzar is the king who like raised Jerusalem and instituted the Babylonian captivity. So he is not a man who a Jewish scholar should be helping out.
12:21 Kate Lister? No.
12:22 Speaker 06 But Ben Zira is. The problems Nebuchadnezzar has are things like he wants to know why donkeys urinate in the urine of other donkeys. I mean, do they?
12:31 Kate Lister? I'm starting to see why people think this might be a satire. Cause like trying to take this seriously is this, this would have been a serious scholarly work. That requires quite a leap of faith, doesn't it?
12:40 Speaker 06 Yes. I mean, it would be really interesting if it was, but I think broadly, there's enough. Yeah. Nebuchadnezzar has a very flatulent daughter and Ben Zira gets her to stop farting.
12:52 Kate Lister? Yeah, I'm, I'm gonna call that one with you as well. Yeah, I think, I think that we're not supposed to take that seriously.
12:57 Speaker 06 No, it is, it's good fun. It's really enjoyable to read. And one of the other problems that Nebuchadnezzar has is that his child is sick. And Ben Zira goes and he reads an incantation over the boy and creates an amulet. Now, this is kind of the, the sad side of Lilith.
13:18 Kate Lister? Okay.
13:18 Speaker 06 Um, this kind of like the horrible side of her that, you know, women really were struggling with, you know, prior to modern medicine, children died in droves, women died in droves. Pregnancy and childbirth was frightening and and there wasn't much you could do if it started going wrong. And we have a whole load of kind of incantations against Lilith and demons like her, demons that tend to be related to her, actually. Like you can follow their folklore and they're all entangled together. And one of them is this charm where it takes a lot of different forms. But functionally, the child stealing demoness manages to get hold of a child and runs towards the sea. Because the sea is is kind of her home, it's it's where she's safe.
14:02 Speaker 06 And before she can get there, one to three brothers with names that have S, N and S in them. Sisynoius is the most famous one, stop her. And generally, they extract from her a promise that whenever their names are spoken, then she won't be able to cause harm to a baby. Now, the story Ben Surratt tells is a combination of that charm. And it this weird Adam in the garden story. So he specifically talks about once Adam and Lilith were created. And for a while, everything was fine. And then, let me just find the passage.
14:44 Kate Lister? Oh, yes, please, we want to get this right.
14:46 Speaker 06 He brought her to Adam and they immediately began to fight. Adam said, you shall lie below and Lilith said, you shall lie below, but we are equal and both of us were created from the earth. They did not listen to each other. When Lilith saw the state of things, she uttered the ineffable name and flew away into the air and fled. I really think when I saw the state of things is a very.
15:11 Speaker 06 We've all been there.
15:12 Kate Lister? We've all been there.
15:14 Speaker 06 And she runs to the sea and she is pursued there by three angels called, I mean, functionally unpronounceably, Snivy, Snisvy and Smunsgolf, which are plays on these kind of like comical plays on these SNS names that have previously appeared in the charms. And they extract from her the promise that she won't be able to kill any children, which, fine, she's now going to start killing children where her names, these names are spoken. So it is a really fascinating and really odd text in that it's taking this sort of relatively recent story of like Adam sleeping with semen stealing demonesses and putting Lilith into
15:55 Speaker 06 the garden with him first before Eve. And also separately, these charm stories of a child stealing demoness running to the sea and being chased there by people with SNS names who managed to get the promise from her that she won't appear where their names are spoken. And that is really interesting, to me at least, because it puts this story that he is reciting, that Bensera is telling, obviously it's satirical. And I think probably the most likely thing that Bensera has added to it is this kind of debate about sexual positions.
16:30 Kate Lister? Hmm.
16:32 Speaker 06 Because other than that, it's bang on for one of these charm stories, which we know were used kind of legitimately by women who were terrified for themselves or their children. And it kind of puts this whole weird nonsense out of, I mean, it was already sort of out of the scholarly world, but puts it into something that's a lot more folkloric. Lilith appears in kind of very scholarly texts, but they're never, they're always written by men and they never care about the child stealing, woman killing side of her. In fact, eventually, especially in Judaism, she becomes the mother of all demons. And actually, the fact that she produces a lot of children is something that men hate about her.
17:16 Speaker 06 And I just find it so interesting. Part of me is desperate, in a very modern way, to think that this kind of fun argument about equality was something that women were reciting themselves, was a story that was being told by women. It's probably too hopeful and probably like Ben Sira changes so much that, you know, what can you say about what he was really riffing off? That's my wish.
17:43 Kate Lister? The thing about satire is it has to be satirising something, though, doesn't it? So like, it has to be, if it was some ancient joke that everyone was going to be falling about laughing at, there has to be a reason, like, why would he evoke that particular debate unless it was something that was in currency at the time?
18:03 Speaker 06 Yeah, and it has to be said as well. What is really interesting, so Ben Sira sticks. There are other versions of this story that eventually get told by kind of Jewish mystics, especially in Kabbalah. They're really boring. They're much more kind of, oh, God kicked her out the garden because she actually wasn't great. And he imprisoned her in the sea. She didn't want to go there. And, you know, she has no power and she's just useless. But none of those stories stick. The story that sticks and the story that is told again and again, like, we have fifty manuscript versions of Ben Sira. It's still the story we know today, is this kind of debate about sexual equality.
18:43 Speaker 06 And Jewish scholars knew this as well because we have, by kind of the logic of the story, Lilith's right? Like, they are both made of the same clay. There's no reason at all why she shouldn't, like, be equal with him and why she should listen to him. And that is something that is picked up on by Jewish scholars looking at it later. And they kind of try and downplay her argument. They're like, oh, actually, she was made out of the same clay, but it was just the scum that was left over of. That Adam was made, so it's not actually equality.
19:20 Kate Lister? That's a strained argument.
19:22 Speaker 06 So strained. And also, you wouldn't be arguing that if you hadn't noticed that like by the logic of the story, she's right. Like, you're trying to change something because you've realised this is a good argument. It's fascinating.
19:41 Kate Lister? I'll be back with Sarah after this short break.
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23:14 Kate Lister? So Ben Serah, you'll have to forgive me, I don't know very much, but I am going to have a look at this mad text that he's written. When was he writing that? What was the date?
23:24 Speaker 06 It is around 700 to 1,000 AD.
23:28 Kate Lister? Okay. And here's the earliest account we've got of this. I'm not going on top, you go on top. I'm not going on top. He's the first one. That's fascinating, isn't it? Because it might just be a big joke, but look how it's rippled into mythology and kind of our understanding of women in antiquity and what we're projecting onto that.
23:51 Speaker 06 Yeah, it's incredible. It's one of the most interesting manuscripts there is.
23:57 Kate Lister? Does he make other sex jokes in this book?
24:00 Speaker 06 I mean, as I say, there is public masturbation.
24:02 Kate Lister? Yes, that counts.
24:04 Speaker 06 Yeah, trying to think of any others apart from that. Off the top of my head, I can't remember any, but that doesn't mean there aren't any in there.
24:10 Kate Lister? But it's not like that that one incident stands out as like, oh, that's a fucking weird addition.
24:15 Speaker 06 No.
24:15 Kate Lister? It's very much in keeping with.
24:17 Speaker 06 Very much in keeping with the rest of it.
24:19 Kate Lister? Okay, so that's about 1,000 A.D. But Lilith, you're saying she can trace her roots right back to ancient Mesopotamia?
24:29 Speaker 06 Yeah.
24:30 Kate Lister? That's crazy. How have they managed to join up those lines between this text of semen stealing and two demons in Mesopotamia? Like, how? That's incredible. How do you manage to join those dots?
24:43 Speaker 06 So actually, it follows really beautifully. So from about 2,000 B.C., we have the initial texts against this demoness called Lamashtu and the incantations against her. And then we can watch through sort of cuneiform texts, she's popular as a demoness and she appears quite frequently. And we can also see Elitu, kind of this virgin ghost figure as well. I mean, ancient Mesopotamia is full of texts. They wrote on clay. And the joy of clay is that if you set a city on fire, then it just bakes the clay and preserves everything even better. It's like the opposite of paper. If you burn a library, which they did,
25:27 Speaker 06 the Library of Ashavananapal is like the library or the collection of writing of the ancient world. And it survives because someone torched the city.
25:38 Speaker 06 Baked the clay tablets. Mesopotamia is so cool.
25:42 Kate Lister? It is, isn't it? It's like, it's absolutely bonkers, the stuff that goes on.
25:46 Speaker 06 Yeah.
25:46 Kate Lister? I say that, that's not fair. Comparing it to other world mythologies, they're equally as bonkers, but it is.
25:51 Speaker 06 It's all bonkers.
25:52 Kate Lister? It is. I think what I like about stuff, the ancient Mesopotamian, is it, this is me being biased because I'm a sexist historian, but they're very open and upfront and not bothered about sex in, in a way that's quite, like even their gods and their goddesses, they're just like, yeah, yeah, they were shagging.
26:08 Speaker 06 Well, I think what's really interesting as well about kind of Letu is like I say, she is this demoness who is responsible for wet dreams.
26:15 Kate Lister? That's a crap job, isn't it? Like, could you imagine if you were a goddess waiting for your assignments to be handed out and that's what you get given, like a.
26:23 Speaker 06 So she's a ghost. She's the ghost of a girl who, no, no, sorry, ghost. So she's the ghost of a girl who died having, never having sex. So she is seeking out mortal men to enact her passions.
26:37 Kate Lister? Wow.
26:37 Speaker 06 And she comes to you in dreams and she's the explanation for wet dreams. I mean, imagine dying when you haven't had sex and then you've got to go around.
26:43 Kate Lister? Like hang around men having wet dreams. Oh, that's.
26:46 Speaker 06 What a treat. Anyway, each their own.
26:51 Speaker 06 And the thing is, in ancient Mesopotamia, wet dreams are just a thing. They're just a thing that happens. And you can kind of see this in the incantations against her. Like, they're just sad. They're kind of, you just feel sorry for her. Like, they're things like, oh, you know, this girl who's never had a nice young man undo her garment clasp. Like, that's real sweet.
27:13 Kate Lister? That is sweet.
27:13 Speaker 06 Who among us hasn't wanted a nice young man to undo our garment clasp?
27:17 Kate Lister? Oh.
27:19 Speaker 06 They're full of this kind of pathos and she's not very feared at all is kind of the impression that you get from the sources. And then you watch her move through. Then you can find her in these things called Aramaic incantation bowls, which are like clay bowls with incantations written on them. And the idea is you kind of put it upside down, like you kind of trap a spider, except you're trapping a demon in the bowl. And she moves through those and she keeps up kind of the seduction and the child killing. And there is a little bit more concern about the seduction side of things, but it's, it's not. Mostly people are afraid of her because she'll kill children and mothers.
28:00 Speaker 06 And then you get into kind of Jewish texts being written by men. And suddenly, what everyone cares about is the sex side. And Judaism in the Middle Ages especially, really doesn't like masturbation or wet dreams.
28:16 Kate Lister? No.
28:17 Speaker 06 It's a surprisingly sex positive thing, at least for those of us kind of raised in Christian environments. In that, you know, kind of go forth and multiply was taken seriously. Uh, there's this one scholar who says, if you say sex is terrible, you blaspheme God who created genitals, which, fair.
28:34 Kate Lister? Yep, fair.
28:35 Speaker 06 But it's only sex in the right context. It's okay, sex with your wife when you like her and neither of you are drunk to make children. And there is a real concern about sex outside of those contexts, and especially things like wet dreams. There's a famous story where um, you you also shouldn't have sex with your wife when she's menstruating. And there's a very fame, very famous, mildly famous, known story about a man who during periods when his wife was menstruating, would keep himself awake by sitting in an uncomfortable chair because he didn't want to risk the possibility of a wet dream.
29:12 Kate Lister? Fucking hell.
29:13 Speaker 06 It's just, come on, guys. It's fine. And like masturbation isn't allowed. You've got the story of Onan. You know, who spilled his seed on the ground and God is unimpressed. And suddenly that side of Lilith becomes terrifying. She stops being kind of this sad figure we all feel a bit sorry for and almost like kind of an explanation for wet dreams rather than anything else and becomes this horrible woman who's causing you to have wet dreams. So it's actually all women's fault at the end of the day, like if we really think about it.
29:45 Kate Lister? It's always women's fault. But there is, I I don't wanna try and say that like the ancient Jewish texts were were really sex positive. You sometimes get scholars who try and make the case, but they kind of, they keep coming, you sort of have to get limited by the fact of like, there's a lot of sex in there and they're quite, go and have sex, but it is heterosexual sex, sex when you're married.
30:04 Speaker 06 Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Yeah, it's like against medieval Christianity where it's like.
30:10 Speaker 06 Oh my God, I thought of a woman. I shall be whipping myself and then I'll throw myself into a bramble patch.
30:15 Kate Lister? They get very, very upset about that stuff. But the issue of semen stealing is really interesting because that has probably it's separated from Lilith into like, is it the succubus, the succubi demon, this one that was supposed to like steal male essences and all kinds of of mass stuff. You see this cropping up all over the place that women are gonna drain men's potency through having sex with them. And you see that cropping up all over the place.
30:45 Speaker 06 Absolutely, yeah. I mean, the other thing that I really love in this stuff about Lilith, where you can see where she is sitting so precisely on the fault lines of male anxieties about sex and about women. I think there's there's a wonderful scholar, Sarah Johnston, who wrote about kind of an iteration of Lamesh two and Lilith in Greece. And she says, demons are the clay with which we sculpt mold images of our fears. And she's so right in that Lilith is such a clear representation of people's fears about childbirth, infant death, sex, and she is shaped so perfectly to kind of
31:23 Speaker 06 medieval Jewish scholars fears about women. And the other thing she does when she steals your semen, she'll create children. And then she'll bring them to your funeral. And then God will see that you have a lot of illegitimate children and so will your relatives. And it will be really embarrassing.
31:42 Kate Lister? Hard to play in the long game, isn't it?
31:47 Speaker 06 And they might also dispute inheritances. That's another thing that they're worried about. And there was this really clear thing of like concern about having sex with a real woman who might have illegitimate children and might embarrass you with them in front of your family and in front of God. There's even a story where like the prophet Elijah meets Lilith. And Lilith is like, you're a dad. Good news.
32:15 Speaker 06 And it's got, it's quite fun to read, but at the same time, it's got this kind of thing of like, if you have illegitimate children, that's bad, but isn't it really the fault of women?
32:27 Kate Lister? Always.
32:27 Speaker 06 And it even happened to a prophet. So like, what are you meant to do? Like, it's not great.
32:34 Kate Lister? That's a get out of jail free card, isn't it?
32:36 Speaker 06 Yeah.
32:37 Kate Lister? So by the time we've got to, I don't know, is it the Middle Ages that the kind of the Judaic tradition, Lilith is now a demon who is like the antithesis of everything women are supposed to be.
32:50 Speaker 06 Absolutely, yeah.
32:51 Kate Lister? She kills babies instead of birthing them. She steals semen for fun and high jinks rather than to produce legitimate issue. Honestly, couldn't you just sit them down and just go, lads, we don't want your semen. I know you think it's amazing, but like, honestly, we're fine. Nobody wants it.
33:09 Speaker 06 There is this real kind of whiplash when like kind of researching and reading about these demons. Where on the one hand, you've got women being like, I'm very scared of dying in childbirth and my infant children dying. And you're like, that's a very legitimate concern.
33:23 Kate Lister? I get that.
33:24 Speaker 06 On the other hand, you've got men being like, I'm worried women are going to seduce me and steal my semen. It's like, that will not be happening. Also, I don't know, your picture came down to us because you're only medieval and you're safe.
33:38 Kate Lister? Do you think that like this semen stealing malarkey, do you think it could be like it's a coded fear of losing masculinity? Cause certainly by the time you.
33:47 Speaker 06 Absolutely.
33:47 Kate Lister? Yeah, by the time you get to like the 19th century and this idea, it's reappeared then as like, if you masturbate, you're going to go insane and die if you're a man. That it's got to that, that point. And it's all about that you'll lose your manly essence and you're kind of shrivel. Do you think that's kind of what's going on here?
34:04 Speaker 06 I think there's definitely kind of concerns about that too. I think there are. Kind of in Judea's and there is so much emphasis on, you know, don't spill your seed on the ground.
34:14 Kate Lister? Don't spill your seed. Keep it in your pants.
34:16 Speaker 06 Yeah, or in a woman.
34:19 Kate Lister? Or in a woman, in a lawful woman.
34:21 Speaker 06 In the right woman.
34:23 Kate Lister? At the right times, in the right positions.
34:26 Speaker 06 Yes.
34:27 Kate Lister? It's very strict, isn't it?
34:28 Speaker 06 Yeah, it's so weird. I just, I know that like, I don't know, I don't want people thousands of years hence to know what my sexual hangups are. But I don't write books about them. So.
34:42 Kate Lister? No, conjure demons out of, out of nothing. The demon of not ever texting you back, that would be my one.
34:48 Speaker 06 Yeah.
34:49 Kate Lister? Just this horrible demon that just, that ghosted you immediately and never spoke to you again. That would be my demon. Is Lilith in the Bible? Let's talk about how she's got associated with, with Adam. And is it just that one joke? Like, is she in the Bible at all?
35:06 Speaker 06 No, but there is kind of this entry point for her. So in Genesis, there's kind of two different accounts of the creation of women. One of them is where God created man and woman, man and woman, he created them. And then a bit later, you get the story about kind of Eve coming out of Adam's rib or his side. And you get that whole story. Now, that is likely because sort of the first few books of the Bible are being created from at least four different sources, that people are kind of awkwardly mushing together. And these sources all tend to tell roughly the same stories, just in slightly different ways.
35:49 Speaker 06 And it means you get lots of little contradictions like that, where sort of it looks like women's created twice, but it's not. It's the same story told twice, slightly changed. Obviously though, in the medieval period and late antiquity, you can't. Accuse the text itself of being incoherent. So that explanation is off the table. There's lots of ways this is resolved. One of them, which which I like, is that Adam and Eve were created like as one, kind of as one sort of generally it's depicted like merged at the back. And then Eve is removed from Adam's side afterwards, but they've sort of already both been there as one
36:30 Speaker 06 weird double human. Another method is just to ignore it, which is quite a common one. But there is this suggestion of this first wife and that kind of allows Lilith entry into the garden. And like I say, there is also this separate tradition where Adam was having his semen stolen by demons after he was in the garden.
36:51 Kate Lister? Is that in the Bible?
36:52 Speaker 06 That's not, go, go, God, no.
36:53 Kate Lister? I was gonna say, it's been a while since I read it, but I don't recall that.
36:58 Speaker 06 Would have made it much more fun.
36:59 Kate Lister? Wouldn't it? I definitely remembered that bit.
37:02 Speaker 06 Take out some of the genealogies, put in more demon sex.
37:04 Kate Lister? Put in more demon sex.
37:05 Speaker 06 Is my editorial feedback. Anyway, yeah, that's not in the Bible. All that's in the Bible is this hundred year gap in between Adam and Eve having one set of children and then having their next child. And then that was where this kind of idea that demons were stealing his semen came in. I suppose in a world where you've already got semen stealing demons, like at least one semen stealing demoness flying around, then that makes sense. But it means you've kind of got her already as sexually associated with Adam.
37:36 Kate Lister? Yeah.
37:37 Speaker 06 After the garden. So it sort of makes sense if she becomes the lover of Adam or the partner of Adam beforehand as well.
37:45 Kate Lister? Interesting.
37:46 Speaker 06 And like I say, Ben's Sarah is the first time that's fully expressed.
37:55 Kate Lister? I'll be back with Sarah after this short break.
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39:39 Kate Lister? It's bonkers, isn't it? That like, it was kind of a joke, but then it's not a joke, and it's kind of attached on to something else. But like, the idea of sex in the Garden of Eden was actually something medieval scholars gave a lot of thought to, because they had to try and square this circle of, as you were saying earlier, the medieval scholars came up with this idea of pleasure is sinful, which seems to have been new. That seems to have been, I don't think many people before that would have come up with that, like, to actually, even if it's with your wife and all the rest of it. So you get these scholars like St. Augustine trying to work out how Adam and Eve might have had sex in the Garden of Eden if pleasure is a sin, because how, and it just goes, they get themselves into some
40:24 Kate Lister? real knots about it.
40:25 Speaker 06 Isn't there one that's like, oh, like the penis thing was just mechanical at that point. So actually, they weren't having fun.
40:32 Kate Lister? That they would like lie next to one another and they would kind of like touch hands and then kind of like by a process of osmosis, a pregnancy would happen and they get really like caught up with it of just this, well, how did pleasure exist? And then you can sort of understand that if they're that anxious about it, Lilith offers this almost this like repository of like, that's where all the naughty stuff was.
40:54 Speaker 06 Yeah.
40:54 Kate Lister? Does she crop up outside of after the Bible? So she has this biblical, almost like a step on cameo moment of, oh, well, she's not, she's not really in there. And then she's clearly been written about in kind of parodies, like a thousand years after that. But what life after that does she take on? Is she taken seriously as like a demonic entity?
41:16 Speaker 06 Absolutely. So underneath all this, pretty much down to the modern day, the incantations against her as a demoness who will harm pregnant women or their children. That just continues. Those you can find pretty much down to the modern day. Basically, the advent of modern medicine is what stopped that. For the other side of her, kind of Renaissance Christianity got very interested in Kabbalah. They were still persecuting Jews, obviously, but like.
41:44 Kate Lister? But we like their stories. Lovely stories.
41:45 Speaker 06 Yeah, yeah. Oh, God, it's, why is prejudice never orig- I mean, it probably was if it was original, but it's so boring. Anyway. So Michelangelo in the Sistine Chapel, Lilith's there.
41:58 Kate Lister? No way. Oh, I didn't know that.
42:00 Speaker 06 Yeah. So you've got Adam and Eve and Adam's like reaching up and taking, well, he's like pulling back the branches of the tree to reveal Lilith. He's handing the fruit to Eve.
42:10 Kate Lister? Wow.
42:12 Speaker 06 It becomes this kind of story of her giving the fruit to Eve because she is this kind of slighted ex-wife who wants to get even.
42:21 Kate Lister? Wow.
42:22 Speaker 06 One of the things that's really interesting actually about kind of the story of the apple is the snake is this, the primary driver of the story, but doesn't have a personality. And, you know, why did the snake want Eve? To eat the apple. What was going on there?
42:38 Kate Lister? What was the benefit of that? Yeah.
42:40 Speaker 06 Yeah. So constantly you get people trying to associate anyone who might have had a motive with the snake. So quite often, you know, like Lucifer might be the snake and quite often it's Lilith. Um. Who sort of makes sense. She actually kind of Lamash to Lilith. And like in later forms of Lilith are really associated with snakes and they always were. So she'd already been depicted as kind of serpentine. So she makes real sense to have as that. Titian painted her as kind of the snake in the Garden of Eden. She's a Notre Dame.
43:13 Kate Lister? See, this makes sense of why she's got that biblical association. Because people like Mykonos are painting her into the Sistine Chapel in the Vatican itself. It's no wonder that now she's kind of a part of it, but not actually a part of it.
43:29 Speaker 06 Yeah.
43:30 Kate Lister? Would you say that she's undergone a little bit of a reclamation in modern terms? I've certainly seen artists experimenting with this, like that Lilith, she isn't this steaming, stealing, baby eating monster of of olden times, but she's like the first feminist. When did that start to happen?
43:49 Speaker 06 So fundamentally, it happened with second wave feminism. And it happened with Judith Plaskau, who wrote a midrash based on the Ben Sira story of Adam and Lilith. Her story is about Lilith leaves, I think not because of sex stuff, but just because of equality. Adam expects her to serve him constantly and she doesn't want that, so she leaves. And then God gives Eve to Adam. Everything's fine, but Eve starts to get really curious about Lilith.
44:25 Kate Lister? Stalking her on Facebook.
44:26 Speaker 06 Yeah, absolutely. As you would, your husband's ex, your husband's ex, when your husband isn't behaving very well, is definitely the person you should be reaching out to.
44:34 Kate Lister? Definitely, definitely.
44:37 Speaker 06 Yes. Um. So she climbs over an apple tree to get over the Wall of Eden and goes and speaks to Lilith. And in. Quite an erotically charged scene, like they become friends, they share everything with each other. And then they return to the Garden of Eden together. And I think the last line is, and Adam and God were afraid. And then that's where it ends, and it's brilliant. And she was very, Judith Plaskett was very specifically writing this as like a Jewish text. She wanted to write about kind of the idea that in Jewish history, the women's side of it was ignored. That was sort of fifty percent of Jewish history was being dismissed.
45:18 Speaker 06 And that actually what was important was to bring women's history back into Judaism. And that was kind of how she was conceiving of this. The thing is, though, it works just as a feminist text. Like, it always works just as a feminist text. A woman who says, no, thank you, to God and her husband and the idea of paradise and leaves to go have sex with other demons. That's a flex. It is a flex. And especially because she's leaving because she doesn't want to have sex with Adam in the way he wants her to have sex. But she still wants sex, just not the way he does. It's brilliant, it's so good. It's something that centers women's pleasure, that that says you can want to have sex,
46:02 Speaker 06 but not with that person in that way, and that's legitimate. Go have sex with demons in the sea. It is such an incredible feminist text, even with Ben Surratt. In fact, especially with Ben Surratt's sexual additions, it's it's perfect. It's only really surprising it didn't happen earlier, but it's so perfectly matched second wave feminism in this idea of kind of, I shouldn't have to to be secondary to my husband. I should be allowed to have sexual pleasure. And perhaps I might have to turn my back on husband and God to get that. In order to get that. It just chimes so well. And this story is told again and again with kind of different iterations,
46:44 Speaker 06 with some minor historical inaccuracies about the belief about who Lilith was and where she came from. But yes, and it just became such a well-known story.
46:57 Speaker 06 And such a feminist story in a way that can't really, I think, be undone.
47:04 Kate Lister? As a final question then, and this is a really tricky one, but could Lilith be the oldest mythology, that mythological creature that we've got that still has a sort of a presence and an incantation today? Because I know that you can go back to Mesopotamia and you can track down gods and you can say like Inanna and Ishtar, but they don't have stories written about them today. Like Lilith is still going. She still crops up in like, people are reclaiming her, they're re-talking about her. She's got to be one of the oldest, right, myths that we've got.
47:35 Speaker 06 She absolutely is. This tradition of kind of Lamash two, all the way down to the present day, is basically the longest continuous tradition that we have. I mean, the fact that not even being treated as a story, but being treated as like an incantation against her. We have versions of that kind of going on in the 20th century, in the late 20th century. People are still writing incantations against her and they are similar to ones that people were writing thousands of years ago. It is incredible how well she has survived. And as you say, yeah, she absolutely is one of the longest. And the other ones that are kind of up for the contest are related to Lilith. Mermaids. Mermaids were a part of this family too.
48:20 Speaker 06 So Lamash to Lilith doesn't just become Lilith. She also goes over to Greece and becomes Lamia, who is this seductive, child-eating monster who pops through kind of ancient Greek legend. And she ends up being incredibly associated with the sea, having a serpent tail, sitting by a passage that once you sail into, you can't sail out of it again. And she hides her serpent tail, takes her top off, lures sailors to her with her breasts. And then when they get close enough to her, she'll eat them. And that monster, which is Lamia, sort of combines a little bit with the sirens. Sirens aren't sexy in like the Odyssey. They promise knowledge. They're not promising sex.
49:05 Speaker 06 Their song isn't sexual at all. But she combines with them in that they're also kind of watery. So she ends up getting kind of the song from the sirens. But all the rest of the stuff in mermaids and kind of medieval lore about them seducing men and eating them and that kind of thing, that is Lamia and that is coming from that kind of La Mashtu branch that's gone over to ancient Greece. She's just the best. I mean, I'm biased, but she's absolutely incredible. And then the mermaid sits perfectly on like the sexual repression fault lines of the medieval church in that they are, you know, terrified of women seducing them and drawing them away
49:45 Speaker 06 from God. And you can see as she sits there and is kind of the absolute expression of those fears.
49:53 Kate Lister? Wow. Sarah, you have been marvelous to talk to. Thank you so much. And if people want to know more about you and your work, where can they find you?
50:01 Speaker 06 So I'm reading artefacts on Instagram and on Blue Sky. So find me there. And I would love to talk to anyone about Lilith.
50:11 Kate Lister? Thank you so much for coming to talk to me. You've been so much fun.
50:14 Speaker 06 Thank you for having me. This has been fantastic.
50:23 Kate Lister? Thank you for listening and thank you so much to Sarah for joining me. And if you like what you heard, please don't forget to like, review and follow along wherever it is that you get your podcasts. If there's a subject you wanted us to explore, or maybe you just wanted to say hi, you can email us at [email protected] . Coming up, we have got episodes on Genghis Khan and the sex lives of the Spartans, all heading your way. This podcast was edited by Tom Delargy and produced by Stuart Beckwith. The senior producer was Charlotte Long. Join me again, Betwixt the Sheets, The History of Sex Scandal in Society, a podcast by History Hit. This podcast contains music from Epidemic Sound.
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Previous Sex Lives of Dinosaurs Next Genghis Khan's Sex Life Page updated November 5, 2026 · transcript and summary are machine-generated