The only reference to Lilith is a demon in Isaiah 34:14:
Isaiah 34:14 said:
Wildcats shall meet the hyenas,
Goat-demons shall greet each other;
There too the lilith shall repose
And find herself a resting place.
There is nothing to link the lilith in Isaiah 34:14 to her being Adam's wife or to her being in the Garden or none of Isaiah 34:14 relates to any part of Genesis.
Lilith does however appeared in Jewish folklore, like in
The Book of Legends (or
Sefer Ha-Aggadah). Also known simply as the
Haggada, is interpretation and expansion of the
Torah and other parts of the
Tanakh. A translation can be found in the Sacred Texts website, under the title - Legends of the Jews, translated by Louis Ginzberg 1909. See
Volume 1, chapter 2, under the heading -
WOMAN.
Maureen said:
Bad Lilith. Refused to stay two steps behind her man. Refused to be on the bottom. Wanted to be equal to Adam. Or so I heard.
Nothing in this legend of Lilith say any anything about have sex on the bottom; this is found in Kkabbalah legend, between the 8th and 10th century CE,
The Alphabet of ben Sira. She just wanted equality, because she was made from the same material as Adam.
shayanekh said:
She certainly is pre-biblical. Whether she was ever in the Bible explicitly and was removed or whether her role as Adam's wife was a later romantic invention is incredibly difficult to discern.
As in Jewish literature with Adam, then "yes", she is a late invention. And though Isaiah mention a demon called lilith, this is not the same demon in the legend of Adam.
But the she-demon lilith does predate any biblical literature. In fact, she was in one old Sumerian poem of Gilgamesh (called Bilgames or Gilgames in Sumerian legend) called
Bilgames and the Netherworld. A translation can be found in 1999 Penguin Classics title -
The Epic of Gilgamesh, translated by Andrew George.
According to this poem, some demons, including the lilithu, had infested the beautiful
halub tree (possibly a willow tree) in Uruk, which the goddess Inana wanted to create her throne from. This caused great distress to the goddess, so Gilgamesh drove away the demons for the goddess. So yes, the demon lilith/lilithu is pre-Biblical.