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‘If you hate Lilith, you hate honesty’
Updated On: 30 March, 2024 09:15 AM IST | Mumbai | Fiona Fernandez
Shinie Antony’s new book introduces readers to an under-represented character, a she-demon, a villainess and a fiery voice who demanded equality of the sexes in Biblical times
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Illustration courtesy/Pia Alize Hazarika, Hachette
First there was Adam, then came Eve. They lived together in the fantastical garden of Eden until that fateful day when the devil in the form of the snake tempted Eve to eat the forbidden fruit and they were banished from paradise as they had sinned.
This Biblical story about the first humans on Earth is common knowledge to many. However, journalist-author Shinie Antony’s new title Eden Abandoned: The Story of Lilith (Hachette) seeks to throw light on the woman who finds mention in some ancient texts and versions of the Bible as the first wife of Adam, before Eve. “She is barely there in the scriptures, and is mostly in doggerels and morality tales. There are many texts, seventh century onwards that mention her: Gilgamesh, Talmud, Ben Sira, Genesis 1, the Hebrew Bible; there’s also the fantasy novel by George MacDonald. She has many cameos, all of them scary. She is the White Witch’s mom in CS Lewis’s The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe, in a poem by Vladimir Nabokov, in a 19th century short story by Judith Plaskow Goldenberg, and inspired the Jewish feminist magazine, Lilith,” reveals Antony about the subject of her riveting take of a rage-filled, intriguing villainess’, she reminds, “In the end though, Lilith tells her own story; her mouth at our ear.”
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