Does this seem like a good background for my villain?

I like the premise. Few villains are better than those whose intentions & actions you understand, if not condone.

Question related to the original myth:

How could Lilith begin to kill children when she left Eden, assuming Adam & Eve had the first children...Cain & Abel?

 

That depends on one's view of history. If you're talking about the bible & it's agreed upon composition under Constantine & the Council of Nicea then you may be right. However, aren't the other books of the bible (Pre-Constantine) that were excluded called the Apocrypha? Could she be written about somewhere in those books?

I'm no expert but I do know that the modern King James Bible isn't the bible as it was originally thought of by the many early competing & differentiated sects of Christianity.

 

I thought the Catholic church employed the King James Bible & portions of the apocrypha like the Old Testament books Tobias, Judith, the Wisdom of Solomon, Baruch, and Maccabees. Yet others, such as First Esdras, Second Esdras, Epistle of Jeremiah, Susanna, Bel and the Dragon, Prayer of Manasseh, Prayer of Azariah, and Laodiceans are not part of official canon.

Then there are the New Testament books that never made it into any canon. That list is rather long but a few of the notables...
The First Book of Adam and Eve
The Second Book of Adam and Eve
The Book of the Secrets of Enoch
The Psalms of Solomon
The Odes of Solomon
Testament of Simeon
Testament of Levi
The Testament of Judah
The Testament of Joseph

Is this not accurate?

 

What is RSV? I'm not familiar with that term?

I suppose I could look it up but...

 

It's not that type of community at all (trust me lol... or just read some of the threads... tons of disagreement). Tactful disagreement and discourse is encouraged. It's a learning tool when properly applied. Constructive feedback & criticism, differing viewpoints & opinions, learning from other members in a tolerant and understanding atmosphere while retaining a family friendly basis, focused on Fantasy writing... that is what Mythic Scribes is about.

Sometimes, threads take on a life of their own. We have to be prepared for that possibility but you are never required to, or expected to, respond to those spin-offs either. That is, of course, your choice.

In my view, the fact that the name "sort of" appears, and is mentioned in Medieval tetxs, makes the possibility of her being a villain even more interesting than if she was easily found in scriptures. The mystery,and shadowy veil, lend a certain plausibility to the tale. That intrigues me.

I'm by no means an expert...just an interested party. I find religious history exceedingly interesting...how things came to be...influences on modern thinking, things of this nature. My inquiries and comments were only meant to share my understandings and learn from those who have a firm grasp on the subject (or at least more intimate knowledge than myself).

Still, those books do exist do they not? Weren't they excluded from the original Bible at the Council of Nicea? I've never read them so I can't speak with any authority. However, I often wonder when I see debates like this, if a character such as Lilith, would be found within books like these.

 

It would be wrong to describe the New Testament Apocrypha as part of the Bible. Most of them were rejected out of hand for good reason, and a handful were close but rejected because they weren't tied close enough to the apostles. They are not a forgotten sect of Christianity, they were written by people who had nothing to do with the apostles and whose writing greatly conflicted with the Gospels. Most of them teach a "Gnostic" theology. The standard was that they had to be written either by the Apostles or by someone very close to them, which was based on the claims of the Churches those apostles founded. Many of those claims are documented.

The Deuterocanon refers to the handful of Old Testament books which were removed from the Bible by Martin Luther during the Reformation, based on a claim that they weren't accepted by the Jews. Of course, the Jews threw them out for being written in Greek and sounding too Christian, and only one branch of Jews did so. Hanukkah comes from the Deuterocanon. They remain in the Catholic Bible, and actually, a slightly expanded list is included in the Orthodox Bible.

((edit))

Only a couple of books were really in contention at Nicea. Most of the Churches had settled on very similar canons on their own long before that, especially the four Gospels, and in fact, the biggest debate was on the book of Hebrews, which many had previously left out.

 

The Catholic Bible is the Vulgate, a Latin copy of the Bible translated by St. Jerome in the 5th Century. It's generally recognized that St Jerome had copies of Greek Manuscripts that are older and more diverse than anything we have today. So Catholics will use any variety of Bibles translated from Jerome's Vulgate.

Also - before anyone asks - Latin is a terse language compared to Greek. Latin translates easily into just about any language, while Greek is very nuanced and philosophical, and will lose different layers of meaning depending on which language you translate into. The idea of using a Latin standard for the Bible is that you can translate not only the Bible, but the commentaries, into languages that don't have the scholarship that it would take to have commentaries written in that language. And the commentaries will still be appropriate, where they wouldn't be if you translated the Bible from Greek. The commentaries would be discussing the wrong nuances about the language.

The KJV is only the authoritative Bible for a handful of Protestant sects. Most will argue that the NASB is better for its scholarship.

 

I guess that works, for a story. Lilith is pretty much a medieval Jewish myth, and there's only vague imagery associated with the word before that. So you would need to add some kind of secret history for the concept to work.

 

Here's the thing...you don't need to over worry about fact. It's great if you can have a basic understanding though. The research you do will bleed into the fiction and make it seem tangible & real.

What you DO need is plausibility. Can you write the story so these facts are interwoven with your own creation to make the story of Lilith plausible? If you can do that, you have no issue.

 

Here is something I came across regarding whether Lilith appears in the Bible:

Isaiah 34:14f - Lilith Reference

As far as I know, there is no reference in the Bible to the story of Lilith being Adam's first wife (or partner, or whatever she was meant to be), or really anything about her. I thought the stories of her came from other sources.