Lilith Unfair

SPEAKER_2 (0:02)

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Dan McClellan (0:32)

Lilith and Adam are in the garden, and Lilith gets upset because she wants to, and the text says, be on top. And some people try to interpret this figuratively as an authority question. I think it is far more likely that this is a reference to sexual positions.

That Lilith wants to be on top, and Adam says, you are not fit to be on top.

I am the only one who is fit to be on top. And this would align with the longstanding notion that the only sexual position appropriate for a man is the dominant one, and the only sexual position appropriate for a woman is the submissive one. And so for a woman to be on top, throws a wrench into the social hierarchy, and dogs and cats running wild, it's pandemonium. I'm forgetting the Ghostbusters reference.

Dan Beecher (1:24)

Mass hysteria, come on!

Dan McClellan (1:25)

Mass hysteria, yeah. Hey, everybody, I'm Dan McClellan.

Dan Beecher (1:32)

And I'm Dan Beecher.

Dan McClellan (1:33)

And you are listening to the Data Over Dogma podcast, where we try to increase the public's access to the academic study of the Bible and religion, and combat the spread of misinformation about the same. How are you doing today, Dan?

Dan Beecher (1:47)

I am doing fine. How are you doing?

Dan McClellan (1:49)

I'm doing well, although a tinge of regret. Someone told me that we really missed out on an opportunity to call our last, our episode 12, There's Something About Mary.

So.

Dan Beecher (2:02)

Well, that's true. We could have done it.

We missed it. You know, I did title it after something that Elizabeth Schrader said in the show. So I thought I was at least honoring her with that title. Yeah. But you know, we miss opportunities all the time. That's that's part of life. We take it. We get some. We win some. We lose some. Coming up on this week's show, we're going to be talking about a a famous and infamous lady first. And then we're delving later into some of your personal work, some some work that that that you have a lot of experience with.

Dan McClellan (2:47)

Yeah, I'm going to do a What Does That Mean segment on the word Steely, which I use every now and then. And I can count on getting a dozen references to Steely, Dan, I was going to say every time I say that word. And some people say Steela. And then for plural, they say Steely.

I say Steely for the singular and Steely for the plural.

Dan Beecher (3:11)

So STLE. Is that what we're saying?

Dan McClellan (3:14)

STLE.

SPEAKER_1 (3:15)

Yeah. All right.

Dan Beecher (3:16)

Well, we'll get to that later on in the show. But for now, let's do our first segment. Who's that? We're going to talk about someone, a name that appears, I think only once in the Bible, if it appears at all in your version. It might not appear in your version whatsoever.

But it's a person slash thing slash who knows what. Well, hopefully, Dan, you know what.

It has been, it has become an icon of kind of the modern feminism, this person, will people of a certain age, you and I included, Dan will recall that back in the 90s, singer Sarah McLachlan named an entire festival after a music festival after this person. So who is or what is Lilith?

Dan McClellan (4:25)

Yeah, let's get into it. And speaking of Sarah McLachlan, a huge fan, by the way, if I had the money or the time or the know-how back in the 90s when I was in high school, I would have loved to have gone to Lilith Fair.

Dan Beecher (4:42)

If you're listening, Sarah McLachlan, call us.

Dan McClellan (4:46)

She's not. She's got much better things to do.

But yeah, Lilith. So well, we only have one passage in all the Bible that has anything at all to say about Lilith and that passage is in Isaiah 34 in verse 14 And here we're talking about a threat of destruction to Israel. And part of this threat is to say, basically, I'm going to turn you into a deserted land, a land that's going to be inhabited by a bunch of creatures that are associated with the wilderness associated with a lack of habitation, a lack of civilization. So, in the NRSV, it says, wild cats shall meet with hyenas, goat demons shall call to each other, and thereto Lilith shall repose. And the word in Hebrew there is lilit. And most scholars will tell you that this comes from a term in Akkadian, so from Mesopotamia, that ultimately derives from a Sumerian word. So, it's probably a borrowing into Akkadian from the Sumerian, which is a very different language from Akkadian.