A Tale of Two Sisters: The Image of Eve in Early Rabbinic Literature and Its Influence on the Portrayal of Lilith in the Alphabet of Ben Sira

The purposes of this paper are (1) to outline the early Jewish traditions concerning Lilith, so as to provide the backdrop for (2) the reconstruction of the main elements of her image in the Alphabet of Ben Sira (ABS), which contains the most elaborate variant of the Lilith-myth. The latter in tu…