Sandman: where do the three eve stories come from?

[Amy Z]

Dumbledad wrote:

> Eve (who now lives in a cave in The Dreaming) tells him 
> that there were three Eves, three wives of Adam. The first was made 
> of dust, like Adam, but proves too spirited for him so they 
separate 
> and she goes off to consort with demons. The second was constructed 
> from flesh and bone, and having seen what lies beneath her skin 
> during the construction process, Adam is too put-off to love her; 
so 
> she stays a virgin. No-one knows where she went. 

Yeah, as people have said, Lilith shows up in a lot of Jewish 
folklore.  There's been some interesting re-creation of this myth by 
modern feminist theologians who note that Lilith was pretty spunky 
and maybe ought to be rehabilitated now that we don't take so kindly 
to religion's main message to women being "obey your husbands."  
Judith Plaskow wrote a story about her and Eve:  "The Coming of 
Lilith: Toward a Feminist Theology" in Womanspirit Rising, which was 
edited by Plaskow and Carol Christ.  It's funny and sharp.  Plaskow 
identifies this project as being in the Midrashic tradition, the same 
rabbinic tradition of creative commentary on the Bible that generated 
stories like Lilith in the first place.  Lilith does get an explicit 
mention in the Bible, in Isaiah 34:14.

Re: the second Eve, perhaps she corresponds to the Eve of the first 
creation story in Genesis:

Then God said, "Let us make man in our image, in our likeness, and 
let them rule over the fish of the sea and the birds of the air, over 
the livestock, over all the earth, and over all the creatures that 
move along the ground."  So God created man in his own image, 
in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them. 
(Genesis 1:26-27, King James Version)

The creation-from-the-rib version comes later, in Genesis 2:7, 15-
24.  Gaiman, or whoever he got it from, is using some poetic license, 
since there's nothing to indicate that Eve was created first.  But 
it's significant that the Eve of the first creation story has a 
better shot of being equal to Adam than the rib-Eve in that the 
former was created at the same time as he, explicitly in God's image 
(but of course, God was a MAN and Eve is a MERE WOMAN.  Never forget 
that God has a penis.  And a Y chromosome in each cell of His body.  
And testosterone flowing out of His endocrine system). 

;-)
Amy Z
v pleased with herself for doing all this Biblical research so early 
in the morning