Adam and Eve were the first people God put on Earth
(Genesis 1, 2)

There are also many early biblical stories where Adam got company not of Eve, but of a woman named Lilith.

In early biblical times, many totally different creation myths circulated among the ancient jews.

Adam's First Wife?

According to many old hebrew creation myths, Lilith was the first woman on earth
That’s also why you will find two creation myths in the bible (see below).

In Genesis 1, Yahweh creates Adam and Eve from scratch and at the same time, while in Genesis 2, He creates Adam first, and Eve only later, from Adam’s rib.

But in many other early Hebrew texts, Adam got company not of Eve, but of a woman named Lilith. This creation story existed in many variants and 'flavors', too.

In one of them (the Babylonian Talmud), God created Lilith the way He created Adam: from soil. But this time, He didn't use fertile earth, but dirt to create Lilith.

Obviously, not a good idea.

Adam and Lilith have sex, only to find that Lilith starts giving birth to a vast amount of demons.

After a while, the two first humans have an argument over sex (no, really! Adam wants to be on top, but Lilith refuses) and Lilith runs off, infuriated. Only now God decides to create Eve for Adam.

But all goes terribly wrong.

God lets Adam watch while He pieces together Eve from bone, blood, muscle tissue and skin. Understandably, Adam is disgusted. He doesn’t want this Eve.

So God takes away Eve 1.0, and grudgingly decides to make a new one. This time, the Lord waits until Adam sleeps and creates Eve from a rib of Adam’s – the version we still find in Genesis 2 today. That would mean that Eve is actually the third wife God made for Adam!

Amazingly, the Old Testament still subtly refers to that in Genesis 2:23. Here, the Lord says about Eve: "This at last is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh”. Note those words: at last! Little wonder, after two earlier attempts.

And that’s only one story. Among ancient Jews, there were many, many more creation myths regarding Adam and Eve.

In some of them, Adam originally had a tale. In order to create Eve, the Lord took away that tail and created Eve out of it. That is why humans still have a tail-bone, the myth says.

In other versions, God created Adam and Eve at the same time – but united in one being. In these myths, ‘Adam and Eve’ were originally positioned back to back in one creature, until God decided to separate them. Remnants of this story may have ended up in Genesis 1, where the Lord creates Adam and Eve in one go, too.

 One bible, two creation stories

Genesis 1:26-27

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 2:7,20-23

The LORD God formed the man from the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living being.

(...)

But for Adam no suitable helper was found. So the LORD God caused the man to fall into a deep sleep; and while he was sleeping, he took one of the man's ribs and closed up the place with flesh. Then the LORD God made a woman from the rib he had taken out of the man, and he brought her to the man.

The man said, "This is now bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh; she shall be called 'woman', for she was taken out of man."

Outside of the bible, there is overwhelming scientific evidence that mankind wasn’t put on the planet by God, but gradually evolved from a now extinct ape forebear over the last 5 million years.

The evidence for this is massive. It ranges from fossils of ancient ‘missing links’ and fossilized footprints from upright walking apes to millions of rudimentary tools and artefacts.

And there's the genetic evidence: geneticists suspect which genes have changed, giving us larger brains, a smaller jaw and worse scent. And most important of all: we can easily spot our 'ape roots' by looking in the mirror!

Take our shoulder joints. They're flexible, so that we can swing our arms upwards. That's called 'brachiation', and it's unique to tree-swinging apes. Or look at our back bone. It's unusually rigid: in fact, we owe it to our back bone that we can walk upright. But in nature, it's a very well-known feature only found in specialised tree-climbers. The backbone that enables us to stand upright, is the same backbone apes use for reaching upwards to tree branches!

What happened, very roughly, is this. About 5 million years ago, the African climate got dryer. Forests vanished, forcing tree-dwelling apes to live in the open savannah. Gradually, these apes learned to walk upright, learned how to use their hands and got smarter, probably because they fed on protein-rich bone marrow.

There were many species of Homo, often living at the same time. In the end, our species Homo sapiens drove away the other proto-human species and inherited the planet.

The many different versions of the Adam-and-Eve creation myth were well-known among old church fathers. In fact, they were a thorn in the side of church fathers like Tertullian and Timotheus. Every now and then, these church fathers got word of it when another different creation story was found.

The belief in Lilith was very persistent and trickled down into jewish folklore. Even ‘biblical’ jews believed in an evil spirit of Lilith, who killed their children. Archaeologists have found many amulets offering protection against Lilith.

Robert Graves en Raphale Petai: "From hebrew myths: the book of Genesis"