Robert Rossen – Jean Seberg in Lilith (1964)

I know nothing about Rossen and precious little about Seberg.

I’m posting this because damned if this isn’t a precursor to, like, a third of Arno Rafael Minkkinen’s work.

What interests me more has to do with the title: Lilith.

Thanks to the Lilith Fair, I think most people know that Lilith was the Adam of Biblical myth’s first wife.

The details of her story are wonderful. Unlike Eve, she was made from the same dirt as Adam–instead of a pilfered rib. She refused to be subservient to Adam and eventually departed the garden of Eden, had an affair with an angel and refused to ever return. As such: Eve was fabricated.

Another post that I saw this morning mentioned the story of Susanna and the Elders–expurgated from The Book of Daniel. Essentially, two total creep see Susanna bathing in a garden and approach her saying that if she doesn’t surrender to them sexually they will publicly impugn her virtue. She doesn’t go along and so she is put on trail.

Daniel is like–well, let’s interview them separately and compare their stories. One says she was bathing under a mastic tree; the other an Oak. The size difference in the trees means that neither is telling the truth because one tree is small and another is enormous.

I went to a parochial school and I find these stories fascinating because the world in which they take place is familiar but these take on a slant that make them more relateable, they are also somehow more believable.

Also, I’m curious what other sort of ‘aprocryphal’ stories like these with which I am unfamiliar. I’m starting to think it might be worth building a body of work based around these strong women who were deleted or marginalized (looking at you Bathsheeba) by The Bible and creating photographic icons for them. So what about it? What other similar stories about strong women am I missing, should I consider?