Every time this question is posted, all the so-called "researchers" come out of the woodwork claiming Lilith to have been real and justifying this not by providing actual research but, as usual, justifying this conclusion solely on appeals to their claims to being "researchers" or qualified theologians. What this boils down to is: "Don't ask me to show you the research, just trust me that it exists because I said it does... 'cuz I'm a researcher!" (BTW, this rather exemplifies the Logical Fallacy of "Appeal to Authority.")
As with the search for real Vampires, the only way to understand anything in mythology is to begin, as true researchers always do, with the primary source evidences. In other words, you must "...start at the very beginning, it's a very good place to start." And what worked in "The Sound of Music" for teaching kids to sing works even better where historical research is concerned.
The idea of Lilith as Adam's first wife is not found anywhere in ancient times. You won't find it in the Old Testament ... or in the New Testament. It's not found in the Torah or the Book of Enoch or any ancient text within even a couple thousand years of Adam & Eve's mythological existence. No... the idea didn't even occur to anyone... until as late as the Middle Ages, almost a thousand years after Jesus, in fact. And then, it was invented out of thin air to provide a convenient answer to what seemed a Biblical contradiction.
(The following is excerpted from: http://judaism.about.com/od/jewishculture/a/Where-Does-The-Legend-Of-Lilith-Come-From.htm )
Lilith and the Biblical Story of Creation
The biblical book of Genesis contains two contradictory accounts of humanity’s creation. The first account is known as the Priestly version and appears in Genesis 1:26-27. Here God fashions man and woman simultaneously when the text reads: “So God created mankind in the divine image, male and female God created them.”
The second account of Creation is known as the Yahwistic version and is found in Genesis 2. This is the version of Creation that most people are familiar with. God creates Adam, then places him in the Garden of Eden. Not long afterwards, God decides to make a companion for Adam and creates the animals of the land and sky to see if any of them are suitable partners for the man. God brings each animal to Adam, who names it before ultimately deciding that it is not a “suitable helper.” God then causes a deep sleep to fall upon Adam and while the man is sleeping God fashions Eve from his side. When Adam awakes he recognizes Eve as part of himself and accepts her as his companion.
Not surprisingly, the ancient rabbis noticed that two contradictory versions of Creation appear in the book of Genesis (which is called Bereisheet in Hebrew). They solved the discrepancy ...
... by inventing the idea out of thin air that Adam must have had two wives, and decided to call the first wife they had invented by the name of a well-known demoness from Babylonian mythology: Lilith.
And that is how (and why) they chose to solve the contradiction. After all, can't have the Bible contradicting itself. Thus, if the Biblical pieces don't fit... invent a story that makes them fit. And so they did and "Lilith" as the not-so-blushing first bride was born... errr, married?
Of course, modern Biblical scholarship has solved this seeming contradiction, which turns out to be no contradiction at all. We have discovered that (*gasp!*) the Hebrew Pentateuch (First Five Books of the Bible) were in fact written primarily by two separate authors who each wrote separate books about the same events. When during post-exhilic times (after the return of the Jews from Babylonian captivity) they chose to combine both sets of books into one, rather than edit and redact the two accounts into one, they chose instead to lump in both complete books, differences and all, together... first telling one author's version and then, right after the first, telling the other author's version of the same event... yet without informing the reader that two separate accounts by different authors were being told.
And of course, they did this for fear that God would strike them dead if they altered any of either author's words.
This is why we read two separate accounts about Adam & Eve (the author of the first account has Adam and Eve created at the same time whereas the second author, whose account of the same event was added a few verses later, chose to have Adam created first and Eve created out of one of his ribs), Noah's Flood (in one account the animals enter the ark in groups of seven, whereas in the different account a couple verses apart, the animals enter two by two), and on and on.
Thus what the Medieval Jewish scholars viewed as Biblical contradictions, we in modern times now fully understand were not contradictions at all, simply two different authors describing the same events in their own different ways... and later Biblical editors placing each author's account unchanged back-to-back into the Bible, differences and all.
Therefore, actual Biblical scholars and researchers (the real ones... not those pretending to be such) understand and agree that the only wife of Adam being referred to in Genesis was and always has been ... Eve.
- Upir'
