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Religious prostitution, sacred prostitution or temple prostitution is the practice of having sexual intercourse (with a person other than one's spouse) for a religious or sacred purpose. A woman engaged in such practices is sometimes called a temple prostitute or hierodule, though modern connotations of the term prostitute may or may not be appropriate, given the religious and cultic signification of the activities.
[edit] Ancient Near EastSacred prostitution is often held to have been widespread across the Ancient Near East,[1] starting perhaps in Babylon with the Sumerians, in emulation of the hieros gamos (sacred wedding) custom of the king coupling with the high priestess to represent the union of Dumuzid with Inanna (later called Ishtar).[2] The ancient Greek historian Herodotus wrote:
The Canaanite equivalent of Ishtar was Astarte, and according to the contemporary Christian writer Eusebius temple prostitution was still being carried on in the Phoenician cities of Aphaca and Heliopolis (Baalbek) until closed down by the emperor Constantine in the fourth century AD. [4] Greece did not know sacred prostitution at the same scale that existed in the ancient Near East. The only known cases were at the fringes of the Greek world (in Sicily, Cyprus, in the Kingdom of Pontus and in Cappadocia), and the city of Corinth where the temple of Aphrodite housed a significant number of servants at least since the classical era. In 464 BC a man named Xenophon, a citizen of Corinth who was an acclaimed runner and winner of pentathlon at the Olympic Games, dedicated one hundred young girls to the temple of the goddess as a sign of thanksgiving. We know this because of a hymn which Pindar was commissioned to write (fragment 122 Snell), celebrating "the very welcoming girls, servants of Peïtho and luxurious Corinth" [5]. During the Roman period, Strabo states that the temple had more than a thousand sacred slave-prostitutes (VIII, 6, 20). [edit] Hebrew BibleThe Hebrew Bible uses two different words for prostitute, zonah (זנה)[6][7] and kedeshah (קדשה).[8][9] The word zonah simply meant an ordinary prostitute or loose woman.[7] But the word kedeshah literally means "consecrated female", from the Semitic root q-d-sh (קדש) meaning "holy" or "set apart".[8] Qedesha also became the Canaanite name for their goddess of sex (or perhaps a title for either the goddess Astarte or the goddess Asherah in this role), adapted into Egyptian as Qetesh or Qudshu.[10] Whatever the cultic significance of a kedeshah to a follower of the Canaanite religion, the Hebrew Bible is quick to connect the term with a common prostitute. Thus Deuteronomy 23:17-18 warns followers:
The religious aspect of kedeshah is underlined by the ancient Septuagint translation of the Hebrew Bible into Koine Greek, which renders the first verse as a double prohibition, both against prostitution, and against being an initiate of foreign cults:
It is notable that every occurrence of the female kedeshah appears to be paired, at least to some degree, with the word zonah.[12] Thus Hosea (4:14), in a sequence complaining that the men of Israel have not remained true to Yahweh, but instead have gone whoring after foreign gods, writes using the parallelism typical of Biblical Hebrew poetry:
Even closer is the association in the one other usage, the story of Tamar at Genesis 38, where the two words seem to be being used effectively interchangeably. Tamar, left widowed and childless, disguises herself and tricks Judah into thinking she is a zonah (38:15) to get herself pregnant. But a few verses later Judah's friend the Adullamite, sent to find the woman again, asks the men of the place "Where is the kedeshah, that was openly by the way side?" And they reply, "There was no kedeshah in this place," (38:21) which he duly reports to Judah. (38:22). The meaning of the male form kadesh is not entirely clear. Some early English translations, following the Greek porneuon, rendered it as a "whoremonger" - ie a prostitute-seeker;[13] but it may have been a closer analogue of kedeshah, ie a male cultic attendant, apparently again with some sexual implication, hence the King James translation as "sodomite". Many recent translations simply say "cult prostitute".[14] The Hebrew word keleb (dog) in the next line may also signify a male dancer or prostitute,[15] perhaps a transvestite or eunuch. The cuneiform sign UR.SAL for assinnu (a male devotee of Ishtar who took on feminine characteristics) means both "dog" and "man/woman";[12] while in Greek the word kinaidos ("dog-like";[16] Latin cinaedus) was used for men who were flamboyantly effeminate and behaved as though they were on heat for homosexual advances. In the New Testament the word "dog" may have a similar meaning at Revelation 22:15.[12]. The kadeshim are also mentioned four times in the Books of Kings (1 Kings 14:24, 15:12, 22:46; 2 Kings 23:7), when they evidently rose to some prominence, until purged by Jahwist revivalist kings such as Jehoshaphat and Josiah. Again, ancient translations vary. At 1 Kings 15:12 the Septuagint hellenises them as teletai - personifications of the presiding spirits at the initiation rites of the Bacchic orgies. Aquila at all four instances translates them as endiellagmenoi ("changed ones"), while the Vulgate of St. Jerome renders them as effeminati. [edit] Revisionist viewsRecently some scholars, such as Robert A. Oden,[17] Stephanie Lynn Budin[18] and others,[19] have questioned whether sacred prostitution, as an institution whereby women and men sold sex for the profit of deities and temples, did in fact ever actually exist at all. Not all authors are convinced, however.[2] [edit] Christian saints forced into prostitutionChristian hagiography records the nearly-identical stories of the two pairs of saints, Theodora and Didymus and Antonia and Alexander, centering on a Christian virgin being sent to a brothel against her will, saved by a virtuous man pretending to be her "customer" and culminating with both undergoing martyrdom. [edit] Central America
Bernal Diaz del Castillo (16th century), in his The Conquest of New Spain, reported that the Mexica peoples regularly practiced pederastic relationships, and male adolescent sacred prostitutes would congregate in temples. The conquistadores, like most Europeans of the 16th century, were horrified by the widespread acceptance of sex between men and youths in Aztec society, and used it as one justification for the extirpation of the society ; of all customs of the Nahuatl-speaking peoples, only human sacrifice produced a greater disapproval amongst the Spaniards in Mexico. The custom died out with the collapse of the Aztec civilization. [edit] IndiaThe practice devadasi, as it has come to be seen, and similar customary forms of hierodulic prostitution in Southern India (such as basavi),[20] involving dedicating adolescent girls from villages in a ritual marriage to a deity or a temple, who then work in the temple and act as members of a religious order. Human Rights Watch claims that devadasis are forced at least in some cases to practice prostitution for upper-caste members.[21] Various state governments in India have enacted laws to ban this practice. They include Bombay Devdasi Act, 1934, Devdasi (Prevention of dedication) Madras Act, 1947, Karnataka Devdasi (Prohibition of dedication) Act, 1982, and Andhra Pradesh Devdasi (Prohibition of dedication) Act, 1988.[22] [edit] Recent Western occurrencesIn the 1970s and early 1980s some religious cults were discovered practicing sacred prostitution as an instrument to recruit new converts. Among them was the alleged cult Children of God/The Family who called this practice "Flirty Fishing". They later abolished the practice due to the growing AIDS epidemic.[23] [edit] See also[edit] References
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