Q'deshah: Holy Prostitutes Of The Canaanites

[MrRING]

I thought this was interesting:

http://www.bigeye.com/sexeducation/israelites.html

Prostitution did not exist in the early Israelite tribe until after they came into contact with the Canaanites. Canaanites had fertility cults, and each Canaanite temple had its own set of prostitutes. The Israelites began to divide prostitutes into two separate categories: the zonah, or profane prostitutes and the q'deshah, or holy prostitutes.

The actual word "q'deshah" is borrowed from the neighboring peoples who had polytheist deities, such as the Sumerians and Canaanites. The name of the Sumerian goddess was Qadshu or Qodesh who had her own temple with holy prostitutes called "qodshu." Prostitutes were not looked down upon until Leviticus. Prostitutes had their own homes in which they invited guests to. For example, the prostitute Rahab had a house at the wall of Jericho. Even when the Hebrews took over Jericho, Rahab was still allowed to be in business. By Leviticus, rabbis were forbidden from marrying prostitutes and divorced women. And when the Israelites were exiled from Babylonia in 586 BC, the idea of the q'deshah disappeared since it was borrowed from the other pagan cultures that they lived among.

 

[inspectorloz]

What was the difference between the 'profane' and 'holy' prostitutes? (too lazy to go and research myself)

 

[mossy_sloth]

I thought this was interesting:

http://www.bigeye.com/sexeducation/israelites.html

And when the Israelites were exiled from Babylonia in 586 BC, the idea of the q'deshah disappeared since it was borrowed from the other pagan cultures that they lived among.

exiled FROM Babylonia? The Babylonians destroyed Judaea in 586 and hostages were taken TO Babylon... The exile refers to movement OUT of Judaea, not out of Babylon...

So why would the q'deshah disappear at this time?
( I have never heard of the q'deshah before, but I think I'll try to find out more when I get time...)

btw profane = ritually unclean

 

[mossy_sloth]

ok, just quickly checked my hebrew lexicon...(geek, I know)

and qadeshah (fem) means one devoted to prostitution in honour of idols...so that fits in with the above...(though I can't imagine the israelites sanctioning prostitution in honour of YHWH - it seems more like a 'foreign policy' type distinction rather than a practice adopted amongst the israelites),
HOWEVER the etymology listed in my lexicon indicates that the word came from the word qadash or qadesh, meaning holy or sanctified... of course. the word may have older roots that come from mesopotamia... would anyone with a better knowledge of Hebrew like to clarify?

 

[MrRING]

Some more info:

http://www.ucgstp.org/lit/gn/gn012/archaeol.html

In 1929 excavations began in Ras Shamra (the ancient port town of Ugarit) in northern Lebanon. This work continues. The remains of a palace discovered in the first year of excavation yielded a library containing hundreds of ancient documents that provided a wealth of information about the Canaanite religion. What did these tablets reveal? “The texts show the degrading results of the worship of these deities; with their emphasis on war, sacred prostitution, sensuous love and the consequent social degradation” (The New Bible Dictionary, Tyndale House Publishers, 1982, p. 1230).

(snip)

The corruption found expression in grotesque cultic sexual practices. “The pagan world of the ancient Near East worshipped and deified sex.” So intertwined were sex and religion that “the term ‘holy ones’ (was used) for its cult prostitutes” (Interpreter’s One-Volume Commentary on the Bible, Abingdon Press, 1971, p. 79).

Although the details are crude, they reveal why biblical proscriptions against the Canaanite perversions are so pervasive. “(A) ritual involved a dramatization of the myth . . . (and) centered in sexual activity since the rainfall attributed to Baal was thought to . . . fertilize and impregnate the earth with life just as he impregnated Asherah, the goddess of fertility, in the myth. Canaanite religion, then, was grossly sensual and even perverse because it required the services of both male and female cultic prostitutes as the principal actors in the drama.

And here is more from a apologetics internet site:

http://www.apologeticspress.org/articles/2171

Archaeological discoveries, such as those at Ugarit, have revealed the corruptness of the Canaanite nations. For example, in the Canaanite religion El was the chief god and Baal was his son. These were “gods” who had absolutely no concept of morality. In a poem known as “The Birth of the Gods,” El is said to have seduced two women, and horrible sexual perversions are associated with his name. He married three of his own sisters—who also were married to Baal. He is represented as practicing vile sex acts and influencing others to do likewise. It is little wonder that the evidence indicates that the Canaanites followed their gods in such abominations. In the Canaanite religion, homosexuals and prostitutes were employed to raise money for the support of the temples. It is not an exaggeration to say that these pagans elevated sex to the status of a god [that sounds rather modern, doesn’t it?]. Many scholars believe that there are hints of this sordid background in such Old Testament passages as Deuteronomy 23:18-19—where a prohibition is given against bringing the “hire of a harlot, or the wages of a dog” (a male prostitute; see Harris, et al., 1980, 1:439) into the house of Jehovah.”

And this is a straight historical site on the religion, but as yet I haven't found any direct info on them:

http://phoenicia.org/pagan.html

 

[Anonymous]

And that's why God told the Israelites that it was alright to commit an act of genocide on the Canaanites. They were gagging for it.

 

[MrRING]

You aren't foolin', AndroMan - the hate speach describing why the Canaanites "deserved it" sounds ounforunately like modern people's attempt to cast "others" as objects of hate... :shock:

 

[OneWingedBird]

What was the difference between the 'profane' and 'holy' prostitutes? (too lazy to go and research myself)

One wonders if the temple took a cut from the 'holy' ones, hence favouring their operation, while decreeing all others 'profane' to stop them taking too much business away. :?

I don't know if there's historical evidence to support that, but I'm always sceptical about altruistic of 'ritual' reasons for religious practices.

 

[MrRING]

Found out yet some mo':

http://www.sexmagick.com/aisha/aq_name.htm

Qadishtu - On the one hand, there was the custom that every girl on reaching puberty had to give up her virginity in a sacred ritual context rather then a profane one before she could be wedded; she had to give herself in the sacred enclosure of the temple to any stranger who made a symbolic offering and invoked, through her, the Great Goddess. On the other hand, there were temples with an established body of temple slaves for the service of the goddess. These priestesses practiced a form of worship that the modern world called "prostitution." The mystery of carnal love was celebrated not in a formal and symbolic rite but in a magical, operative rite, to nourish the current of psychism which manifested itself in the presence of the goddess and, at the same time, to pass on to the men who copulated with the priestess the goddess’s influence or virtue as in a sacrament. These young women called "virgins" (parthenoi hierai), pure ones, or blessed ones (qadishtu, mugig, zermasitu), were deemed to embody the goddess and to be the "bearers" of the goddess, from whom, in their specifically erotic duty, they took their name, Isharitu. The sexual act thus performed had both the general function proper to sacrifices intended to invoke or revive divine presences and a function structurally identical with participation in the Eucharist. Ritual sex was the instrument of man’s participation in the sacrum, in this case borne and administered by the woman; it was a technique to make an experiential contact with the divinity and to receive her. The trauma of the coitus, together with the interruption of individual awareness that it caused, formed an especially favorable condition for that contact.

And from the same page:

from When God Was a Woman, Merlin Stone

Qadishtu - The Akkadian name qadishtu is literally translated to "sanctified women" or "holy women". The sacred women of the Babylonian, Sumerian, Canaanite, Cypriate and Greek temples were dedicated to service of the Goddess. These women made love to various men. They owned land and other properties and engaged extensively in business activities. They were often of wealthy families and well-accepted in society. One inscription from Tralles in western Anatolia, carved there as late as AD 200 by a woman named Aurelia Aemilias, proudly announced that she served in the temple by taking part in sexual customs, as had her mother and all their female ancestors before them. These women were dedicated to Inanna, Ishtar, or Asherah. At the temple in Babylon they were known as "ishtaritu" or "women of Ishtar." pp. 156-158

The page has numerous other quotes about them as well... really butts up against current moral ways of seeing the world....

 

[MrRING]

A new short LiveJournal on this topic:

http://ikhet-sekhmet.livejournal.com/18611.html

 

[AgProv]

That's interesting. There's a theme in the Old Testament beginning with Rahab, the prostitute who gains information for the Israelite leader Joshua (well - began with J, anyway) who is beseiging the city where she works in the inside. She is evidently given a bye for the otherwise unseemly nature of her occupation and lauded as a heroine. Later on you get Jael, a daughter of Israel who uses her womanly wiles to lull Sisera (enemy general) into a quiescent state in which she hammers a tentpeg through his head. Book of Judges, I think. Again the issue of what exactly she had to do to get him into a state where she could pick up a hammer and tentpeg without anyone noticing - this is skipped over by the text. Esther gets the information necessary to save Mordecai from death at the hands of the evil Haman. But what did she have to do to draw the attention of the Persian King and get close to him as a trusted confidante? The story says it's perfelctly alright as she was married to him. But you wonder if this is a gloss added afterwards to hide the original inconvenient and morally grey truths... an interesting hidden history seems to emerge here. (the name "Esther" apparently comes from roots meaning "concealed" or "hidden"...) This may be worth exploring - is there a hidden history of Israeli women acting as divinely sanctioned prostitutes, trading sex in the service of Israel? It's apparently a tactic of Mossad and Shin Beth today; the scientist who blew the whistle on Israeli nukes was trapped in Italy by a female Mossad agent who got into an affair with him so as to bust him and get him smuggled back to Israel, against his will...

EDIT - a variant interpretation of the "Song of Solomon" in the O.T. is that this is sort of Jewish "kama sutra", about the training and preparation of a sacred Temple prostitute worshipping G-d with her body.... and it got "sanitised" a little by later interpretations of religion that weren't quite at home with the original intention, and re-interpreted as a metaphor for the "sacred marriage" between a people and their G-d. Got to explore this a bit, as it's interesting... also, the dance of Salome for her stepfather, in the Gospels, for the head of John, suggests a sort of "sacred temple prostitution" aspect even in the N.T.

 

[MrRING]

EDIT - a variant interpretation of the "Song of Solomon" in the O.T. is that this is sort of Jewish "kama sutra", about the training and preparation of a sacred Temple prostitute worshipping G-d with her body.... and it got "sanitised" a little by later interpretations of religion that weren't quite at home with the original intention, and re-interpreted as a metaphor for the "sacred marriage" between a people and their G-d. Got to explore this a bit, as it's interesting... also, the dance of Salome for her stepfather, in the Gospels, for the head of John, suggests a sort of "sacred temple prostitution" aspect even in the N.T.

Found a site that mentions this take on Song of Solomon:

https://progressivechristianity.org...e-sacred-sex-sacred-text-the-song-of-solomon/
And a short quote:

But the verses that are read are carefully chosen to reflect the pious ideal of married love, not the glories of sex. The Song of Solomon is actually Sacred Marriage liturgy from a Mesopotamian ritual of marriage between two gods, the fertility god Dummuzi-Tammuz (perhaps represented by the king or tribal chief) and his sister Inanna-Astarte (represented by the chief’s daughter, or a priestess).

 

[AlchoPwn]

The Babylonians had sacred prostitution in the worship of the Goddess Ishtar. Perhaps the Jewish girls were simply rolled into the Babylonian fertility cult? The Jews weren't a very developed culture in comparison to Babylon at the time, and adoption seems pretty likely.

 

[lordmongrove]

The ENTIRE History Of Prostitution​