Ancient Near Eastern societies along the Tigris and Euphrates rivers featured many shrines and temples or houses of heaven dedicated to various deities.
The 5th-century BC historian Herodotus's account and some other testimony from the Hellenistic Period and Late Antiquity suggest that ancient societies encouraged the practice of sacred sexual rites not only in Babylonia and Cyprus , but throughout the Near East. According to Herodotus , the rites performed at these temples included sexual intercourse, or what scholars later called sacred sexual rites:. The foulest Babylonian custom is that which compels every woman of the land to sit in the temple of Aphrodite and have intercourse with some stranger at least once in her life.
Many women who are rich and proud and disdain to mingle with the rest, drive to the temple in covered carriages drawn by teams, and stand there with a great retinue of attendants. But most sit down in the sacred plot of Aphrodite, with crowns of cord on their heads; there is a great multitude of women coming and going; passages marked by line run every way through the crowd, by which the men pass and make their choice.
Once a woman has taken her place there, she does not go away to her home before some stranger has cast money into her lap, and had intercourse with her outside the temple; but while he casts the money, he must say, "I invite you in the name of Mylitta ". It does not matter what sum the money is; the woman will never refuse, for that would be a sin, the money being by this act made sacred. So she follows the first man who casts it and rejects no one. After their intercourse, having discharged her sacred duty to the goddess, she goes away to her home; and thereafter there is no bribe however great that will get her.
So then the women that are fair and tall are soon free to depart, but the uncomely have long to wait because they cannot fulfil the law; for some of them remain for three years, or four. There is a custom like this in some parts of Cyprus. The British anthropologist James Frazer accumulated citations to prove this in a chapter of his magnum opus The Golden Bough — , [3] and this has served as a starting point for several generations of scholars.
Frazer and Henriques distinguished two major forms of sacred sexual rites: The research of Daniel Arnaud, Vinciane Pirenne-Delforge, Julia Assante, Stephanie Budin [6] and others has cast the whole tradition of scholarship that defined the concept of sacred prostitution into doubt. Budin regards the concept of sacred prostitution as a myth—arguing that the practices described in the sources simply never existed. A more nuanced view, espoused by Pirenne-Delforge, suggests that ritual sex did exist in the Near East, but not in the Greek or Roman worlds in classical or Hellenistic times.
The practice of sacred prostitution has not been substantiated in any Ancient Near Eastern cultures, despite many popular descriptions of the habit. Along the Tigris and Euphrates rivers there was a temple of Eanna, meaning house of heaven [8] dedicated to Inanna in the Eanna District of Uruk. It was previously believed to have been a custom whereby the king coupled with the high priestess to represent the union of Dumuzid with Inanna later called Ishtar.
Other modern historians argue that the temple did house priestesses of the goddess, but there is no evidence that they performed any kind of sexual services in any cult. In Hammurabi's code of laws , the rights and good name of female sacred sexual priestesses were protected.
What the Apostle Paul Said About Prostitutes, Marriage, and Sex
The same legislation that protected married women from slander applied to them and their children. They could inherit property from their fathers, collect income from land worked by their brothers, and dispose of property. These rights have been described as extraordinary, taking into account the role of women at the time. None of the daughters of Israel shall be a kedeshah , nor shall any of the sons of Israel be a kadesh.
You shall not bring the hire of a prostitute zonah or the wages of a dog kelev into the house of the Lord your God to pay a vow, for both of these are an abomination to the Lord your God. Murray writes that biblical passages ban qdeshim and link them with gods and "forms of worship detested by orthodox followers of Yahweh".
Some scholars see the injunctions against foreign worship, including male sacred prostitution, as possibly the original cause of what would later become Judaism's condemnation of sexual contact between men. The Law of Moses Deuteronomy was not universally observed in Hebrew culture under the rule of King David's dynasty, as recorded in Kings. In fact Judah had lost "the Book of the Law". During the reign of King Josiah, The high priest Hilkiah discovers it in "the House of the Lord" and realizes that the people have disobeyed, particularly regarding Sacred Prostitution.
Under the polytheistic religious practices that were commonplace, homosexuality experienced a degree of cultural acceptance along with heterosexuality among the Hebrew tribes, but sacred prostitution was not allowed in conjunction with the worship of Yahweh, where these had been expressly forbidden in Deuteronomy, their sacred Book of Law under King Josiah. They became prostitutes in Egypt, engaging in prostitution from their youth. The prophet Ezekiel condemns both as guilty of religious and political alliance with heathen nations. So within Hebrew cultures involving pagan religions, both homosexual and heterosexual pagan temple prostitution experienced periods of acceptance, and periods of banishment, as under King Josiah.
According to the noted Assyriologist Samuel Noah Kramer , kings in the ancient Near Eastern region of Sumer established their legitimacy by taking part in a ritual sexual act in the temple of the fertility goddess Ishtar every year on the tenth day of the New Year festival Akitu.
The Hittites practiced sacred prostitution as part of a cult of deities, including the worship of a mated pair of deities, a bull god and a lion goddess, while in later days it was the mother-goddess who became prominent, representing fertility, and in Phoenicia the goddess who presided over human birth.
Sacred prostitution - Wikipedia
In ancient Greece , sacred prostitution was known in the city of Corinth where the Temple of Aphrodite employed a significant number of female servants, hetairai , during classical antiquity. The Greek term hierodoulos or hierodule has sometimes been taken to mean sacred holy woman , but it is more likely to refer to a former slave freed from slavery in order to be dedicated to a god. The Roman emperor Constantine closed down a number of temples to Venus or similar deities in the 4th century AD, as the Christian church historian Eusebius proudly noted.
In Southern India and the eastern Indian state of Odisha , devadasi is the practice of hierodulic prostitution, with similar customary forms such as basavi, [30] and involves dedicating pre-pubescent and young adolescent girls from villages in a ritual marriage to a deity or a temple, who then work in the temple and function as spiritual guides, dancers, and prostitutes servicing male devotees in the temple.
Human Rights Watch reports claim that devadasis are forced into this service and, at least in some cases, to practice prostitution for upper-caste members. Though they did develop sexual relations with other men, they were not looked upon with lust. The system was criticised by British rulers, leading to decline in support for the system and the devadasis were forced into entering prostitution for survival. Various state governments in India enacted laws to ban this practice both prior to India's independence and more recently.
Sacred prostitution was once practised by the Miko within traditional Shinto in Japan. There were once Shinto beliefs that prostitution was sacred, and there used to be lodgings for the temple prostitutes on the shrine grounds. This traditional practise came to an end during the beginning of the Meiji era , due to the encroachment of Western Christian morality, and the government implementing the Shinbutsu bunri ; which, among other things, drastically decreased the roles of the Miko, and modified Shinto beliefs until it became what is now colloquially referred to as State Shinto.
2 260,93 RUB
The Maya maintained several phallic religious cults, possibly involving homosexual temple prostitution. The boys were dressed in girl's clothing, and chiefs and head men would have ritual sexual intercourse with them during religious ceremonies and on holy days.
- Military Maledom: An Officer And A Dom.
- What the Apostle Paul Said About Prostitutes, Marriage, and Sex | St. James's Episcopal Church;
- Love Letters to a Sacred Prostitute by Gary (2012, Hardcover)!
- SPANISH SINGAPUR Cuizine 1 (Spanish Edition);
- A NEW AGE IS COMING.
- Amazon Gold: A Ben Candidi Mystery (Ben Candidi Mystery Series Book 4);
Xochiquetzal was worshiped as goddess of sexual power, patroness of prostitutes and artisans involved in the manufacture of luxury items. The conquistadores were horrified by the wide-spread acceptance of homosexuality , ephebophilia , pederasty , and pedophilia among Mesoamerican and South American peoples, and used torture, burning at the stake, mass beheadings, and other means to stamp it out both as a religious practice and social custom. Paul deals directly with sex, but he does not do so as many assume; Paul never really writes a treatise on sexuality; he comments on it, but he never landed a book deal to write definitively and timelessly on the topic.
Not like James Dobson smh. In probably every case when Paul writes of sex, he is responding directly to a question someone else has posed—at the very least, he is responding to a recurring issue in one of his planted communities. If you had read 1 Corinthians , 20, 24, , and , you would know Paul was into singles remaining single. No, Paul wants already -married people to not refrain from sex with one another.
At the time and in the Hellenistic culture, there was a popular notion that if one could be celibate, one could reach new spiritual heights. Additionally, he was trying to help the Corinthians avoid the damage that adultery often causes when spouses decide to find sex elsewhere. The issues we do talk about include whether Communion before Baptism is acceptable or ought to be encouraged , how we use our sacred spaces is it okay for Muslims to hold prayer services in Christian chapels?
I love that the Washington National Cathedral and briefly the Duke University Chapel are offering their sacred space for Muslims to hold services of corporate worship. I love that the Episcopal Church, and some others, are not so prudish as to pretend that alcohol is inherently bad, even allowing it at church events. In all of these things—and so many more—we find tremendous expressions of freedom, but with freedom comes tremendous opportunity to negatively affect others. So many things are lawful for us, but not all of them are beneficial for everyone. Maybe Paul does have some wisdom to offer to us modern Christians…we have a lot with which to wrestle.
Lessons from Denmark, Japan, and Jesus.