Prostitutes were not seen as sacred. In many ancient societies they were stoned to death (Mary Magdalene). If anything Christianity increased tolerance by a lot with their forgiveness ethics and believing that prostitution was necessary even if they didn't like it.
Do you have any idea how long we would be sitting here if I was to give you a detailed analysis of prostitution in the Ancient world encompassing the entire world across the entire 4,000 years that "antiquity" falls into? Wasn't it you who told me to stop turning my posts into essays?
The idea of sacred prostitution was rare, very fucking rare. You were far more likely to be born into a society that thought you should be stoned to death than a society which thought you were sacred. If, in my next life, I was told I was going to be a prostitute and I had to choose between Medieval Europe or a pre-Christian civilization. Without a doubt I am going to choose Medieval Europe.
CC-Ape, let me get this straight: you think you will be reincarnated and given the opportunity to choose the circumstances of your reincarnation but believe you will be forced to be a time traveling whore.
I’ve had some pretty crazy thoughts while I’m on the road, chugging a few rickaritas, but I’ve never had the time traveling whore delusion. However, my high-end rick logic forces me to ask a question: if you believe you will be given a choice, why not prepare by doing research and identifying cultures with traditions of sacred prostitution? Then you’ll know exactly what to request. You can even factor in other information. For example, what was the chance of dying from the plague?
For that matter, if your religious belief is that you will be forced to be a sex worker in the past why not ask to be Hugh Hefner? That guy was definitely a sex worker but he had a sweet house, made a lot of money, and fucked many female whores. The specifics of my tastes in female hairless diverge from his, but his life was way sweeter than a Medieval European hooker!
When approaching these types of philosophical and theological questions, always ask a rick before saying something stupid! ROAR!!!
And Ancient Rome was a very peculiar society at the time. One with one of the most liberal legal systems in the ancient world. Not only that but laws that applied to the actual city of Rome or to cities in the Italian peninsula did not necessarily apply to all the Roman territories. Go to the Middle Eastern territories of the Roman Empire or to the Germanic Tribes up north and people were killed for stuff like this.
"Sacred prostitutes used to be valued and respected."
It is not for sure the Mary Magdalen was the penitent woman who faced stoning. Nor is it clear that Magdalen was ever a prostitute.
Some believe that the Church just made that up to discredit her and to be able to push her to the margins. She is only in the Gospels because it would have discredited the Gospels if she were left out.
There is some dispute about religious prostitution. But it seemed to have been standard throughout the near and middle east. And most interesting is that it seemed also be be standard in and around Solomon's Temple. It was everywhere except in the knave, where Yahweh was worshiped.
I didn't move the goalposts. Rome was weird. They were an exception, not the rule. Rome allowed women to own businesses. Pretty much nobody else did that, including the Greeks. Using Rome as your "got ya" point to how prostitution was treated in the Ancient World is like a future historian looking at Afghanistan and saying it represents what was normal in the early 21st century.
@SJG
It was not standard in the near/middle east. The norms portrayed in the Bible were fairly standard at that time. It wasn't because prostitution was special, it was simply a matter of any woman caught having sex outside of marriage back then was stoned.
No fornication would've gotten you into deep shit too. The part that disturbs me the most about it is it was usually the girl's own family that would carry out the stoning because she had dishonored them by doing it. Now if you had a family that wasn't crazy, you would have a better chance of not getting stoned given that they would've likely kept it a secret from everybody else. But given that a prostitute is seeing numerous different men, it was really really dangerous back then.
Medieval Europe was very different. Although it was looked down upon it wasn't really punished so peasants didn't take the whole no premarital sex thing very seriously. That being said, practicality wise, you might have a lot of trouble finding a space to do it if you weren't married with your own house.
Look the Wikipedia article is required to gather as much information on the practice of sacred prostitution as possible. The only thing that this says though is that it may have occurred in some other societies but that it is highly disputed by historians as to whether it existed at all in the Ancient Near East. Basically, all that is proven in this article is that there's some debate as to whether it may have existed.
The only Ancient societies there is actually substantial evidence to show its existence was at certain periods of Roman rule and in a few areas of Greece and Hellenistic colonies which would have represented something like 5% of the world's population at its time.
Greece, perhaps. The Near East? Very little evidence to support that.
You have to remember that husbands and fathers had almost complete control over women's sexuality back then. A woman disobeying by sleeping with someone else was considered to gravely dishoner the man.
In order for prostitution to be considered sacred you would've had to find a father that wasn't ashamed of his daughter being a prostitute. That's difficult to find even today much less in antiquity.
A lot of it comes from Herodotus. Some people have disputed it, but there is also physical archeological evidence showing that it was true even in Jerusalem.
I think most believe that religious prostitution predated secular prostitution, and that it was an essential in the development of money.
The quintessential item in a woman's initiation, according to Herodotus, in Babylon, is a stint in the temple.
She was to sit there cross legged on the floor until someone selected her for a session, by dropping a coin into her lap, and she was to accept who ever did this, no matter the value of the coin.
For a man the essential religious experience was to session with the prostitute, as she would trans-impersonate the goddess.
What the biblical authors seemed most afraid of, a minority POV, was that their religion and their temple would become infused with religious prostitution.
Whether a father would be ashamed, well being a temple prostitute was a high honor. But the women might also have been raised by the temple since early childhood.
Yes there is dispute, but most believe that it was real, and that today it is still real. Being a temple prostitute, male or female, had very high status.
Some primitive societies have had initiation customs which resemble prostitution. Some designated woman does this. She many or may not get money, but that is because their society may or may not use money. The more religious, the less the need for money.
Being a prostitute would have been the same as being a priestess. A very high honor.
None of your links point to any evidence of religious prostitution in the Ancient Near East beyond what has already been presented. There is nothing in the Nizari article about prostitution but you claim that "it was real." The closest thing you have is an erotic fiction novel and your book about the Bible actually supports my point that Ancient norms pretty much called all sex outside of marriage "adultery."
As far as pre-historic, tribal societies go, I can 100% agree there were tribal societies with religious overtones to prostitution. But that's going really far back into human history. As far as I am aware, we are only discussing societies in antiquity.
Remember, everything about history is still just a theory. And we are mostly talking about the BCE years, and in some cases before much was written. The Bible is not a majoritarian POV, it is an extreme minority POV.
Cats are the only asocial animal we have successfully domesticated. We’re disappointed that we don’t bond with them as easily as dogs. But are we just missing the signs? https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20191…
18 comments
Do you have any idea how long we would be sitting here if I was to give you a detailed analysis of prostitution in the Ancient world encompassing the entire world across the entire 4,000 years that "antiquity" falls into? Wasn't it you who told me to stop turning my posts into essays?
The idea of sacred prostitution was rare, very fucking rare. You were far more likely to be born into a society that thought you should be stoned to death than a society which thought you were sacred. If, in my next life, I was told I was going to be a prostitute and I had to choose between Medieval Europe or a pre-Christian civilization. Without a doubt I am going to choose Medieval Europe.
I’ve had some pretty crazy thoughts while I’m on the road, chugging a few rickaritas, but I’ve never had the time traveling whore delusion. However, my high-end rick logic forces me to ask a question: if you believe you will be given a choice, why not prepare by doing research and identifying cultures with traditions of sacred prostitution? Then you’ll know exactly what to request. You can even factor in other information. For example, what was the chance of dying from the plague?
For that matter, if your religious belief is that you will be forced to be a sex worker in the past why not ask to be Hugh Hefner? That guy was definitely a sex worker but he had a sweet house, made a lot of money, and fucked many female whores. The specifics of my tastes in female hairless diverge from his, but his life was way sweeter than a Medieval European hooker!
When approaching these types of philosophical and theological questions, always ask a rick before saying something stupid! ROAR!!!
And Ancient Rome was a very peculiar society at the time. One with one of the most liberal legal systems in the ancient world. Not only that but laws that applied to the actual city of Rome or to cities in the Italian peninsula did not necessarily apply to all the Roman territories. Go to the Middle Eastern territories of the Roman Empire or to the Germanic Tribes up north and people were killed for stuff like this.
It is not for sure the Mary Magdalen was the penitent woman who faced stoning. Nor is it clear that Magdalen was ever a prostitute.
Some believe that the Church just made that up to discredit her and to be able to push her to the margins. She is only in the Gospels because it would have discredited the Gospels if she were left out.
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/140195…
SJG
The POV expressed in the Bible is a minority POV.
SJG
I didn't move the goalposts. Rome was weird. They were an exception, not the rule. Rome allowed women to own businesses. Pretty much nobody else did that, including the Greeks. Using Rome as your "got ya" point to how prostitution was treated in the Ancient World is like a future historian looking at Afghanistan and saying it represents what was normal in the early 21st century.
@SJG
It was not standard in the near/middle east. The norms portrayed in the Bible were fairly standard at that time. It wasn't because prostitution was special, it was simply a matter of any woman caught having sex outside of marriage back then was stoned.
Medieval Europe was very different. Although it was looked down upon it wasn't really punished so peasants didn't take the whole no premarital sex thing very seriously. That being said, practicality wise, you might have a lot of trouble finding a space to do it if you weren't married with your own house.
The evidence for which was mostly admitted to be dubious.
Oh this temple had rooms for women so clearly they were practicing sacred prostitution.
Yeah that's a stretch at best especially given what we know about the norms of most Near Eastern societies in this time period.
Look the Wikipedia article is required to gather as much information on the practice of sacred prostitution as possible. The only thing that this says though is that it may have occurred in some other societies but that it is highly disputed by historians as to whether it existed at all in the Ancient Near East. Basically, all that is proven in this article is that there's some debate as to whether it may have existed.
The only Ancient societies there is actually substantial evidence to show its existence was at certain periods of Roman rule and in a few areas of Greece and Hellenistic colonies which would have represented something like 5% of the world's population at its time.
About what was actually literally so, scholars are in disagreement.
In the Roman Empire, the sacred dimension of prostitution would have been just part of a larger state run money making scam.
But in Greece and the Near East, it was real.
SJG
You have to remember that husbands and fathers had almost complete control over women's sexuality back then. A woman disobeying by sleeping with someone else was considered to gravely dishoner the man.
In order for prostitution to be considered sacred you would've had to find a father that wasn't ashamed of his daughter being a prostitute. That's difficult to find even today much less in antiquity.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sacred_pro…
I would say that in Rome the religious dimension was just a scam.
In Greece, I would say it was semi-real. In Corinth they would build the brothels up on the cliffs so that they could be seen from the sea.
But going further East, like Babylon, I would say that it was maximally real.
In Egypt it seemed to have come later.
And then for the Nizari based in Persia, more of an occult group, and influencing the Knights Templar, it was totally real.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nizari
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/089281…
I think most believe that religious prostitution predated secular prostitution, and that it was an essential in the development of money.
The quintessential item in a woman's initiation, according to Herodotus, in Babylon, is a stint in the temple.
She was to sit there cross legged on the floor until someone selected her for a session, by dropping a coin into her lap, and she was to accept who ever did this, no matter the value of the coin.
For a man the essential religious experience was to session with the prostitute, as she would trans-impersonate the goddess.
What the biblical authors seemed most afraid of, a minority POV, was that their religion and their temple would become infused with religious prostitution.
And then you have things like:
https://www.amazon.com/Strange-Woman-Pow…
The bible is full of such characters, though described from an alien POV.
Mountains of books like this written in the last 40 years. Though yes, not everyone agrees.
https://www.amazon.com/Qedesha-Sacred-Pr…
Some say it is wrong to call it prostitution, its just that sex was part of their religion. The money, well religion usually takes in money.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z_hytXNo…
Whether a father would be ashamed, well being a temple prostitute was a high honor. But the women might also have been raised by the temple since early childhood.
Based on a book, but says that Ruth grew up in something like that:
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0054343/
Yes there is dispute, but most believe that it was real, and that today it is still real. Being a temple prostitute, male or female, had very high status.
Here, cyberpunk SciFi, in which it is real today, leading lady becomes part of it.:
https://www.amazon.com/Islands-Net-Bruce…
Some primitive societies have had initiation customs which resemble prostitution. Some designated woman does this. She many or may not get money, but that is because their society may or may not use money. The more religious, the less the need for money.
Being a prostitute would have been the same as being a priestess. A very high honor.
SJG
None of your links point to any evidence of religious prostitution in the Ancient Near East beyond what has already been presented. There is nothing in the Nizari article about prostitution but you claim that "it was real." The closest thing you have is an erotic fiction novel and your book about the Bible actually supports my point that Ancient norms pretty much called all sex outside of marriage "adultery."
As far as pre-historic, tribal societies go, I can 100% agree there were tribal societies with religious overtones to prostitution. But that's going really far back into human history. As far as I am aware, we are only discussing societies in antiquity.
Remember, everything about history is still just a theory. And we are mostly talking about the BCE years, and in some cases before much was written. The Bible is not a majoritarian POV, it is an extreme minority POV.
This is good:
https://www.amazon.com/Prostitute-Studie…
Seems to have developed at the origins of high culture paganism and the development of agriculture and the settled living in cities.
As opposed to nomadic life styles.
Abraham rejected settled living, having been offered it twice, and having turned his back on Ur.
SJG
http://www.sss-now.org/
https://inanna.virtualave.net/ishtar.htm…
Also the Epic of Gilgamesh depends on bringing one temple prostitute out to stay with Gilgamesh and fuck him for several days in order to tame him.
SJG
Meals 4 Heels
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2019…
Amsterdam
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mwV-NH6t…
Cats are the only asocial animal we have successfully domesticated. We’re disappointed that we don’t bond with them as easily as dogs. But are we just missing the signs?
https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20191…
Steve Jobs Said 1 Thing Separates Successful People From Everyone Else (and Will Make All the Difference In Your Life)
https://getpocket.com/explore/item/steve…
Forget You - CeeLo Green (cover)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q1y3Erm4…
https://www.amazon.com/Women-Prostitutio…
SJG