BIBLELORE
3 Sacred Prostitution
What does it mean for Christians and non-Jews in the 21st century A.D. to be
bound by a B.C.E. theology of that minority tribe of Hebrews who invaded the
land of the Canaanites under the assumption that they were the Chosen People of
Moses' god Yahweh?
The Israelites left Egypt for Canaan where their ancestors once lived. They defeated the Canaanites in battle and occupied their land but assumed Canaanite religious cult practices and shared in their religious beliefs. Among those cult practices was sacred prostitution which Israelites practiced along with their neighbors. In time the practice came under criticism from certain Israelite priests who believed that it rendered Israelites impure or unclean in their relationship with Yahweh.
Sacred prostitution involved both female and male cult prostitutes. Young male Israelites who engaged in homosexual sacred prostitution were referred to as "dogs" by Jewish Deuteronomic reformers in the 7th century B.C., as mentioned in Chapter I. Deut. 23:17, 18 reads: "There shall be no whore of the daughters of Israel, nor a sodomite of the sons of Israel. Thou shalt not bring the hire of a whore, or the price of a dog, into the house of the Lord thy God for any vow: for even both these are abomination unto the Lord thy God."
To Israelites, who regarded dogs (as a rule, wild and undomesticated) as scavengers and predators, the designation of "dog" for a male temple prostitute was at best derisive and derogatory.
But to Canaanite worshipers, temple prostitutes played a natural, accepted role in their cult of fertility.
Attempts to abolish sacred prostitution in the temples of Baal were made by several kings of Judah over three centuries without lasting success, notably Asa, great-grand-son of Solomon; Jehoshaphat, son of Asa; and Josiah. Asa and Jehoshaphat, who both ruled in the 10th century B.C.., had limited success. Later, in the 7th century B.C., about 629 B.C., Josiah, after seeking the Lord at age 16, proceeded from age 20 to age 26 to destroy everywhere in Judah and Israel all images and relics of Canaanite worship. 2 Chronicles 34: 1,3,4 relates:
"Josiah was eight years old when he began to reign, and he reigned in Jerusalem one and thirty years. For in the eighth year of his reign, while he was yet young, he began to seek after the God of David his father: and in the twelfth year he began to purge Judah and Jerusalem from the high places, and the groves, and the carved images, and the molten images. And they brake down the altars of Baalim in his presence, and the images, that were on high above them, he cut down; and the groves, and the carved images, and the molten images, he brake in pieces and made dust of them, and strowed it upon the graves of them that had sacrificed unto them."
Despite Josiah's claim to success at abolishing ritual cult prostitution in the temples, the practice apparently persisted in the land. All failed attempts to end ritual sex, including homosexual activity, from Israelite culture and religion only encouraged the zealous priest in the 6th century B.C. to include sanctions in Chapters 18 and 20 of the Holiness Code section of the Book of Leviticus. Thus the prohibition of homosexuality, per se, as written in Lev. 18:22 and Lev. 20:13, was a human invention, not a sanction from Moses' imagined god Yahweh.
Clearly, to answer the opening question of this chapter, it is time for today's Christians and non-Jews to be freed of the theology of that minority tribe of Hebrews that has dominated ancient and Western civilization for the past 2000 years. The laws of ancient Israel should not control Western civil and ecclesiastical law; it should not dominate the lives, attitudes, behaviors and laws of non-Jews, now or in future.
Today religious leaders can no longer legitimately claim God's disapproval, hatred, or prohibition of homosexuality, or of homosexual persons, on the basis of scripture compiled a thousand years after the time of Moses, which was added to the original Torah allegedly received by Moses from his god Yahweh. Many ministers, priests and rabbis, however, may be expected to ignore the facts and continue to perpetuate the lie. But the facts are the facts; the truth is the truth. All religious leaders must seek to repair the tremendous damage to homosexual persons caused by perpetuating the myth that the god of Moses, Yahweh, condemned homosexuality.
In Chapter 4 of Biblelore, the gods of fertility, Baal and Asherah, will be reviewed.
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