Czy w starożytnym Izraelu istniała prostytucja sakralna? Qedešah w Starym Testamencie

Abstract

The author asks a question, if there was a sacred prostitution in Israel in biblical times. This question is related to the word qedešah in the Old Testament. There is no unambiguous extra-biblical evidence for any kind of the temple-prostitution in Mesopotamia and Syro-Palestine: Herodotos, Histories I.199 is a polemical text; sumerian und akkadian texts cannot prove, that any cult functionaries were involved in sexual acts as a part of their ministry (it applies also to a sacred marriage ceremony); the same is to state about ugaritic qdš(t); terracotta "naked women" were probably amulets, which show a protective deity, and they cannot serve as an evidence for a fertility cult. Two deuterocanonical (apocryphal) books mention sexual intercourses in connection with an idolatrous cult or Jerusalem’s temple, but Letter of Jeremiah 42-43 is not an independent source and 2 Maccabees 6(,4) shows a scandal of the inseparability of clean and unclean in the time of the pollution of the temple in Jerusalem. In both texts women are used to characterize gentile’s impiousness. The word קרשח/קרש means in the Old Testament probably a subordinate cult functionary, who was involved in rituals, which were regarded later as non-yahvistic. The only three Old Testament texts, in which fem. קרשח (gender indicated) is used, put together קרשח and a prostitute: Hos. 4,(11-)14 apply the word prostitute (verbal und nominal) metaphorically for the disloyalty to JHWH; Deut. 23,18-19 is unclear and it is improbable, that both verses (18 and 19) tale about the same class of people; Gen. 38(,21-22) seems to identify קרשח with the prostitute (Tamar), but in no cultic or temple context. No one of the Old Testament texts can prove, that קרשח was a temple-prostitute. A sacred prostitution in biblical time’s Israel and in Israel’s environment turns out to be very questionable and cannot serve as an explanation’s key of the Old Testament texts right off the bat.