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The Myth of Sacred Prostitution in Antiquity

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The Myth of Sacred Prostitution in Antiquity P1: ICD 9780521572019pre CUFX214/Budin 978 0 521 88090 9 November 12, 2007 19:38 This page intentionally left blank ii P1: ICD 9780521572019pre CUFX214/Budin 978 0 521 88090 9 November 12, 2007 19:38 THE MYTH OF SACRED PROSTITUTION IN ANTIQUITY In this study, Stephanie Lynn Budin demonstrates that sacred prostitution, the sale of a person’s body for sex in which some or all of the money earned wasdevoted to a deity or a temple, did not exist in the ancient world. Recon- sidering the evidence from the ancient Near East, the Greco-Roman texts, and the early Christian authors, Budin shows that the majority of sources that have traditionally been understood as pertaining to sacred prostitution actu- ally have nothing to do with this institution. The few texts that are usually invoked on this subject are, moreover, terribly misunderstood. Furthermore, contrary to many current hypotheses, the creation of the myth of sacred pros- titution has nothing to do with notions of accusation or the construction of a decadent, Oriental “Other.” Instead, the myth has come into being as aresult of more than 2,000 years of misinterpretations, false assumptions, and faulty methodology. The study of sacred prostitution is, effectively, a historiographical reckoning. Stephanie Lynn Budin received her Ph.D. in Ancient History from the Uni- versity of Pennsylvania with concentrations in Greece and the ancient Near East. She is the author of The Origin of Aphrodite (2003) and numerous arti- cles on ancient religion and iconography. She has delivered papers in Athens, Dublin, Jerusalem, London, Nicosia, Oldenburg, and Stockholm, as well as in various cities throughout the United States. i P1: ICD 9780521572019pre CUFX214/Budin 978 0 521 88090 9 November 12, 2007 19:38 ii P1: ICD 9780521572019pre CUFX214/Budin 978 0 521 88090 9 November 12, 2007 19:38 The MythofSacred Prostitution in Antiquity STEPHANIE LYNN BUDIN iii CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS Cambridge, New York, Melbourne, Madrid, Cape Town, Singapore, São Paulo Cambridge University Press The Edinburgh Building, Cambridge CB2 8RU, UK Published in the United States of America by Cambridge University Press, New York www.cambridge.org Information on this title: www.cambridge.org/9780521880909 © Stephanie Lynn Budin 2008 This publication is in copyright. Subject to statutory exception and to the provision of relevant collective licensing agreements, no reproduction of any part may take place without the written permission of Cambridge University Press. First published in print format 2007 ISBN-13 978-0-511-39464-5 eBook (NetLibrary) ISBN-13 978-0-521-88090-9 hardback Cambridge University Press has no responsibility for the persistence or accuracy of urls for external or third-party internet websites referred to in this publication, and does not guarantee that any content on such websites is, or will remain, accurate or appropriate. P1: ICD 9780521572019pre CUFX214/Budin 978 0 521 88090 9 November 12, 2007 19:38 In Loving Memory of A. John Graham didskalov kaª j©lov v P1: ICD 9780521572019pre CUFX214/Budin 978 0 521 88090 9 November 12, 2007 19:38 vi P1: ICD 9780521572019pre CUFX214/Budin 978 0 521 88090 9 November 12, 2007 19:38 CONTENTS Acknowledgments page ix Abbreviations xi 1. Introduction ................1 2. The Ancient Near Eastern Data ...14 3. The So-Called “Evidence” .....48 4. Herodotos .................58 5. In the Footsteps of Herodotos: Lucian and “Jeremiah” ........93 6. Pindar Fragment 122 .........112 7. Strabo, Confused and Misunderstood ..............153 8. Klearkhos, Justinus, and Valerius Maximus ...........210 9. Archaeological “Evidence” from Italy .................247 10. The Early Christian Rhetoric ...260 11. Last Myths ................287 Bibliography 337 Index 357 Index Locorum 363 vii P1: ICD 9780521572019pre CUFX214/Budin 978 0 521 88090 9 November 12, 2007 19:38 viii P1: ICD 9780521572019pre CUFX214/Budin 978 0 521 88090 9 November 12, 2007 19:38 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS Anumber of people helped me, through encouragement, feedback, and suggestions, to make this book better. To them I am truly grateful. Many thanks go out to Julia Assante, T. Corey Brennan, Michael Flower, Daniel A. Foxvog, David Greenberg, Thomas Harrison, Victor Hurowitz, Kimberly Huth, Thomas McGinn, Aislinn Melchior, Rosaria Munson, Beatrice Rehl, James Rushing, Johanna Stuckey, Jean MacIntosh Turfa, and the incredibly helpful staff at the Center for Advanced Judaic Studies in Philadelphia. My thanks also go to everyone at the Summer Session Office, Rutgers Camden, for time, compassion, and office supplies. I am, of course, solely responsible for whatever is erroneous in the pages that follow. Additional thanks go to Sifu Rommie Revell for always providing me with something to punch during stressful times, and for never giving up on the rather hopeless endeavor of telling me to relax. Finally, I send all gratitude and love to my husband Paul C. Butler, an eternal source of support and drawings. The images in Figures 7.1 and 7.2 are by him. He is very, very tired of hearing about sacred prostitution. ix P1: ICD 9780521572019pre CUFX214/Budin 978 0 521 88090 9 November 12, 2007 19:38 x P1: ICD 9780521572019pre CUFX214/Budin 978 0 521 88090 9 November 12, 2007 19:38 ABBREVIATIONS AHR American Historical Review AJPhil American Journal of Philology AJSL American Journal of Semitic Languages and Literatures ArchClass Archeologia Classica AS Anatolian Studies BCH Bulletin de Correspondence Hellenique´ BDB Brown-Driver-Briggs. Hebrew and English Lexicon BICS Bulletin. Institute of Classical Studies. University of London BTB Biblical Theology Bulletin CAD Chicago Assyrian Dictionary CP Classical Philology CQ Classical Quarterly HTR Harvard Theological Review JA Journal Asiatique JANER Journal of Ancient Near Eastern Religion JAOS Journal of the American Oriental Society JESHO Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient LSJ Liddell, Scott, and Jones. Greek-English Lexicon MGR Miscellanea Greca e Romana RA Revue Assyriologique RB Revue Biblique Rend. Pont. Rendiconti. Pontificia Accademia Romana de Archeologia RHR Revue de l’Histoire des Religions RlA Reallexikon der Assyriologie UF Ugarit-Forschungen ZA Zeitschrift fur¨ Assyriologie ZAˇ Zivaˇ Antike ZPE Zeitschrift fur¨ Papyrologie und Epigraphik xi P1: ICD 9780521572019pre CUFX214/Budin 978 0 521 88090 9 November 12, 2007 19:38 xii P1: ICD 9780521572019pre CUFX214/Budin 978 0 521 88090 9 November 12, 2007 19:38 THE MYTH OF SACRED PROSTITUTION IN ANTIQUITY xiii P1: ICD 9780521572019pre CUFX214/Budin 978 0 521 88090 9 November 12, 2007 19:38 xiv P1: IBE 9780521572019c01 CUFX214/Budin 978 0 521 88090 9 October 13, 2007 0:25 chapter one INTRODUCTION acred prostitution never existed in the ancient near east Sor Mediterranean. This book presents the evidence that leads to that conclusion. It also reconsiders the various literary data that have given rise to the sacred prostitution myth and offers new interpretations of what these may have actually meant in their ancient contexts. I hope that this will end a debate that has been present in various fields of academia for about three decades now. What is sacred prostitution, also known as cult, cultic, ritual, or temple prostitution? There are, as one might imagine of a topic that has been the object of study for centuries and the object of debate for decades, anumber of different answers to that question. If we were to approach the topic from a classics perspective, we might come across the definition in the second edition of the Oxford Classical Dictionary, where sacred prostitution existed in two main forms. (1) The defloration of virgins before mar- riage was originally a threshold rite, whereby the dangerous task of having intercourse with a virgin was delegated to a foreigner, since intercourse was in many, if not all, cases limited to strangers...(2) regular temple prostitution, generally of slaves, such as existed in Baby- lonia, in the cult of Ma at Comana Pontica, of Aphrodite at Corinth, and perhaps at Eryx, and in Egypt.1 If we were researching the roles of cult prostitutes of the Old Testament we would read in the Anchor Bible Dictionary that When speaking of cultic prostitution, scholars normally refer to reli- giously legitimated intercourse with strangers in or in the vicinity of 1 OCD: 890. 1 P1: IBE 9780521572019c01 CUFX214/Budin 978 0 521 88090 9 October 13, 2007 0:25 The Myth of Sacred Prostitution in Antiquity the sanctuary. It had a ritual character and was organized or at least condoned by the priesthood, as a means to increase fecundity and fer- tility. There is, however, another, more restricted way in which one can speak of cultic prostitution. We may use the term to call attention to the fact that the money or the goods which the prostitutes received went to the temple funds.2 Looking more deeply into the possible Mesopotamian roots of this alleged practice, we might come across in the Dictionary of the Ancient Near East an entry on “Prostitution and Ritual Sex” that combines several different categories of sexual act. Extracting the material pertaining specifically to sacred prostitution, one reads, Prostitutes are mentioned together with various groups of women engaged in more or less religious activities. Inana/Ishtar was a pro- tective goddess of prostitutes. Possibly prostitution was organized like other female activities (such as midwifery or wet nursing) and manip- ulated through the temple organization.3 Tur ning to New Testamentstudies, we would find in S. M. Baugh’s article on “Cult Prostitution in New TestamentEphesus: A Reappraisal” a more focused description, identifying cult prostitution as union with a prostitute (whether with a female or a male makes no difference) for exchange of money or goods, which was sanctioned by the wardens of a deity whether in temple precincts or elsewhere as a sacred act of worship. In such cases, the prostitute had semi-official status as a cult functionary, either on a permanent or temporary basis, and the sexual union is usually interpreted to have been part of a fertility ritual.
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