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The End of the Male Cul T Prostitute

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The End of the Male Cul T Prostitute THE END OF THE MALE CULT PROSTITUTE: A LITERARY -HISTORICAL AND SOCIOLOGICAL ANALYSIS OF HEBREW QADES-QEDEslM by PHYLLIS A. BIRD Evanston, Illinois In this article I shall argue that the predication of a class of "male cult prostitutes" in ancient Israel on the basis of occurrences in the MT of the terms qädes and qedesfm is questionable on literary, lin­ guistic, and sociological grounds. Briefly summarized, the arguments are as follows: (1) the expression "male cult prostitute" does not cor­ respond to any ancient locution; (2) the institution as reconstructed in the secondary literature does not make sense in terms of current under­ standings of the social and religious organization of ancient Israel and the ancient Near East; (3) the textual evidence exhibits no first-hand knowledge of the institution. The discussion focuses on the textual evi­ dence, interpreted in the light of literary-historical and sociological considerations.\ Linguistic considerations The linguistic argument concerns the terrninology commonly used to translate the Hebrew terms, and applies equally to the masculine and feminine forms of the noun. It is independent of questions of histo­ ricity or assumed function(s). Nevertheless, because the nomenclature has had a deterrnining effect on the way the phenomenon has been conceived, and hence on the way the textual evidence has been inter­ preted, the issue of terrninology becomes a substantive consideration. I This article is drawn from a larger study of qedesa/qldeSfm and assumes an under­ standing of the feminine term that cannot be fully explicated here. The treatment of the masculine forms is also necessarily abbreviated. 38 PHYLLIS A. BIRD The expression "cultic (or 'sacred') prostitute", as a combination of terms referring on the one hand to the sacred sphere and on the other to profane sexual commerce,2 does not correspond to the Hebrew lexeme, which points only to a sacred or cultic identification;3 nor does it have a counterpart in any ancient Semitic usage.4 No com­ pound term linking the ideas of cultic service and prostitution is found in any of the cultures for which the institution of "sacred prostitution" has been posited. The Akkadian evidence is particularly clear in showing that !he prostitute (!Jarimtu) and the several classes of cult­ related women, including the qadistu, belong to quite distinct social and literary contexts.5 Thus the concept of "sacred prostitution" rep- 2 Prostitution is the granting of sexual access for payment (Gagnon, p. 592). Because tenns for prostitutes II1ld prostitution are used at times more broadly to describe prornis­ cuous sexual relations or lewd behavior, usually by a woman (see the Oxford English Dietionary, s.v. "prostitute" for English usage), it is often difficult to determine the exact nature of practices characterized as "prostitution", especially in polernical accounts. In Hebrew, the female prostitute is designated by a participle (zand) from a root used to describe indiscrirninate and/or illicit sexual activity, especially on the part of an unmarried woman. A secondary, metaphorical use of the root to describe Israel's illicit "affairs" with foreign gods has resulted in confusion and conflation of meanings in the secondary lit­ erature, which cannot be analysed here. There is no masculine professional noun from this root corresponding to zand. Male (homosexual) prostitution is poorly attested in the Hebrew Bible, the single occurrence of an apparent reference to a male prostitute (de­ scribed as a "dog" [keleb]) is treated below. See Bird (1989a), pp. 120--1; Bird (1993); cf. Goodfriend. 3 qiides (m.)/qedescl (f.) is a qatil-type noun from the common Sernitic root QDS meaning "holy" or "sacred". A literal rendering would be "Geweihter", "consecrated person". All other Hebrew fonnations from this root exhibit a sense of holiness or relationship to a deity or a sanctuary (BDB, pp. 871-4; HALAT, pp. 1003-8). The cognate languages dem­ onstrate the same range of meanings and usage (Costecalde; Müller; Xella). 4 Wacker (pp. 51-2) credits the expression, as weil as the conception, to British anthropologists of the Victorian era. See esp. Frazer (1914), pp. 41, 51, 70, 71; and William Robertson Srnith, whose 1889 Leetures on the Religion 0/ the Semites referred to "temples of Sernitic deities thronged with sacred prostitutes" (p. 436). Wilhelm (p. 511) argues that A.H. Sayce (1883) was the first to connect Herodotus' remarks in Klio 199 (= 1.199) with temple prostitutes, identifying them with the qadistus of Assyrian texts. A basis for the modem expression may be found in the usage of Classical and Patristic authors, who describe the activities of women at various sanctuaries as prostitution--but this language is always used of someone else's practice (either ancient or foreign). 5 Based on my analysis of qadiStu and lJarimtu texts. See Westenholz, pp. 250-5,262; Gruber (1986), pp. 139-46. While van der Toom (1992) argues against "narrowing down" the activities of the qadistu to those of a prostitute, he asserts that "the tenn does at times refer to a prostitute" (p. 512). Since no texts are cited, it is impossible to determine what evidence he has in mind. His argument that the qadistu operated together with the lJarimtu and the istaritu under the patronage of Ishtar, the goddess of love (p. 512) falsely infers common activity from common identification with a goddess of many roles. Moreover, the identification is problematic. Westenholz (p. 251) argues that the qadistu had a special .
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