Table Of ContentHarlot or Holy Woman?
Harlot or Holy Woman?
A Study of Hebrew Qedešah
Phyllis A. Bird
In Collaboration with Anna Glenn
Eisenbrauns | University Park, Pennsylvania
Library of Congress Cataloging- in- Publication Data
Names: Bird, Phyllis A. (Phyllis Ann), 1934– author. | Glenn, Anna, author.
Title: Harlot or holy woman? : a study of Hebrew qedešah / Phyllis A. Bird ; in
collaboration with Anna Glenn.
Description: University Park, Pennsylvania : Eisenbrauns, 2019. | Includes bibliographical
references and index.
Summary: “A study of the Hebrew term qedešah, meaning “consecrated woman,” but
translated “prostitute” or “sacred prostitute” in English Bibles. Offers an alternative
explanation suggesting a wider participation for women in Israel’s early cultic
practice”—Provided by publisher.
Identifiers: LCCN 2019027371 | ISBN 9781575069814 (cloth)
Subjects: LCSH: Kedeshah (The Hebrew word) | Bible. Genesis XXXVIII, 21–22—
Comparative studies. | Bible. Deuteronomy XXIII, 18—Comparative studies. |
Prostitution—Religious aspects. | Women in the Bible. | Women—Middle East—
Religious life. | Sex in the Bible. | Middle Eastern literature—Relation to the Old
Testament. | Middle East—Civilization—To 622. | Middle East—Social life and
customs.
Classification: LCC PJ4819.K43 B57 2019 | DDC 892.4/099287—dc23
lc record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019027371
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ansi z39.48–1992.
Contents
Preface and Acknowledgments vii
List of Abbreviations xi
Chapter 1. Introduction 1
Chapter 2. Sacred Prostitution as Interpretive Construct 33
Chapter 3. Sir James George Frazer and the Concept of Sacred
Prostitution 69
Chapter 4. Classical Sources in Constructions of Sacred Prostitution 105
Chapter 5. New Sources from the Ancient Near East 209
Chapter 6. Qedešah in the Hebrew Bible 359
Appendix A. Synopsis of Classical Sources in Constructions of
Sacred Prostitution 413
Appendix B. Synopsis of qadištu /nu.gig Texts 421
Appendix C. Nu- gig in Early Sumerian Texts 433
Bibliography 455
Index of Sources 481
v
Preface and Acknowledgments
This study has been long in the making and in publication. The basic arguments of
Chapters 2 and 3 were laid out in 1998 in a paper titled “Sacred Prostitution: Modern
Coinage and Conception,” and presented at the 2000 IOSOT Congress in Cape
Town under the title “ ‘Sacred Prostitution’: In Search of Origins.” The first draft of
Chapter 1 was completed in July of that year, reaching its “final” in October 2002.
And a foundational study for the exegetical arguments of Chapter 6 was presented
at the 1995 IOSOT Congress in Cambridge.1 But other projects intervened, in
particular studies on Old Testament theology,2 theological anthropology,3 and
women’s religious lives in ancient Israel.4 Nevertheless, Chapter 2 was completed
1. “The End of the Male Cult Prostitute: A Literary- Historical and Sociological Analysis of
Hebrew qādēš/qĕdēšīm,” in Congress Volume: Cambridge, 1995 (ed. J. A. Emerton; VTSup 66; Leiden:
Brill, 1997) 33–80. Earlier attention was given to the critical text of Hos 4:14 in the article “ ‘To Play
the Harlot’: An Inquiry into an Old Testament Metaphor,” in Gender and Difference (ed. Peggy L.
Day; Minneapolis: Fortress, 1989) 75–94, although the focus in that article was on the language of
“whoring” (z- n- h), and my analysis of the literary history of the periscope changed as I worked on
the present volume.
2. An invitation to contribute to the “Biblische Theologie” colloquium of the Gerhard von Rad
centennial symposium (Heidelberg, 2001) provided the stimulus for “Old Testament Theology and
the God of the Fathers: Reflections on Biblical Theology from a North American Feminist Perspec-
tive,” published in Altes Testament und Moderne, Vol 14: Biblische Theologie (ed. B. Janowski, M. Welker,
and P. Hanson; Münster/London: LIT, 2005), 69–107.
3. Exemplified in “Theological Anthropology in the Hebrew Bible,” in Companion to the Hebrew
Bible (ed. L. G. Perdue; Oxford: Blackwell, 2001) 258–75.
4. Seen in “The Place of Women in the Israelite Cultus” (in Ancient Israelite Religion: Essays in
Honor of Frank Moore Cross [ed. P. D. Miller et al.; Philadelphia: Fortress, 1987] 397–419; reprinted
in Bird, Missing Persons and Mistaken Identities: Women and Gender in Ancient Israel [Minneapolis:
Fortress, 1997] 81–102); “Women’s Religion in Ancient Israel” (in Women’s Earliest Records: From
Ancient Egypt and Western Asia [ed. Barbara Lesko; Brown University Judaic Studies 166; Scholars
Press, 1989] 283–98); and “Israelite Religion and the Faith of Israel’s Daughters: Reflections on Gen-
der and Religious Definition” (in The Bible and the Politics of Exegesis: Essays in Honor of Norman
vii
viii Preface and Acknowledgments
in 2003 and Chapter 3 in 2006. The texts from classical antiquity that had been
the focus of my Cape Town paper were examined more closely and contextually
in Chapter 4, reaching their final form in 2009. And the exegetical treatment of
the biblical texts, the foundation of the study from the beginning, was updated in
Chapter 6, completed in 2010.
What remained “preliminary” was the analysis of the Akkadian qadištu texts
(Chapter 5, section I), which I had recognized as critical when I began to focus my
research on women’s religious lives in 1987. A sabbatical as Research Associate in
the Women Studies in Religion Program at Harvard Divinity School in 1989–90
provided me the opportunity to examine the qadištu citations of the Chicago
Assyrian Dictionary with the help of Kathryn Slanski, graduate assistant at the
time in the Department of Near Eastern Languages and Literatures. Slanski’s aid
was indispensable in helping me locate texts, providing preliminary translations
of untranslated portions, and introducing me to the Sumerian in which the Old
Babylonian legal and economic texts were written.5 A further contribution of the
program was acquaintanceship with Joan Goodnick Westenholz, Research Associ-
ate in 1987–88, who supplied me with a prepublication draft of her article, “Tamar,
qĕdēšā, qadištu, and Sacred Prostitution in Mesopotamia.”6
Completing the study of the Akkadian qadištu texts proved difficult after I
returned to teaching at Garrett- Evangelical Theological Seminary, as I had no
colleagues trained in Akkadian and could find no Assyriologist willing to read
my work. But using available translations, though dated and partial, I was able to
arrive at a picture of the qadištu in ancient Mesopotamia, in a variety of contexts
over a millennium of time, that forms the essential content of Chapter 5, section I.
With the Ugaritic material of Chapter 5, section II completing the study, a “final”
draft was submitted to Eisenbrauns editor Jim Eisenbrauns in late fall of 2011, with
the assurance of an initial response within a month. A year passed with the man-
uscript unread, a victim of staff changes at the press.
Discouraged, I considered salvaging the work by creating a shorter, more pop-
ular edition for a general audience with a different publisher. But the unique con-
tribution of this study was the presentation, for the first time, of all of the relevant
extrabiblical texts, in their contexts—not just selections and snippets. I wanted to
make the full breadth of the evidence available, to scholars versed in the ancient
languages, and to readers without such expertise. With the encouragement of my
K. Gottwald on His Sixty-Fifth Birthday [ed. D. Jobling et al.; Cleveland, OH: Pilgrim, 1991] 97–108;
311–17; reprinted in Bird, Missing Persons, 103–20).
5. She also helped me explore Sumerian nu- gig, which provided the logogram for Akkadian
qadištu and designated a class of women attached to certain temples in ancient Sumer. I was further
aided in this inquiry by Professor Piotr Steinkeller, who graciously read and commented on my first
attempts to interpret the distinct uses of the term as applied to human and divine subjects.
6. Published in HTR 82 (1989) 245–65.
Preface and Acknowledgments ix
Princeton colleague Katharine Sakenfeld I tried once again to find an Assyriologist
willing to bring the Akkadian (and Sumerian) texts into uniform style and update
them with references to the latest editions. And this time I succeeded, through the
mediation of Sakenfeld’s Hopkins teaching assistant who pointed me to a fellow
Hopkins student, Anna Glenn. Glenn’s collaboration has been indispensable in
providing electronic copies of the texts in their latest editions and references to
recent commentary as well as standardizing the presentation of the texts and the
translations. Through the miracle of the internet we have “conversed” from Evan-
ston, Baltimore, and Bern. And while the final interpretation of the texts remains
my own, it has profited immeasurably from this interchange.
Though the publication of the present volume was delayed somewhat by
the acquisition of the Eisenbrauns publishing house by Penn State University
Press7—I remain grateful to Jim Eisenbrauns for honoring his commitment to
see my work published—I am hopeful, nevertheless, that the fruit of my labors
over many years will at last be available to a wider audience. And I am grateful for
the many colleagues who responded over those years with interest and encour-
agement to portions of the work presented in professional meetings and academic
institutions. I look forward now to renewed engagement with a biblical figure who
deserves to be known by her given name, qedešah.
7. This latest delay has allowed me to insert references to Mayer Gruber’s commentary on Hosea
(Hosea: A Textual Commentary [LHBOTS 653; London: Bloomsbury T&T Clark, 2017]), which
appeared after my manuscript was already with the publisher.
