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
