As I stated last week, I hope this can be a serious study of the Christian Bible, and I only ask that those who participate try to stay away from personal-level attacks. All pertinent comments are welcome, regardless of whether you are a believer or not.
This week, we close out our look at the book of Genesis. Don't worry, though. Plenty more interesting stuff in the rest of the Bible.
Gen 38:15-18 – When Judah saw her, he thought her to be a prostitute, for she had covered her face. He went over to her at the roadside, and said, "Come, let me come in to you," for he did not know that she was his daughter-in-law. She said, "What will you give me, that you may come in to me?" He answered, "I will send you a kid from the flock." And she said, "Only if you give me a pledge, until you send it." He said, "What pledge shall I give you?" She replied, "Your signet and your cord, and the staff that is in your hand." So he gave them to her, and went in to her, and she conceived by him.
Gen 38:24-26 –About three months later Judah was told, "Your daughter-in-law Tamar has played the whore; moreover she is pregnant as a result of whoredom." And Judah said, "Bring her out, and let her be burned." As she was being brought out, she sent word to her father-in-law, "It was the owner of these who made me pregnant." And she said, "Take note, please, whose these are, the signet and the cord and the staff." Then Judah acknowledged them and said, "She is more in the right than I, since I did not give her to my son Shelah." And he did not lie with her again.
According to what I've been able to gather from the book "Is it God's Word?" this is evidence of the pagan roots of Judaism. There are many more tidbits of this sort in the OT. Anyway, what this amounts to is showing Judah participating (or so he thought) in the pagan fertility rite of visiting a priestess-prostitute. To quote from Chapter 8 of this book:
"THE TEMPLE HARLOTS OF YAHVEH
There remain several aspects of Hebrew phallic worship which we shall briefly notice. One feature common to all the ancient religions was the consecrated women, or priestess-prostitutes, who were always in attendance in the temples and at the asherah ("groves"), to participate in the worship with the true believers who had the price of oblation. Their earnings in this sacred calling went into the "treasury of Yahveh," and were a large part of its legitimate income. True, the "law" prescribed: "There shall be no whore [qadeshah] of the daughters of Israel, nor a sodomite [qadesh] of the sons of Israel. Thou shalt not bring the hire of a whore, or the price of a dog, into the house of Yahveh thy God for any vow" (Deut. xxiii, 17, 18). But, this "law" was ex post facto, and totally unobserved, for the practice prevailed even in the holy temple of Solomon. The Hebrew word "qadesh," the name for the consecrated devotees of phallism, is exactly the same word as that for "holy" or "consecrated" or "sanctified"; it is used in the "ten commandments": "Wherefore Yahveh blessed the sabbath day and hallowed [qadesh-u] it" (Ex. xx, 11); and in the inscription on the golden crown of Aaron: "Holiness [qadesh] to Yahveh" (Ex. xxxix, 30); and wherever this idea is expressed.
The first Bible mention of this cult is some five hundred years before the time of Moses, when the fair young widow Tamar, despairing of getting the man so often promised her, dressed herself in the garb of a "qadeshah" or temple-harlot, with a veil over her face, and went and "sat in an open place" where she knew that her father-in-law Judah would pass by; and Judah came by, and fell into her trap, with interesting sequel, related in Genesis xxxviii. Later Moses, in instituting the religious observances of the Chosen People, thought it amiss that Hebrew young women and young men should engage in this religious prostitution, and hence the "law" above quoted, prohibiting them from acting the role of temple-prostitutes. So these sacred offices were usually filled by "the stranger within thy gate," and particularly by the Moabitish maidens and young men. While yet in the midst of their wanderings in the wilderness, "the people began to commit whoredom with the daughters of Moab, ... and bowed down to their gods. And Israel joined himself unto Baal-peor" (Num. xxv, 1-3); that is, to "Baal the hymen-breaker," so named because Moabitish maidens were wont to break their hymens on the idol-phallus before becoming qadeshoth, or religious prostitutes. As to the qadeshuth, or official sodomites, who abounded among the Chosen People, as attested by many scriptural passages, the less said about these detestable attendants of the worship of Yahveh, the better."
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