D23-26: How Pagan Temples Attached A Religious Aura To Their Prostitution Services To Attract Customers

Let’s continue on with our discussion about prostitution in the ancient world.

The first thing you have to understand is that houses of ill repute in the Biblical era were not considered as such.

The activity of sex for pay was actually connected to the various temples and their gods and goddesses.

If you want to access some incredibly detailed information on the topic, you can do no better than studying the works of the Greek historian Herodotus.

He provides quite graphic accounts on how exactly pagan brothels operated in those days.

In a nutshell, there were two categories of temple or cultic prostitution systems.

The first category were the brothels operated by the temple authorities as a for-profit business.

Let me make it crystal clear I’m only talking about pagan temples here since such activities would NEVER had occurred in the Levitical priesthood.

You’ve all heard about Paul warning against prostitution in his letters to the Corinthians, haven’t you?

Well, it just so happens that the temple to the goddess Aphrodite in Corinth was famous for raking in tons of cash produced by the string of brothels it owned.

The second category of cultic prostitution was an operation where young girls were actually betrothed to a given temple and then forced to serve as prostitutes because it was honoring to the pagan gods since what they were doing enabled god’s priests to “earn” their livelihood.

I guess you could consider this an ancient version of child trafficking. 

Since time immemorial, in most Middle Eastern cultures cultic prostitution was seen as completely legitimate and universally accepted.

That’s the reason it was viewed as the world’s oldest profession.

The pagan temples saw it as a lucrative opportunity to monopolize a market that was highly profitable.

Here’s what’s fascinating.

In order to appeal to their customers, a pagan temple would attach a religious aura to their services.

The idea was that a man would be more inclined to spend his money with a cultic prostitute as opposed to a common or private one who operated in another nearby location.

That’s right.

By attaching a religious aura to this “pay for play” activity, both the customer and the prostitute were made to feel that what they were doing was something good and holy.

Pretty horrific, isn’t it?

Now that you have this understanding, can you see why God prohibited such activities for Israel?

Not only did He prohibit such activities, he went so far as to say that any money gained from such activities should NEVER be used for holy purposes such as for tithing or paying a vow price to the Levitical Priesthood.

So what’s the big takeaway here?

The takeaway goes back to all my teachings on unauthorized or illicit mixtures.

Taking gain that from the Lord’s perspective is ill gotten and then turning around and offering it to Him as a HOLY thing is an abomination.

This strikes at the very heart of the idea that one can mix the things of the world with the things of the Lord and somehow end up with something that is good and righteous.

In fact, it was this idea of illicit mixtures that Yeshua was referring to when he said “Render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar’s and render unto God the things that are God’s”.

That ain’t some New Testament idea folks.

Yeshua was making it clear that we should NOT bring things that belong in the sphere of the world into union with anything in the sphere of the Lord’s HOLY kingdom.

CONNECTING THIS TEACHING TO THE NEW TESTAMENT

“Shall I then take the members of Messiah 
and unite them with a prostitute? Never!
Do you not know that he who unites himself
with a prostitute is one with her in body?
For it is said, “The two will become one flesh.”
But whoever is united with the Lord is
one with him in spirit.
Flee from sexual immorality.
All other sins a person commits are outside the body,
but whoever sins sexually, sins against their own body.
Do you not know that your bodies are temples
of the Holy Spirit, who is in you,
whom you have received from God?
You are not your own;
you were bought at a price.
Therefore honor God with your bodies.”
1st Letter To The Corinthians 6:15-20