#hierodules

“In Cyprus it appears that before marriage all women were formerly obliged by custom to prostitute themselves to strangers at the sanctuary of the goddess... Similar customs prevailed in many parts of Western Asia. Whatever its motive, the practice was clearly regarded, not as an orgy of lust, but as a solemn religious duty performed in the service of that great Mother Goddess of Western Asia whose name varied, while her type remained constant, from place to place....

Sanctuary of Aphrodite at Paphos (now Kouklia, Cyprus).

(Source: Nikodem Nijaki, CC BY-SA 3.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0, via Wikimedia Commons)

“...at Babylon every woman, whether rich or poor, had once in her life to submit to the embraces of a stranger at the temple of Mylitta, that is, of Ishtar or Astarte, and to dedicate to the goddess the wages earned by this sanctified harlotry. The sacred precinct was crowded with women waiting to observe the custom. Some of them had to wait there for years. 

An engraving of the goddess Mylitta, by Daniël met de Penningen (1690).

(Source: Rijksmuseum, CC0, via Wikimedia Commons)

“At Heliopolis or Baalbec in Syria [i.e., Lebanon], famous for the imposing grandeur of its ruined temples, the custom of the country required that every maiden should prostitute herself to a stranger at the temple of Astarte, and matrons as well as maids testified their devotion to the goddess in the same manner. The emperor Constantine abolished the custom, destroyed the temple, and built a church in its stead.

Panoramic shot of a Baalbek temple complex in modern-day Lebanon.

(Source: © Guillaume Piolle / CC BY 3.0 / Wikimedia)

“In Phoenician temples women prostituted themselves for hire in the service of religion, believing that by this conduct they propitiated the goddess and won her favour. ‘It was a law of the Amorites, that she who was about to marry should sit in fornication seven days by the gate.’ 

An Amorite penitent.

(Source: Dosseman, CC BY-SA 4.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0, via Wikimedia Commons)

“At Byblus the people shaved their heads in the annual mourning for Adonis. Women who refused to sacrifice their hair had to give themselves up to strangers on a certain day of the festival, and the money which they thus earned was devoted to the goddess….

A Roman-era Astarte statuette from Byblos.

(Source: taller romano, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons)

“We are told that in Lydia all girls were obliged to prostitute themselves in order to earn a dowry; but we may suspect that the real motive of the custom was devotion rather than economy. The suspicion is confirmed by a Greek inscription found at Tralles in Lydia, which proves that the practice of religious prostitution survived in that country as late as the second century of our era. It records of a certain woman, Aurelia Aemilia by name, not only that she herself served the god in the capacity of a harlot at his express command, but that her mother and other female ancestors had done the same before her; and the publicity of the record, engraved on a marble column which supported a votive offering, shows that no stain attached to such a life and such a parentage. 

Greek inscription found in Tralles, Lydia (part of modern-day Republic of Türkiye), telling of Aurelia Aemilia's life as a hierodule.

(Source: W. M. Ramsay, "Unedited Inscriptions of Asia Minor," Bulletin de Correspondance Hellénique, vii. [1883] p. 276.)

“In Armenia the noblest families dedicated their daughters to the service of the goddess Anaitis in her temple at Acilisena, where the damsels acted as prostitutes for a long time before they were given in marriage. Nobody scrupled to take one of these girls to wife when her period of service was over. 

Modern-day depiction of the goddess Anahit (Anaitis), sculpted by Hagop Ishkanian (1964).

(Source: Hagop Ishkanian, CC BY 4.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0, via Wikimedia Commons)

“Again, the goddess Ma was served by a multitude of sacred harlots at Comana in Pontus, and crowds of men and women flocked to her sanctuary from the neighbouring cities and country to attend the biennial festivals or to pay their vows to the goddess."

A dedication to the goddess Ma, imprinted by one of the faithful, c. 1st cent. BCE.

(Source: National Museum in Warsaw, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons)

hierodules from Gene Wolfe’s “Book of the New Sun”

they’re backwards-living alien-angel-monsters whose masks only conceal further masks

So here, Jerusalem, the bride of God, is now being called a motherless whore. (Not exaggerating in the slightest.)

3...By origin and birth you belong to the land of the Canaanites; your father was an Amorite, your mother a Hittite. 4 As for your birth, on the day you were born your navel cord was not cut; you were not washed with water or anointed; you were not rubbed with salt or wrapped in swaddling clothes. No eye looked on you with pity or compassion to do any of these things for you. Rather, on the day you were born you were left out in the field, rejected. 6 Then I passed by and saw you struggling in your blood, and I said to you in your blood, “Live!” 7 I helped you grow up like a field plant, so that you grew, maturing into a woman with breasts developed and hair grown; but still you were stark naked. 8 I passed by you again and saw that you were now old enough for love. So I spread the corner of my cloak* over you to cover your nakedness; I swore an oath to you and entered into covenant with you—oracle of the Lord GOD—and you became mine.

Not only does God fight dirty, he swears dirty, too.

20 The sons and daughters you bore for me you took and offered as sacrifices for them to devour! Was it not enough that you had become a prostitute? 21 You slaughtered and immolated my children to them, making them pass through fire. 22 In all your abominations and prostitutions you did not remember the days of your youth when you were stark naked, struggling in your blood. 23 Then after all your evildoing—woe, woe to you! oracle of the Lord GOD— 24 you built yourself a platform and raised up a dais* in every public place. 25 At every intersection you built yourself a dais so that you could degrade your beauty by spreading your legs for every passerby, multiplying your prostitutions.

I'm gonna take this as more circumstantial evidence that idolatry in the pre-Christian Middle East was all tied up with prostitution - that for the early Jews, there was an inextricable link between pagan temples and wild sex.

And it made them feel kinda funny.

26 You served as a prostitute with the Egyptians, your big-membered neighbors, and multiplied your prostitutions to provoke me.

AHEM.

33. Prostitutes usually receive gifts. But you bestowed gifts on all your lovers, bribing them to come to you for prostitution from every side. 34 Thus in your prostitution you were different from any other woman. No one solicited you for prostitution. Instead, you yourself offered payment; what a reversal!

So this is the downside of being "married to God." He's not the most patient of spouses.

And even all het up like that, God's still dishing out cruel poetry, bringing to meaning to the expression "sister cities":

46 Your elder sister was Samaria with her daughters to the north of you; and your younger sister was Sodom and her daughters, south of you. 47 Not only did you walk in their ways and act as abominably as they did, but in a very short time you became more corrupt in all your ways than they were. 48 As I live—oracle of the Lord GOD—I swear that your sister Sodom with her daughters have not done the things you and your daughters have done!

By the time we reach the, "It's OK honey, I still love you," at the end of this super-long rant, we're almost too exhausted and terrified (I imagine) to absorb the theological significance:

62 For I will re-establish my covenant with you, that you may know that I am the LORD, 63 that you may remember and be ashamed, and never again open your mouth because of your disgrace, when I pardon you for all you have done—oracle of the Lord GOD.

A new covenant? Well, a renewed one, anyway. Naturally, Christians see this a little differently than Jews - we could be talking about the Christian faith here (heavily revised Judaism), or we could be talking about Judaism without the Temple. Without access to Jerusalem.