קְדֵשָׁה

From the study of Deuteronomy 23:17

Range of meaning

Built on the root q-d-š, 'set apart, holy, consecrated', so its literal sense is 'a woman who has been consecrated or dedicated'. It occurs only five times in the Hebrew Bible: Genesis 38:21–22 (three times), here, and Hosea 4:14. Each time it sits next to the ordinary word for prostitute, zōnāh. In Genesis 38 the narrator calls Tamar a zōnāh (38:15), and Judah's friend asks the locals about 'the qĕdēšāh' (38:21). In Hosea 4:14 the men 'go aside with prostitutes and sacrifice with qĕdēšôt'. So biblical writers clearly linked the qĕdēšāh with sex outside marriage. But the word itself means 'consecrated one', and no passage describes a sex rite she performed.

Against the English

KJV and YLT say 'whore', which keeps the sexual link but hides the 'holy/consecrated' root. Modern versions say 'shrine', 'cult' or 'temple prostitute', which keeps both sides but suggests organised sex rituals in temples. That picture has much weaker evidence than many readers assume.

How it drifted

The idea of 'sacred prostitution' (sex performed as worship to ensure fertility) goes back to the Greek historian Herodotus (1.199, on Babylon). Nineteenth- and early twentieth-century scholars then built it into the standard model of 'Canaanite fertility religion', and translators adopted 'cult/temple prostitute'. Since the 1980s many specialists have questioned whether such an institution existed at all.

Used elsewhere in the period

The Akkadian cognate qadištu (Mesopotamia) names a woman dedicated to a deity. The texts show her in roles such as midwife, wet-nurse and ritual singer. The Laws of Hammurabi (§181) list her with other dedicated women, and the Middle Assyrian Laws (A §40) regulate whether she is veiled. None of these texts clearly shows her selling sex (Westenholz 1989; Gruber 1986). The Ugaritic qdšm are male temple staff listed beside priests in administrative texts, again with no sexual role stated.