Biblical Hebrew Forum

[<david.kimbrough AT charter.net>]

"Sodomite" in the narrowest sense just means a resident of the city of Sodom. 
 It has the connotation of homosexuality due to the story of Sodom in Genesis.

However here the word is Kadeshim, or ritual male prostitutes.  There is a 
female version, kadeshah, the role that Tamar played in Genesis.  This is 
sometimes translated as "temple prostitutes" but in the Genesis story of 
Tamar, she pretended to be a kadeshah far from any fixed temple (assuming her 
tent did not constitute a temple).  The root is kd#, to sanctify.  The 
activities of these ritual prostitutes (male and female) may have been 
assoicated with the Asherah / Baal cults.

While the kadesh performed homosexual acts as a cultic activity, the 
individual may or many not have been of the homosexual *orientation* in the 
modern sense.  This is to say, given a preverence, the kadesh may have not 
engaged in homosexual acts in the privacy of his own home with another man.  
Conversely, a lesbian (in the modern sense) may have been a kadeshah and 
engaged in heterosexual acts for ritual purposes.


David Kimbrough
San Gabriel