Biblical Hebrew Forum

["Stoney Breyer" <stoneyb AT touchwood.net>]

-----Original Message-----
Peter Kirk:
Surely the point is: (v.17, English) No temple prostitution among
Israelites; (v.18) don't even bring the earnings of prostitutes into the
temple because that makes them effectively temple prostitutes; because 
YHWH detests temple prostitution.

But, Peter, doesn't that paraphrase, like Patrina's explanation, beg the
question rather than answer it? ... the question being What *is* a
qedeshah? 

More narrowly, is the common understanding of qedeshah as "temple
prostitute" based on any *reliable* evidence that "temple prostitution"
was actually practiced in Canaan or anywhere else in the ANE? May it not
equally be the same sort of myth as the Witch Cult of Northern Europe?

Stoney Breyer
Writer / Touchwood