I have read with much interest the articles regarding whether to give prostitution a legal face in St Lucia. I noted the phrase used that St Lucia is a nation under God.
It can only augur well for a developing nation to discuss these issues so allow me to stoke the fires a little and visit the profession of prostitution from the center of our collective consciences—The Bible.
What is telling is that although we are supposedly ‘a nation under God’, we have not heard God’s voice on the matter; nor has He/She been invited to comment on the work that occupy prostitutes.
I am not a Bible freak by any measure, but I have read it and at times even studied a subject or two outlined therein. This is not a sermon and I am not a preacher, and this article is not intended to convey this.
Within its pages, God appears to be a very sexually oriented being indeed! He/She made us male and female—in He/She’s very image. An act which encapsulates all sexual activity and called it good. Thus we are in God’s sexual image.
If one called prostitution a ‘sick trade’ as Dr King’s adversaries seems to say, then one can conclude that God is sick. Not so? How does all this apply to prostitution? The scene will unfold . . . I hope. I will attempt to paint a broad picture of biblical sexuality, and then fit some specifics regarding prostitution into that context.
God made a man and called him Adam. God made the being from mud or dust. God examined Her creation and said in effect: Uh, uh, not good. God then proceeded to put Adam to sleep and took out a piece of himself, supposedly a rib, and made a woman. Adam awoke from his sleep and spoke for the first recorded time and said in effect ‘Wow . . . hmmm, now we can make babies!’
The woman was Adam’s biological twin; Gen 2:20-24, and this is where it begins to get interesting and we can glimpse a little of God’s inner workings regarding sexuality. She contained his exact DNA. She became his wife by an act of sexual intercourse as stated in verse 24. This action by God initiated the two as sexually functional. However the relationship speaks volumes. Adam and his woman were sharing a relationship closer than that of a man and his mother, sister, daughter, or aunt. The relationship is incestuous according to our modern law. However it does not impair sexual function but rather establishes it. It is incest of a stronger kind, for example if Adam had married his sister. God sanctioning incest?
Let us move rapidly on to the next interesting account. Forget Cain who supposedly married his sister, accompanied by God’s tacit approval. We come to Abraham, the Father of the faithful. We see he carried the title: father. We will revisit that title further on in this discourse. This is the very Abraham, whom God made sexually virile. His aged wife also being made sexually responsive, Hebrews 11: 11-12 and genesis 17:17, so that he had two wives and a jabal. Thus jabalism enters the picture. The two wives were Sarah and Keturah (after Sarah’s death) and Hagar the Egyptian jabal, Gen 16:1-4 and Gen 25:1. Here again under our laws old Abe would be guilty of child molestation. He being over a hundred years old when he met Keturah who was still of childbearing age. So in this account we have incest, Sarah being Abe’s sister, jabalism and adultery, and acts close to child to child molestation, seen in his marriage to Keturah. God’s response to Hagar’s offspring was regarding the passing on of the promise and not the sexual act itself. God blessed Hagar’s child. He is the same Abe who is father of the faithful, the one on whom the entirety of Christianity is based! He is called father, Jesus is not called father.
God made Abe sexually capable, exclaiming in Genesis 12:2: I will make you a great nation. Again Gen 18:18 records the following: seeing that Abraham all become a great and mighty nation . . .? One does not become a tribe or nation without spending much time in bed with women!
As we arrive at Genesis 16, we note in verse twelve that Sarai’s his sister. So here we go again. Incest. Not only was Abraham in an ongoing incestuous relationship, following Adam’s example set a thousand years or more prior, but Abe was a liar. He lied by premeditation, and lying by premeditation ran in his family. Hey I’m no better, but at least I’m in good company! However that is the historical fact. Sarah aided him with his lies and Isaac his son carried on the trait, Gen 26:7. Jacob, Abe boy’s grandson, refined the family skill of premeditated lying and stole his brother Esau’s birthright as well as his blessing, with Rebecca his mother, Jacob’s wife being part of the whole episode. Gen 27 records the events. Those men lied and placed entire governments and nations at risk! Notice Gen. 26:10, Gen 20:5 Gen. 12:18,17.The account, I repeat, the account does raise major questions regarding God’s judgment. Both Pharaoh and Abimelech were unaware that the women were married; both kings acted in honesty according to their cultures.Yet God is recorded as having plagued Pharaoh for his innocent act and protects Abimelech for the same type of action.
God’s promise to make Abe a great nation called for (a) sexual virility (b) The female agents to bear the children and (c) land space. This promise and the sexual actions which developed attendant to that promise of God would no doubt evolve into the profession of temple prostitution. They had no choice. Especially when we study the slavery that Israel would encounter.
Lot, Abe’s nephew had to run from Sodom, having been warned of its’ impending destruction. The record in Genesis 19: 30 to 36, shows Lot engaging in incestuous sexual activity with both of his daughters. Throughout all of that God’s silence is deafening. What’s that about silence meaning consent?
Lot’s children were named Edom and Moab, of whom Daniel wrote that they are spared the brutality of a militarily superior invading force. Well, according to modern law these nations would not even exist because God would have destroyed their fore parents for incest. However they survived and were protected throughout their times. Now, what has prostitution got to do with all of this? I think that the answer is emerging. God is not so tense or uptight about sex and sexuality as our modern laws would have us believe. The account would show that (a) God is wrong and our laws right (b) That the account is wrong (c) Someone or some people changed the documentation to suit their own profession. (c) That God continues her creative work throughout a variety of situations.
Isaac and Ishmael are reputed to be the ancestors of the modern nations of The Israelis and the Arabs. If this is so, then Ishmael Abe’s bastard child should have been decimated by God. No, today, they control the world with their oil, the life of all worldwide commerce and industry. No Arab diplomat trots the globe seeking favours . . . instead all diplomats from so called leader nations go to
the Arabs. The Arabs even lead the US by the nose, since the US needs to satisfy its insatiable appetite for oil. Israel on the other hand is struggling for survival. Yet he is the child born legitimately. Supposedly.
THE CASE FOR PROSTITUTION
Gen. 38 records Judah’s sexual escapades. Judah was one of Jacob’s boys. He was a prince. One of the twelve princes of Israel. His sexual activities show his love for prostitutes. Now this is no Caucasian woman, as Egyptian documentaries point out. This is African territory which stretched from Africa to China in those days, Chinese DNA evidence pointing to the fact that they, the Chinese, are our children. Consider the book of Esther for information regarding the expanse of the territory. He pledges his signet ring, and his staff which records his family tree, for a little loving. He promised to send her a young goat, which no doubt would form the foundation of the prostitute’s economy so that she would be able to support herself and Judah’s child. Imagine how much money a princely signet ring and royal staff would cost today. The prostitute became pregnant. She knew that she was ovulating but she also knew the role of prostitution in her society. Tamar accordingly bore Judah’s princely child. They both knew that it was (still is) a religious rite dating back to Adam and God, Adam’s mother and father (Luke 3:38) and continuing, in a direct line to Jesus, who entered the picture under the Roman emperor Tiberius Caesar; Pontious Pilate then governor of Judeah and Herod the boss over the relevant province. This brief note regarding the governing structure of the occupying Romans provides some of the ambience which dictated the need for prostitution as a rite.
Judeah was under Roman military occupation. It is highly in doubt that the occupying power would tolerate a rival shadow royal hierarchy and government with all of its political implications. Rome was out to wipe out the God line. It was politically expedient. Rome hardly wanted a rebellion in its sphere of influence, especially one of such potentially potent force. Thus, prostitution was a rite, which dated back to ages before Abraham. Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Solomon, Boaz, Jesus. If those men had to preserve and spread out their descendants, so that in view of the circumstances of war and conquest that prevailed, some children would survive.
PROSTITUTION IN JESUS’ DAY
The word sacrifice is rooted in the word sacrum, which refers to three or five bones bonded together at the posterior end of the spinal column and united to the two halves of the pelvis or hips. The dictionary refers to it as the holy bone, and the word holy is the same in meaning as sacred, thus sacrifice is related to activities involving these bonded set of bones. One can call them married bones for the sake of this discourse. The pelvic or hip area houses parts of the organs which eliminate waste from the body. They also house parts of the organs responsible for the reproductive process namely the female and male sexual organs. Thus the word sacrifice then would relate to sexual activity involving those organs, especially in the context of the male and female God of Genesis, on whose philosophy this whole argument is based.
Luke 2:4, Luke 3:22-38, Matthew 1:1-25 record the royal line and alludes to the rite of prostitution which accompanied that line and was so necessary for its survival through time based on the promise of God.
However, when we get to Jesus, no record appears available except with reference to one Emmanuel. Sacred prostitution could not be disannulled by the law which was added 430 years later . . . Gal. 3:17-18. This promise forms the basis for prostitution which is a rite associated with the continuance of a royal lineage. That rite has other serious implications as well. Jesus had to have children or else God’s promise would fail. Jesus’ children had to be hidden because of the prevailing situation in Judeah at the time.
THAT ENIGMATIC COMMENT
The Jews of Jesus’ time accused him of being born as a result of fornication John 8:41. This is a spiritually serious comment. A comment which examined in its full puts the whole of Christianity under the microscope. In purely sexual terms it refers to one born illegitimately, out of wedlock or as the result of sex with a prostitute. In the context the Jews were saying that Jesus was the son of a prostitute. That may be why they brought the woman caught in adultery to him. They were placing Jesus between a rock and a hard place.
Even the text raises this same question, in the record of his geneology. Luke 3:23 and Jesus himself being about thirty years of age being (as was supposed) the son of Joseph, the son of Heli . . . Notice the phrase as was supposed . . . The online dictionary describes the word supposed as follows, “Supposed: Assumed as true regardless of fact.”
Would you like to be accused of a crime because you were assumed or supposed to be at the scene? It raises the point that sacred prostitution was a fact of life for those people and they knew Jesus’ lineage and they knew the preserving rite of prostitution associated with Jesus’ royal line.
As mentioned earlier in this essay, it was customary in those days for young women preferably virgins, teenagers, to serve as temple prostitutes. The record points to the possibility that Mary, Jesus’ mother was serving in the temple where she met Jesus’ immediate ancestor and she was offered the opportunity to carry the royal child who would be named Jesus. Question: Why did Joseph of Arimathea (Matt .27 57 – 60) place Jesus in a brand new tomb, supposedly his own? The inference is hard to pass up. Note if you will verse 61. Joseph of Arimathea was a leading member of the Sanhedrin, the same group who, for political expediency wanted to kill Jesus. Joseph of Arimathea had the title of Father, accordingly he had access to the temple, where he undoubtedly met Mary. Notice that the text shows that he was a secret disciple of Jesus, emphasis on the word secret. He was well known to Pilate, so we can infer that he moved in the highest political circles, from which position he could easily watch over his son Jesus.
Even Jesus’ birth was secretive. The preservation a of a royal line, started before Adam, Luke 3:38, through Abraham and his descendants and confirmed to David to whom God said: The Lord has sworn and will not change His mind, David will always have a son to sit on my throne. 2 Chronicles 6:16, and 1 Chron. 29:23. Solomon sat on the throne of the LORD.
The heavy hitters who were present at Solomon’s coronation is evidence of the its importance—Nathan the prophet, around whom all else revolved, Zadok the priest . . . Thus it is the royal genetic line of one know only by the title: LORD. Therefore a priesthood was established which was entrusted with the responsibility to ensure the survival of that line. It had to be preserved through wars, invasions, shifts in populations, genocide and other assorted dangers. One such threat is recorded in Matt 2:1–20. Herod, Caesar’s tetrarch over that quarter of Judeah where Jesus was, sought to kill the boy. Couldn’t find him, so Herod committed genocide. He slaughtered all the children he could find in the area and its environs . . . note verse 16. God had already sent the boy and his parents to Egypt till Herod et al were dead. Such was the threat. Herod did not act independently . . . For they are dead who sought the young child’s life. Matt 2:20. Strong political forces wanted to obliterate the Lord’s royal line.
So prostitution is a rite, one attending to royalty, and not just any royalty but the royalty and lineage of a mysterious being known not by name, but by title: LORD. Jesus was David’s son according to lineage. Matt 1: 1 and Matt. 1:21-23. Political forces wanted to destroy Jesus. Prostitution involved the rite in which a virgin was chosen and impregnated by a male of that line to help carry on the lineage. Joseph of Arimathea, the father of the priesthood was the one who passed on the Lord’s seed. Joseph, Mary’s husband had another role.
(For the conclusion of this article please check this weekend’s STAR)
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