The Doula and the Whore: The Meaning of Qedeshah

After Herodotus translated qedeshah as “temple prostitute,” that definition was seized upon by translators and scholars from the 5th century BCE onward. Only recent scholarship has finally revealed that the function of the qedesh class was likely religious without a sexual component. Despite such scholarship and ample evidence to the contrary, many scholars to this day hold fast to the notion of qedeshah-as-sacred-prostitute.

According to Assyriologist Joan Goodnick Westenholz, in North Syria, male members of the qadištu class were known to serve as cantors and priests. In Mesopotamia, the cognates of qedeshah referred to a special status of women who were known to preside over childbirth and wet-nursing, serve ritual functions, and played a role in fertility and childbirth, serving alongside a midwife. They were sometimes counted among sorceresses and witches and may have performed exorcisms. Some led rituals similar to Hebrew priests.

Notably, none of these various functions was that of temple prostitute, but ranged from what we might think of today as clergy to what we would today call a doula -- a woman who serves in the birthing chamber but whose role is spiritual rather than medical. (Goodnick Westenholz, Joan. “Qědēšā, Qadištu, and Sacred Prostitution in Mesopotamia.”)

If there is no evidence that a qedesh was a temple or cultic prostitute, how did this come to be the prevailing understanding for this term? Did qedeshah mean “cultic prostitute” to the biblical authors?

The Anchor Bible Dictionary notes that, “On the basis of Ugaritic texts and various passages in the books of Kings which refer to the qādēš, it can be concluded that qādēš/qědēšâ refer to a priestly class rejected by orthodox Yahwists… [and that, to the] Deuteronomist[,] both of these professions [those of the qādēš and the qědēšâ] were abhorrent to the pious writer.” Meanwhile, many scholars “argue convincingly that the idea of prostitution was only a polemical association with women connected to religious centers criticized by the biblical writers.” As the qedeshim served foreign gods, they were viewed as abhorrent marginalized by the authors of the Bible. The conflation of a qedesh with a prostitute could have been a means of degradation; rather than believing that the qedeshim were, in fact, prostitutes, the biblical authors may have been intentionally defiling the foreign religious leaders by using the term in this way. “[I]t is recognized that the Hebrews saw all forms of religion except their own as depraved and full of debauchery. To the Hebrew author, the pagan priestess must be a harlot…”

Goodnick Westenholz notes that the term qedeshah in the story of Tamar and Judah in Genesis 38 is only used among Canaanite characters in the story, and that “Hirah [was] not trying to change the nature of the affair from one with a common prostitute to one with a sacred prostitute; rather he [was] denying the affair and pretending to take the kid [payment] to the קדשה for a sacrifice, as in Hos. 4:14.” According to this reading, while the Hebrews may have conflated qedeshah with prostitute, the Canaanites did not conflate the two because they knew that a qedeshah served a (non-sexual) religious function. This reading posits a nuanced view for the biblical scholars -- that they themselves did not conflate the two terms.

Jonathan Kirsch, in The Harlot by the Side of the Road, takes the opposite view, positing that the biblical authors did equate qedeshah with prostitute, but used one term as a more elevated term for “prostitute” -- similar to our modern distinction between “whore” and “call girl,” for example: “[A]s used by the biblical author in Genesis 38, qedeshah may not be intended as a technical term for a cult prostitute but rather as a ‘poetic synonym’ for a ‘common or garden harlot.’"

The Anchor Bible Dictionary offers an explanation that attempts to strike a balance between the two, suggesting that the Hebrews conflated the two terms and the Canaanites did not, and that Hebrew readers of the Bible would therefore be “amused by the Canaanite’s ascription of holiness to a sexual mercenary.”

Given that the biblical authors were prone to wordplay, this explanation is sound. In the societies where qedeshot were employed, these women were revered and worked in the sacred sphere. In monotheistic Hebrew society, qedeshot may as well have been prostitutes, whether they were in practice or not. ​​​​​​​

It is important, in a nuanced socio-historical understanding, to separate the original meaning and functions of the qedesh class from the biblical conception of qedeshot and from the historical process of translation. It is most accurate to say that the qedeshot in original function were doulas and religious leaders, in biblical conception were heathens or prostitutes, and in translation were memorialized as sacred, temple, or cult prostitutes.