The offspring of temple prostitutes...

Currently teaching 1 Corinthians and the question came up as to what happened to the offspring of temple prostitutes in cities like Corinth where they were reputed to have over a 1000 practicing prostitutes.

I have Gold scholars, and I haven't bee able to find any resource that deals with the subject, can anyone recommend a logos product that might shed some light?

Terry

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DominicM

Question like this make me wish we could time travel (to really find out)...

I cant find anything here in my Platinum.

David Ames

C. History of Corinth

Such success inevitably provoked the envy of those less fortunate in their location and less industrious in their habits, and so in the 5th–4th centuries b.c., Athenian writers made Corinth the symbol of commercialized love. Aristophanes coined the verb korinthiazesthai, “to fornicate” (Fr. 354). Philetaerus and Poliochus wrote plays entitled Korinthiastēs, “The Whoremonger” (Athenaeus 313c, 559a). Plato used korinthia korē, “a Corinthian girl,” to mean a prostitute (Rest. 404d). These neologisms, however, left no permament mark on the language, because in reality Corinth was neither better nor worse than its contemporaries. It was not dedicated to the goddess of love, Aphrodite (Saffrey 1985), and Strabo’s story of 1000 sacred prostitutes (8.6.20) has been shown to be pure fabrication (Conzelmann 1967).

vol. 1, The Anchor Yale Bible Dictionary, 1135-36

Bohuslav Wojnar

Strabo’s story of 1000 sacred prostitutes (8.6.20) has been shown to be pure fabrication (Conzelmann 1967).

Good find [Y]

Anthony H

Currently teaching 1 Corinthians and the question came up as to what happened to the offspring of temple prostitutes in cities like Corinth where they were reputed to have over a 1000 practicing prostitutes.

I have Gold scholars, and I haven't bee able to find any resource that deals with the subject, can anyone recommend a logos product that might shed some light?

Terry

Here is some material that deals with offspring, sorry it's not in Logos...yet.

Faraone, Christopher A. (2006). Prostitutes and Courtesans in the Ancient World. Madison, Wisconsin: The University of Wisconsin Press.

http://uwpress.wisc.edu/books/2828.htm

Here is an online article that refs Faraone's book. (About half way through the article.)

http://hubpages.com/hub/Prostitution-Sexuality-and-Morality-in-the-New-Testament

Terry Poperszky

Strabo’s story of 1000 sacred prostitutes (8.6.20) has been shown to be pure fabrication (Conzelmann 1967)

Interesting...Well I am glad that I use the word reputed [;)]

But regardless of the number, or the city, I assume the practice of temple prostitution wasn't a fabrication, so my question stands...

Anthony H

Strabo’s story of 1000 sacred prostitutes (8.6.20) has been shown to be pure fabrication (Conzelmann 1967)

Interesting...Well I am glad that I use the word reputed

But regardless of the number, or the city, I assume the practice of temple prostitution wasn't a fabrication, so my question stands...

Look's like we posted at the same time 2:34... anyone know the odd's.

tom

I assume the practice of temple prostitution wasn't a fabrication,

Not only is modern scholarship tends to be divided on this subject, I think scholarship is shifting away from it. Here are two more sources that are not in Logos as of yet:

Julia Assante's essay "From Whores to Hierodules: The Historiographic Invention of Mesopotamian Female Sex Professionals." in Ancient Art and Its Historiography 2003

Stephanie Lynn Budin (2008), The Myth of Sacred Prostitution in Antiquity, Cambridge University Press, ISBN 0-521-88090-4

Terry Poperszky

Here is some material that deals with offspring, sorry it's not in Logos...yet.

Don't worry about that, I am more interested in the answer, than I am that it comes from Logos. I find the gaps in Logos material somewhat interesting at times though.

The type of information in that second article was just what I was looking for...

Thanks,

Terry

Jack Caviness

in reality Corinth was neither better nor worse than its contemporaries. It was not dedicated to the goddess of love, Aphrodite (Saffrey 1985), and Strabo’s story of 1000 sacred prostitutes (8.6.20) has been shown to be pure fabrication (Conzelmann 1967).

It is amazing how often truth can destroy good sermon points.

the question came up as to what happened to the offspring of temple prostitutes

I have never seen this discussed anywhere, but I would be very interested in the answer.

Terry Poperszky

Not only is modern scholarship tends to be divided on this subject, I think scholarship is shifting away from it

Ok, then the question becomes for me whether there is any difference in application if the prostitute mentioned in 1 co 6:15-17 is of the cultic or non-cultic variety. Personally I am assuming this is NOT analogous to eating meat sacrificed to idols.

Mark Barnes

Currently teaching 1 Corinthians and the question came up as to what happened to the offspring of temple prostitutes in cities like Corinth where they were reputed to have over a 1000 practicing prostitutes.

I'm afraid the answer to the question is probably a very unpleasant one. I can't speak specifically for Corinth, but I know that abortion (and infanticide, and effective infanticide through exposing infants) was rife amongst Greeks and Romans in the first century. It didn't become illegal until the 4th century AD.

On the question of cultic prostitution in Corinth, Jerome Murphy O'Connor's St Paul's Corinth (an excellent book but sadly not in Logos) as a very helpful survey of the evidence on pp 56-57, 144-146. He concludes that there were not temple prostitutes, but there still were a great many 'secular' prostitutes in the city.

I'd create a collection of Background resouces, and search it for (infanticide, abortion, foeticide).

Here's an extract from DNTB:

2.7. Exposure of Unwanted Infants. The father had the right to refuse to rear a newborn, even against the mother’s objections (Gardner, 6). Deformed infants were sometimes killed (Den Boer, 98–99, 113, 116; in other cultures, e.g., Dawson, 324), but most babies were abandoned. Even if the percentage of babies abandoned has been overestimated (see Engels 1984, skeptical of the ten percent figure for infanticide), the exposure of children was a widely known custom (Pausanius Descr. 2.26.4); abandoned babies figure commonly in legends (Diodorus Siculus Bib. Hist.. 4.64.1; 8.4.1; 19.2.3–5; Appian Rom.Hist. 1.1.2) and novels (Longus Daphn. Chl. 1.2, 5).

The high mortality rate among children may have provided one contributing factor for the abandoning of children; at the least it may have reduced the openness to emotional attachment (cf. Dixon, 113; Dupont, 221). Still, ancients were sad when their children died and did not abandon infants out of dislike for them (Golden). Often poverty required exposure or killing (Ovid Met. 9.675–84) of infants, but even a rich family might expose a child if they already had too many (Longus Daphn. Chl. 4.24; perhaps Suetonius Tiberius 47).

For economic reasons (the expense of the dowry), girls appear to have been abandoned more often than boys (P.Oxy. 744; Ovid Met. 9.675–84, 704–13), resulting in a high age for marriage for Greek males (see Marriage). Of the dozens of census declarations from Egypt, only two list more daughters than sons, and even then only one or two more (N. Lewis, 54–55; cf. Tarn, 101). Some scholars object that high rates of female infanticide would decimate the population (Engels 1980), but this ignores substantial concrete evidence (Harris). Moreover, Roman writers do suggest gradual declines in the Greek population, and in any case selective abandonment did not prevent propagation as effectively as widespread infanticide would. Rescued females often became slave prostitutes (see Adultery, Divorce)…

…Because Egyptian religion prohibited killing infants, Egyptians often rescued babies exposed by Hellenistic settlers in Egypt’s nomes; the rescue is reflected in some children’s names (e.g., Kopreus, “off the dunghill” [N. Lewis, 54]). Sometimes those who rescued such infants adopted them as children (Juvenal Sat. 6.602–9), but the children more often became slaves; the Roman government imposed heavy inheritance tax penalties on those who tried to adopt them as children (BGU 1210; N. Lewis, 58). In places like Ephesus the public bought infants cheaply, whom they then enslaved to Artemis (I. Eph. 17–19 in Trebilco, 343). Under Roman law a father who later recognized a child he had abandoned must pay the expenses of his rearing before taking him back (Quintilian Inst. Orat. 7.1.14). Those infants not rescued would have been eaten by dogs and birds (Philo Spec. Leg. 3.115).

(That last link is worth reading for a first century Jewish view on the subject.)

Ben

Check out this from JETS- http://www.biblicalstudies.org.uk/article_ephesus_baugh.html

Terry Poperszky

Ben - Excellent article...

Mark - I ran across some of that already in the cultural references, my hesitancy was that if these were the offspring of temple prostitutes, then the religious order may have had stipulations on how they were to be handled. If not, they were destined for the grave or slavery.

Guys, feel free to keep posting. But I want to thank you for the plethora of information on the subject you have given me. Now to read and digest it...

Jack Caviness

Guys, feel free to keep posting.

Mark has already provided some useful information on this subject. I just wanted to add a paragraph from the IVP NT Background Commentary Article title: Adultery/Divorce 3.2 Prostitution (An article worth reading in its entirety).

More often, prostitutes were female slaves forced to provide income to their masters by the exploitation of their bodies. Exposed female infants were often taken in and raised as slaves, normally for the sex trade; infants could be sold into prostitution (Martial Epigr. 9.6.7; 9.8). Captured female slaves might be used for the same purpose (Apuleius Met. 7.9; ’Abot R. Nat. 8A). Those slaves found to be freeborn were freed from this life; such a dramatic reversal of apparently lowborn persons being discovered to be highborn reflects a common story line (e.g., Longus Daphn.Chl. 4.36), particularly for Terence (Self-Tormentor; Eunuch; Lady of Andros; Lady of Perinthos).

It would appear that the children of prostitutes would be exposed, abandoned, or sold into sexual slavery.

Robert Pavich

Here's an extract from DNTB:

? What's this resource?

David

Dictionary Of New Testament Background = DNTB

David Ames

Re Mark Barnes reply:

There is always:

A Modest Proposal: For Preventing The Children of Poor People in Ireland From Being Aburden to Their Parents or Country, and For Making Them Beneficial to The Public

By Jonathan Swift (1729)

Robert Pavich

Dictionary Of New Testament Background = DNTB

thanks David.

Dan Sheppard

As far as I know, they all became prostituting attorneys.

Allen Browne

Check out this from JETS- http://www.biblicalstudies.org.uk/article_ephesus_baugh.html

Thanks for posting Baugh's article.

Looks like we need a book (or website) on "Modern Myths of the Ancient World"

Jack Caviness

Check out this from JETS- http://www.biblicalstudies.org.uk/article_ephesus_baugh.html

Thanks for posting Baugh's article.

Very informative article.

BTW: That resource is available in Logos as part of the Theological Journals Library.

Sam Tsutada

Thanks for the post.

>Aristophanes coined the verb korinthiazesthai, “to fornicate” (Fr. 354).

I am wondering if this reference is accurate. I am assuming that Fr. an abbreviation of Aristophanes' "Frogs", and that number 354 is the number of the line. I can't find it there…

Lew Worthington

Whew, this is an old post. I appreciate you bringing it up.

"Fr." refers to Aristophanes' "Fragments". As the Loeb website points out, while we have 11 of his intact plays, he wrote over 40 and nearly 1,000 fragments survive. I don't have the book in Logos, so I can't look it up, but I have some confidence that Liddell, et. al. didn't get this one wrong. ☺️

Lew Worthington

OK, since I can't seem to let it go, I did confirm that Aristophanes used the word. I don't know how to confirm that he actually coined it. But in archive.org, there's an old, poorly scanned concordance of Aristophanes' works. It uses a different numbering system for the lines, so I found it here:

To make this about Logos, I wish we had more Loeb. More were originally in Community Pricing, but that's gone. So some are left dangling in prepub.