temple prostitution
- Thread starter tleilaxu
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buzz
Adventurer
Re: Re: Coming in late
I suppose this all depends on whose history you subscribe to. IMHO, this is a very biased viewpoint: biased by the gender and faith of the people writing the history, biased by our distance from the events, and biased by a lack of concrete evidence.
And I maintain that "prostitute" has too many other connotations that do not accurately reflect the subject it's being applied to in this discussion. The whole basis of this thread is misguided.
Wayside said:
I suppose this all depends on whose history you subscribe to. IMHO, this is a very biased viewpoint: biased by the gender and faith of the people writing the history, biased by our distance from the events, and biased by a lack of concrete evidence.
And I maintain that "prostitute" has too many other connotations that do not accurately reflect the subject it's being applied to in this discussion. The whole basis of this thread is misguided.
buzz
Adventurer
mythago said:
I'm no historian, so as much as I would like to counter this assertion, I cannot. Nonetheless, even if Stone's work is "suspect," I found it worth reading simply for challenging conventional notions of ancient goddess-based religions.
Ergo, why I bristle when I read posts debating how much "temple prostitutes" charged to "get down" with patrons.
To me, it reads too much like: "I'm going to have a Hebrew-based faith in my game. How big should the horns they cover with their hats be?"
Dr. Strangemonkey
First Post
buzz said:
I'm no historian, so as much as I would like to counter this assertion, I cannot. Nonetheless, even if Stone's work is "suspect," I found it worth reading simply for challenging conventional notions of ancient goddess-based religions.
Ergo, why I bristle when I read posts debating how much "temple prostitutes" charged to "get down" with patrons.
I have my own historical point of view on this, but I do see your point.
To which I have two additions:
First, one of the things I find interesting about Sacred prostitution is that it doesn't just represent an attempt to integrate the sexual into the realm of the sacred, but also the monetary. Both of these elements of human intercourse are looked upon as profoundly irreligious now, but it is very apparent in the case of temple prostitution that this was not always the case.
From that perspective what I see is not simply the idea of sex as a sacrament, but also commerce. To a certain extent that is also what the Greek and Hebrew chroniclers see and dissaprove of.
To put it in a very skewed and highly out of context light, Christ hangs out with prostitutes, he flogs money-changers from the temple. The idea of commerce being sacred and good particularly where associated with sexuality is far more alien to our culture than the idea of sexuality being sacred and good.
Second, most of the religions I have been referring to are practicing not in the context of ancient goddess religions, but in the context of highly patriarchal mixtures of polytheistic gods and goddesses with very organized religious institutions.
Even given the possibilities of goddess cultures, the context I am thinking of this thread in is precisely not that. And I make that exception because I respect the feelings and positions of those who have developed the concept of ancient goddess cultures as an alternitave to the 'masculine' models of much of the religion we are familiar with. The only other reason is because I didn't think the thread was calling for it.
This isn't at all a flame, I'm just pointing out that we can have the conversation about temple prostitution and we can have the conversation about ancient goddess religions without running into each other.
In fact there is a lot of common ground, after rereading Herodotus I can see now how Temple Prostitution might fit into his theory on the increasing masculinazation of classical paganism corrupting both the remaining goddess cults and much of Christianity.
Re: Re: Re: Coming in late
Sure it does (have other connotations). No word fits only one situation. That's how language is designed. But we are only using certain of its meanings here. You do this multiple times in your post without even realizing it, but we don't call you misguided.
Sorry Humpty Dumpty but you are not the master of words you'd like to be.
It has nothing to do with whose version of history you 'subscribe' to (I'm trained in Classics as well as Enlglish so when it comes to the ancient world my "version" tends to be absolutely the most rigorously investigated and easily the most accurate version availible, refreshingly lacking in judgments and prejudice, thanks).
Why you comment on the gender and religion of historians I have no idea. The history I read, at least, isn't to be found at your local Borders. In fact, the strains of feminism have become so pervasive in cultural criticism that most of the writing on the ancient world for at least the last decade has been tempered a great deal by the sensitivity you fail to find elsewhere in this thread.
buzz said:
Sure it does (have other connotations). No word fits only one situation. That's how language is designed. But we are only using certain of its meanings here. You do this multiple times in your post without even realizing it, but we don't call you misguided.
Sorry Humpty Dumpty but you are not the master of words you'd like to be.
It has nothing to do with whose version of history you 'subscribe' to (I'm trained in Classics as well as Enlglish so when it comes to the ancient world my "version" tends to be absolutely the most rigorously investigated and easily the most accurate version availible, refreshingly lacking in judgments and prejudice, thanks).
Why you comment on the gender and religion of historians I have no idea. The history I read, at least, isn't to be found at your local Borders. In fact, the strains of feminism have become so pervasive in cultural criticism that most of the writing on the ancient world for at least the last decade has been tempered a great deal by the sensitivity you fail to find elsewhere in this thread.
Snoweel
First Post
buzz said:
Ergo, why I bristle when I read posts debating how much "temple prostitutes" charged to "get down" with patrons.
As much as I hate to rankle my fellow users, the above comment is just petty.
You admit that morality from culture to culture is relative, but then deny anybody the right to conform to the morality of their culture.
WTF?!?!? How are the PC's in your campaign supposed to react????
While I concede that morality is a construct, any two individuals who intend to establish a relationship must agree on a protocol of values or they may as well be communicating in different languages.
So if those who spent their formative years growing up in the Judeo-Christian world decide that it's easier (and just as valid) to define their heroes and villains by the morality that is ingrained into their subconscious, why should you 'bristle'?
Just because you're 'enlightened' enough to have embraced another morality (whereby, like all moralities, you arbitrarily allocate 'horns' to villains of your own choosing) doesn't mean that anbody else's villains are more or less valid than your own.
D&D is about 'good guys' fighting 'bad guys'. Nobody is the sole arbiter of who wears those hats.
Not even you.
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