prostitution

125:1.2But most of all was his sense of pro­pri­ety out­raged by the sight of the frivolous cour­te­sans parad­ing about within this precinct of the tem­ple, just such painted women as he had so re­cently seen when on a visit to Sep­pho­ris. This pro­fa­na­tion of the tem­ple fully aroused all his youth­ful in­dig­na­tion, and he did not hes­i­tate to ex­press him­self freely to Joseph.

147:5.3On this par­tic­u­lar oc­ca­sion at Si­mon’s house, among those who came in off the street was a woman of un­sa­vory rep­u­ta­tion who had re­cently be­come a be­liever in the good news of the gospel of the king­dom. This woman was well known through­out all Je­ru­sa­lem as the for­mer keeper of one of the so-called high-class broth­els lo­cated hard by the tem­ple court of the gen­tiles. She had, on ac­cept­ing the teach­ings of Je­sus, closed up her ne­far­i­ous place of busi­ness and had in­duced the ma­jor­ity of the women as­so­ci­ated with her to ac­cept the gospel and change their mode of liv­ing; not­with­stand­ing this, she was still held in great dis­dain by the Phar­isees and was com­pelled to wear her hair down—the badge of har­lotry. This un­named woman had brought with her a large flask of per­fumed anoint­ing lo­tion and, stand­ing be­hind Je­sus as he re­clined at meat, be­gan to anoint his feet while she also wet his feet with her tears of grat­i­tude, wip­ing them with the hair of her head. And when she had fin­ished this anoint­ing, she con­tin­ued weep­ing and kiss­ing his feet.

150:2.2It was at Mag­dala that the women first demon­strated their use­ful­ness and vin­di­cated the wis­dom of their choos­ing. An­drew had im­posed rather strict rules upon his as­so­ciates about do­ing per­sonal work with women, es­pe­cially with those of ques­tion­able char­ac­ter. When the party en­tered Mag­dala, these ten women evan­ge­lists were free to en­ter the evil re­sorts and preach the glad tid­ings di­rectly to all their in­mates. And when vis­it­ing the sick, these women were able to draw very close in their min­istry to their af­flicted sis­ters. As the re­sult of the min­istry of these ten women (af­ter­ward known as the twelve women) at this place, Mary Mag­da­lene was won for the king­dom. Through a suc­ces­sion of mis­for­tunes and in con­se­quence of the at­ti­tude of rep­u­ta­ble so­ci­ety to­ward women who com­mit such er­rors of judg­ment, this woman had found her­self in one of the ne­far­i­ous re­sorts of Mag­dala. It was Martha and Rachel who made plain to Mary that the doors of the king­dom were open to even such as she. Mary be­lieved the good news and was bap­tized by Pe­ter the next day.

162:3.4This woman, once comely, was the wife of an in­fe­rior cit­i­zen of Naz­a­reth, a man who had been a trou­ble­maker for Je­sus through­out his youth­ful days. The man, hav­ing mar­ried this woman, did most shame­fully force her to earn their liv­ing by mak­ing com­merce of her body. He had come up to the feast at Je­ru­sa­lem that his wife might thus pros­ti­tute her phys­i­cal charms for fi­nan­cial gain. He had en­tered into a bar­gain with the hire­lings of the Jew­ish rulers thus to be­tray his own wife in her com­mer­cial­ized vice. And so they came with the woman and her com­pan­ion in trans­gres­sion for the pur­pose of en­snar­ing Je­sus into mak­ing some state­ment which could be used against him in case of his ar­rest.

173:3.2And the peo­ple spoke with one ac­cord, say­ing, “The first son.” And then said Je­sus: “Even so; and now do I de­clare that the pub­li­cans and har­lots, even though they ap­pear to refuse the call to re­pen­tance, shall see the er­ror of their way and go on into the king­dom of God be­fore you, who make great pre­ten­sions of serv­ing the Fa­ther in heaven while you refuse to do the works of the Fa­ther. It was not you, the Phar­isees and scribes, who be­lieved John, but rather the pub­li­cans and sin­ners; nei­ther do you be­lieve my teach­ing, but the com­mon peo­ple hear my words gladly.”

• almost unknown among ancient tribes

69:9.1While prim­i­tive so­ci­ety was vir­tu­ally com­mu­nal, prim­i­tive man did not ad­here to the mod­ern doc­trines of com­mu­nism. The com­mu­nism of these early times was not a mere the­ory or so­cial doc­trine; it was a sim­ple and prac­ti­cal au­to­matic ad­just­ment. Com­mu­nism pre­vented pau­perism and want; beg­ging and pros­ti­tu­tion were al­most un­known among these an­cient tribes.

• early men’s clubs paid for women from other tribes

70:7.9Com­mer­cial­ized pros­ti­tu­tion be­gan when these men’s clubs paid money for the use of women from other tribes. But the ear­lier groups were re­mark­ably free from sex lax­ity.

• daughter of priest turning to p. burned alive

70:10.14Pun­ish­ment by burn­ing alive was once a com­mon prac­tice. It was rec­og­nized by many an­cient rulers, in­clud­ing Ham­murabi and Moses, the lat­ter di­rect­ing that many crimes, par­tic­u­larly those of a grave sex na­ture, should be pun­ished by burn­ing at the stake. If “the daugh­ter of a priest” or other lead­ing cit­i­zen turned to pub­lic pros­ti­tu­tion, it was the He­brew cus­tom to “burn her with fire.”

• almost unknown among ancient tribes

82:2.2Among the early races there was lit­tle or no reg­u­la­tion of the re­la­tions of the sexes. Be­cause of this sex li­cense, no pros­ti­tu­tion ex­isted. To­day, the Pyg­mies and other back­ward groups have no mar­riage in­sti­tu­tion; a study of these peo­ples re­veals the sim­ple mat­ing cus­toms fol­lowed by prim­i­tive races. But all an­cient peo­ples should al­ways be stud­ied and judged in the light of the moral stan­dards of the mores of their own times.

• entered into by women found by grooms’ mothers not to be virgins

82:4.5Since the chastity taboo had its ori­gin as a phase of the prop­erty mores, it ap­plied at first to mar­ried women but not to un­mar­ried girls. In later years, chastity was more de­manded by the fa­ther than by the suitor; a vir­gin was a com­mer­cial as­set to the fa­ther—she brought a higher price. As chastity came more into de­mand, it was the prac­tice to pay the fa­ther a bride fee in rec­og­ni­tion of the ser­vice of prop­erly rear­ing a chaste bride for the hus­band-to-be. When once started, this idea of fe­male chastity took such hold on the races that it be­came the prac­tice lit­er­ally to cage up girls, ac­tu­ally to im­prison them for years, in or­der to as­sure their vir­gin­ity. And so the more re­cent stan­dards and vir­gin­ity tests au­to­mat­i­cally gave ori­gin to the pro­fes­sional pros­ti­tute classes; they were the re­jected brides, those women who were found by the grooms’ moth­ers not to be vir­gins.

• temple prostitution › considered sure guard against calamity

87:6.15This doc­trine also ex­plains many re­li­gious-rit­ual re­ver­sions of a sex na­ture, such as tem­ple pros­ti­tu­tion. These re­ver­sions to prim­i­tive cus­toms were con­sid­ered sure guards against many calami­ties. And with these sim­ple-minded peo­ples all such per­for­mances were en­tirely free from what mod­ern man would term promis­cu­ity.

• temple prostitution › otherwise-sacrificed maidens earned redemption money from

89:7.4Many of the pe­cu­liar as­so­ci­a­tions of sex lax­ity with prim­i­tive wor­ship had their ori­gin in con­nec­tion with hu­man sac­ri­fice. In olden times, if a woman met head-hunters, she could re­deem her life by sex­ual sur­ren­der. Later, a maiden con­se­crated to the gods as a sac­ri­fice might elect to re­deem her life by ded­i­cat­ing her body for life to the sa­cred sex ser­vice of the tem­ple; in this way she could earn her re­demp­tion money. The an­cients re­garded it as highly el­e­vat­ing to have sex re­la­tions with a woman thus en­gaged in ran­som­ing her life. It was a re­li­gious cer­e­mony to con­sort with these sa­cred maid­ens, and in ad­di­tion, this whole rit­ual af­forded an ac­cept­able ex­cuse for com­mon­place sex­ual grat­i­fi­ca­tion. This was a sub­tle species of self-de­cep­tion which both the maid­ens and their con­sorts de­lighted to prac­tice upon them­selves. The mores al­ways drag be­hind in the evo­lu­tion­ary ad­vance of civ­i­liza­tion, thus pro­vid­ing sanc­tion for the ear­lier and more sav­age­like sex prac­tices of the evolv­ing races.

89:7.5Tem­ple har­lotry even­tu­ally spread through­out south­ern Eu­rope and Asia. The money earned by the tem­ple pros­ti­tutes was held sa­cred among all peo­ples—a high gift to pre­sent to the gods. The high­est types of women thronged the tem­ple sex marts and de­voted their earn­ings to all kinds of sa­cred ser­vices and works of pub­lic good. Many of the bet­ter classes of women col­lected their dowries by tem­po­rary sex ser­vice in the tem­ples, and most men pre­ferred to have such women for wives.

• temple prostitution › modification of human sacrifice

89:8.1Sac­ri­fi­cial re­demp­tion and tem­ple pros­ti­tu­tion were in re­al­ity mod­i­fi­ca­tions of hu­man sac­ri­fice. Next came the mock sac­ri­fice of daugh­ters. This cer­e­mony con­sisted in blood­let­ting, with ded­i­ca­tion to life­long vir­gin­ity, and was a moral re­ac­tion to the older tem­ple har­lotry. In more re­cent times vir­gins ded­i­cated them­selves to the ser­vice of tend­ing the sa­cred tem­ple fires.

• temple prostitution › Salem missionaries failed to end

95:1.6The early prog­ress of the Mel­chiz­e­dek teach­ing was highly grat­i­fy­ing un­til Na­bo­dad, the leader of the school at Kish, de­cided to make a con­certed at­tack upon the preva­lent prac­tices of tem­ple har­lotry. But the Salem mis­sion­ar­ies failed in their ef­fort to bring about this so­cial re­form, and in the wreck of this fail­ure all their more im­por­tant spir­i­tual and philo­sophic teach­ings went down in de­feat.

133:3.6When in Rome, Ga­nid ob­served that Je­sus re­fused to ac­com­pany them to the pub­lic baths. Sev­eral times af­ter­ward the young man sought to in­duce Je­sus fur­ther to ex­press him­self in re­gard to the re­la­tions of the sexes. Though he would an­swer the lad’s ques­tions, he never seemed dis­posed to dis­cuss these sub­jects at great length. One evening as they strolled about Corinth out near where the wall of the citadel ran down to the sea, they were ac­costed by two pub­lic women. Ga­nid had im­bibed the idea, and rightly, that Je­sus was a man of high ide­als, and that he ab­horred ev­ery­thing which par­took of un­clean­ness or sa­vored of evil; ac­cord­ingly he spoke sharply to these women and rudely mo­tioned them away. When Je­sus saw this, he said to Ga­nid: “You mean well, but you should not pre­sume thus to speak to the chil­dren of God, even though they chance to be his erring chil­dren. Who are we that we should sit in judg­ment on these women? Do you hap­pen to know all of the cir­cum­stances which led them to re­sort to such meth­ods of ob­tain­ing a liveli­hood? Stop here with me while we talk about these mat­ters.” The cour­te­sans were as­ton­ished at what he said even more than was Ga­nid.

133:3.7As they stood there in the moon­light, Je­sus went on to say: “There lives within ev­ery hu­man mind a di­vine spirit, the gift of the Fa­ther in heaven. This good spirit ever strives to lead us to God, to help us to find God and to know God; but also within mor­tals there are many nat­u­ral phys­i­cal ten­den­cies which the Cre­ator put there to serve the well-be­ing of the in­di­vid­ual and the race. Now, of­ten­times, men and women be­come con­fused in their ef­forts to un­der­stand them­selves and to grap­ple with the man­i­fold dif­fi­cul­ties of mak­ing a liv­ing in a world so largely dom­i­nated by self­ish­ness and sin. I per­ceive, Ga­nid, that nei­ther of these women is will­fully wicked. I can tell by their faces that they have ex­pe­ri­enced much sor­row; they have suf­fered much at the hands of an ap­par­ently cruel fate; they have not in­ten­tion­ally cho­sen this sort of life; they have, in dis­cour­age­ment bor­der­ing on de­spair, sur­ren­dered to the pres­sure of the hour and ac­cepted this dis­taste­ful means of ob­tain­ing a liveli­hood as the best way out of a sit­u­a­tion that to them ap­peared hope­less. Ga­nid, some peo­ple are re­ally wicked at heart; they de­lib­er­ately choose to do mean things, but, tell me, as you look into these now tear-stained faces, do you see any­thing bad or wicked?” And as Je­sus paused for his re­ply, Ga­nid’s voice choked up as he stam­mered out his an­swer: “No, Teacher, I do not. And I apol­o­gize for my rude­ness to them—I crave their for­give­ness.” Then said Je­sus: “And I be­speak for them that they have for­given you as I speak for my Fa­ther in heaven that he has for­given them. Now all of you come with me to a friend’s house where we will seek re­fresh­ment and plan for the new and bet­ter life ahead.” Up to this time the amazed women had not ut­tered a word; they looked at each other and silently fol­lowed as the men led the way.

133:3.8Imag­ine the sur­prise of Jus­tus’ wife when, at this late hour, Je­sus ap­peared with Ga­nid and these two strangers, say­ing: “You will for­give us for com­ing at this hour, but Ga­nid and I de­sire a bite to eat, and we would share it with these our new-found friends, who are also in need of nour­ish­ment; and be­sides all this, we come to you with the thought that you will be in­ter­ested in coun­sel­ing with us as to the best way to help these women get a new start in life. They can tell you their story, but I sur­mise they have had much trou­ble, and their very pres­ence here in your house tes­ti­fies how earnestly they crave to know good peo­ple, and how will­ingly they will em­brace the op­por­tu­nity to show all the world—and even the an­gels of heaven—what brave and no­ble women they can be­come.”

133:3.9When Martha, Jus­tus’ wife, had spread the food on the ta­ble, Je­sus, tak­ing un­ex­pected leave of them, said: “As it is get­ting late, and since the young man’s fa­ther will be await­ing us, we pray to be ex­cused while we leave you here to­gether—three women—the beloved chil­dren of the Most High. And I will pray for your spir­i­tual guid­ance while you make plans for a new and bet­ter life on earth and eter­nal life in the great be­yond.”

133:3.10Thus did Je­sus and Ga­nid take leave of the women. So far the two cour­te­sans had said noth­ing; like­wise was Ga­nid speech­less. And for a few mo­ments so was Martha, but pres­ently she rose to the oc­ca­sion and did ev­ery­thing for these strangers that Je­sus had hoped for. The el­der of these two women died a short time there­after, with bright hopes of eter­nal sur­vival, and the younger woman worked at Jus­tus’ place of busi­ness and later be­came a life­long mem­ber of the first Chris­tian church in Corinth.

132:4.5He talked with a Ro­man sen­a­tor on pol­i­tics and states­man­ship, and this one con­tact with Je­sus made such an im­pres­sion on this leg­is­la­tor that he spent the rest of his life vainly try­ing to in­duce his col­leagues to change the course of the rul­ing pol­icy from the idea of the gov­ern­ment sup­port­ing and feed­ing the peo­ple to that of the peo­ple sup­port­ing the gov­ern­ment. Je­sus spent one evening with a wealthy slave­holder, talked about man as a son of God, and the next day this man, Claudius, gave free­dom to one hun­dred and sev­en­teen slaves. He vis­ited at din­ner with a Greek physi­cian, telling him that his pa­tients had minds and souls as well as bod­ies, and thus led this able doc­tor to at­tempt a more far-reach­ing min­istry to his fel­low men. He talked with all sorts of peo­ple in ev­ery walk of life. The only place in Rome he did not visit was the pub­lic baths. He re­fused to ac­com­pany his friends to the baths be­cause of the sex promis­cu­ity which there pre­vailed.

143:5.4Nalda did not know how to take Je­sus’ will­ing­ness to talk with her. She be­held in the Mas­ter’s face the coun­te­nance of an up­right and holy man, but she mis­took friend­li­ness for com­mon­place fa­mil­iar­ity, and she mis­in­ter­preted his fig­ure of speech as a form of mak­ing ad­vances to her. And be­ing a woman of lax morals, she was minded openly to be­come flir­ta­tious, when Je­sus, look­ing straight into her eyes, with a com­mand­ing voice said, “Woman, go get your hus­band and bring him hither.” This com­mand brought Nalda to her senses. She saw that she had mis­judged the Mas­ter’s kind­ness; she per­ceived that she had mis­con­strued his man­ner of speech. She was fright­ened; she be­gan to re­al­ize that she stood in the pres­ence of an un­usual per­son, and grop­ing about in her mind for a suit­able re­ply, in great con­fu­sion, she said, “But, Sir, I can­not call my hus­band, for I have no hus­band.” Then said Je­sus: “You have spo­ken the truth, for, while you may have once had a hus­band, he with whom you are now liv­ing is not your hus­band. Bet­ter it would be if you would cease to tri­fle with my words and seek for the liv­ing wa­ter which I have this day of­fered you.”

143:5.5By this time Nalda was sobered, and her bet­ter self was awak­ened. She was not an im­moral woman wholly by choice. She had been ruth­lessly and un­justly cast aside by her hus­band and in dire straits had con­sented to live with a cer­tain Greek as his wife, but with­out mar­riage. Nalda now felt greatly ashamed that she had so un­think­ingly spo­ken to Je­sus, and she most pen­i­tently ad­dressed the Mas­ter, say­ing: “My Lord, I re­pent of my man­ner of speak­ing to you, for I per­ceive that you are a holy man or maybe a prophet.” And she was just about to seek di­rect and per­sonal help from the Mas­ter when she did what so many have done be­fore and since—dodged the is­sue of per­sonal sal­va­tion by turn­ing to the dis­cus­sion of the­ol­ogy and phi­los­o­phy. She quickly turned the con­ver­sa­tion from her own needs to a the­o­log­i­cal con­tro­versy. Point­ing over to Mount Ger­izim, she con­tin­ued: “Our fa­thers wor­shiped on this moun­tain, and yet you would say that in Je­ru­sa­lem is the place where men ought to wor­ship; which, then, is the right place to wor­ship God?”

143:5.13Nalda told John that Je­sus had told her “all I ever did.” John many times wanted to ask Je­sus about this visit with Nalda, but he never did. Je­sus told her only one thing about her­self, but his look into her eyes and the man­ner of his deal­ing with her had so brought all of her check­ered life in panoramic re­view be­fore her mind in a mo­ment of time that she as­so­ci­ated all of this self-rev­e­la­tion of her past life with the look and the word of the Mas­ter. Je­sus never told her she had had five hus­bands. She had lived with four dif­fer­ent men since her hus­band cast her aside, and this, with all her past, came up so vividly in her mind at the mo­ment when she re­al­ized Je­sus was a man of God that she sub­se­quently re­peated to John that Je­sus had re­ally told her all about her­self.

169:1.12“But when the older brother heard this, he was so hurt and an­gry he would not go into the house. When his fa­ther heard of his re­sent­ment of the wel­come of his younger brother, he went out to en­treat him. But the older son would not yield to his fa­ther’s per­sua­sion. He an­swered his fa­ther, say­ing: ‘Here these many years have I served you, never trans­gress­ing the least of your com­mands, and yet you never gave me even a kid that I might make merry with my friends. I have re­mained here to care for you all these years, and you never made re­joic­ing over my faith­ful ser­vice, but when this your son re­turns, hav­ing squan­dered your sub­stance with har­lots, you make haste to kill the fat­ted calf and make merry over him.’

69:5.107. Sex urge—the de­sire to buy one or more wives. Man’s first form of trad­ing was woman ex­change; it long pre­ceded horse trad­ing. But never did the barter in sex slaves ad­vance so­ci­ety; such traf­fic was and is a racial dis­grace, for at one and the same time it hin­dered the de­vel­op­ment of fam­ily life and pol­luted the bi­o­logic fit­ness of su­pe­rior peo­ples.