Det bibliska fördömandet av homosexuellt beteende hänger ihop med att det sågs en form av avgudadyrkan. Hetero- och homosexuella prostituerade förrättade fruktbarhetsriter till sina gudars ära, och israeliterna tog gärna efter. Dawson skriver bl.a.:
”These five verses [Deut. 23:17, 1Kings 14:24, 15:12, 22:46, 2Kings 23:7] refer to the widespread practice of ritual prostitution at pagan places of worship. … Sacred prostitution was a wide spread feature of Canaanite religious practice before and after the Israelite invasion. So strong was the tradition that it became a part of the religion of Israel itself, as is clearly shown by the reference in 2 Kings 23 where King Josiah as part of his reforms of the religious life of Judah expels the prostitutes from the Temple in Jerusalem itself and destroys their living quarters. The story of Judah and Tamah in Genesis 38 shows that it was prevalent even as far back as the patriarchal period and here it seems to have been associated with the sheep shearing festival.
I believe that the Israelite rejection of cultic prostitution as a legitimate form of religious expression is one of the most significant features of their religious practice and helps explain their attitude to human sexual expression in general and to homosexual behaviour itself.
Human sexuality as a symbol of creation was a central feature of the religious thought of all the countries around Israel throughout the Old Testament period. …
We cannot be sure of the exact role of ritual prostitution. In Canaan the sacred marriage was a central feature of those religions of the area which were concerned with fertility, and the institution of sacred prostitution may have been the symbolic accompaniment of the sacred marriage. The religion of Canaan was associated entirely with the forces of nature and the cycle of the seasons. In particular the victory of Baal the god of fertility over Mot, the god of death and drought, was celebrated in the coming of the new season's rain at new year. It was then we believe that large gatherings formed at the hill shrines and the victory of Baal and his marriage with Anat, who had saved him from the clutches of Mot, was celebrated with mass re-enactments of their reunion. Modern pilgrimages appear quite tame by comparison, and it is no surprise that such popular activities should have been adopted by the Jews.
Ritual promiscuity, designed to promote increase of people, cattle or crops, was a standard feature of seasonal fertility festivals. There are echoes of this even in England where children still dance around the may-pole which is a phallic fertility symbol. Herodotus described these activities in Babylon and Cyprus, and it is described also as part of the cult of the Great Goddess, Ma, at Comana in Pontus. In Java, as also among the Fan of West Africa, the Hereros and the Gavos, men and women are expected to copulate openly in the fields at major agricultural festivals.
In Canaan, most of this activity went on at the local sanctuary or high place, which before the Exile was where most people would have worshipped. (1 Samuel 9:9-25 describes Samuel at such a local shrine and the sort of worship that would have taken place there.) Often these were places where the pagan communities had worshipped before, in the same way Christian churches in England are often built on old pagan sites. … It was at more important hill shrines such as those at Dan or Shiloh, that there would have been buildings to house permanent staff including the Ke'dheshoth.
Most of these people were women though clearly men were involved as well. We do not know for certain if male prostitutes serviced male devotees but it is generally assumed that they did. Neither can we be sure if these people were volunteers, or people who had fallen on hard times and found it their only source of income, or as is more likely, slaves sold into this service. The passage in Hosea (3:1-4) where Hosea is instructed to take a prostitute for his wife as a sign of the relationship between the faithful God and his unfaithful people, suggests that she was a slave. "So I paid fifteen pieces of silver and one hundred and fifty kilograms of barley to buy her." (v.2) We don't know either whether people were involved in this for a short time or over long periods. Hosea's denunciations of this practice (e.g. Hosea 2:2-5; 4:14) shows that it was a widespread practice in the northern kingdom of Israel well into the 8th century BC, In these passages the whoring of his wife appears to be voluntary at least after their marriage and therefore all the more reprehensible. …
Ritual prostitution was extraordinarily persistent. From the references in the Books of Kings we know that several times these activities were suppressed as in the reigns of Asa and his son Jehoshephat in the middle of the 9th century BC, about a hundred and thirty years before Hosea, but it was still necessary to make the same reforms during the reign of Josiah some two hundred and fifty years later. …
Clearly in the Israelite mind the sort of behaviour that went on at the hill shrines and elsewhere was associated with lust, contempt for others and idolatry. In the days when the Israelites were trying to establish their own identity over and against the people around them, believing themselves to be uniquely called by God to do so, they would see this ritual prostitution as devoid of the context of any proper relationship and as that idolatry which believed that a special union could be achieved through sexual intercourse with the god or goddess being worshipped. For the devout, educated Israelites with their image of a transcendent God, the Creator of the universe, this would have appeared not only shocking but absurd. Human sexuality was intended to be part of a lasting relationship so that children which might result from it could be brought up, in the words of the old marriage service, "in the fear and nurture of the Lord."
Here people could be a part of God's creative purposes. It is the emphasis on the idea that sexuality should be part of a lasting stable relationship that is a genuine Israelite insight. The Israelites would certainly not have conceived that there could be any stable relationship other than that of heterosexual marriage. …
Sacred prostitution was not restricted to Palestine. It had spread widely in the Greek and Roman worlds. The Temple of Aphrodite, goddess of love and beauty, in Corinth, was actually the centre for the worship of Astarte or Ishtar. Strabo, writing in the 1st century AD says that at one time there were a thousand prostitutes working at this shrine. It may be that this was in Paul's mind when he wrote Roman's 1:26 and Corinthians 6:9-10. Prostitution was roundly condemned by biblical writers who deplored the debasing of the pure religion of Israel with pagan rites. Rites which God hated and were, according to biblical writers, the reason why he had taken the land of Palestine away from its original inhabitants and given it to Israel. (Leviticus 18:25-26)
Homosexual behaviour was strongly associated in Jewish moral thinking with the idolatry of pagan shrines and therefore was condemned all the more strongly. There was very strong pressure on all people to get married so any homosexual behaviour would also be seen as adulterous and a danger to the married state and the future stability of the community.”
http://www.lgcm.org.uk/bible/chap4.htm
http://karlafhallstrom.blogspot.com/2006/09/hbt-bibeln-inledning-och-lnkar.html
