(Ad)Dressing Foreign Women
Ancient Exegesis of Numbers 25 and Roman Prostitution
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 10907348 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Atar Livneh (0000-0001-8126-657X, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev Beer-Sheva Israel, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2021 |
| Volume | 53 |
| Issue | 2 |
| Pages | 198-228 |
| Publication date | 2021-07-05 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | No |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Journal for the Study of Judaism (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0047-2212 • E-ISSN: 1570-0631 |
| Publisher | Walter de Gruyter GmbH (PUBLISHER • DE) |
| DOI | 10.1163/15700631-bja10038 |
| OpenAlex | W3189613078 |
| Language | EN |
| References cited | 51 |
Does the infinitive לזנות in Num 25:1 suggest that the foreign women were prostitutes? Analyzing four Roman-period Jewish sources—Biblical Antiquities 18:13–14; Philo, Moses 1.294–304 and Virtues 34–50; and Sifre Numbers 131—this article demonstrates that the public exposure of naked bodies in LAB reflects Roman norms relating to prostitutes. Philo even more explicitly depicts the women as brothel prostitutes, projecting the Roman repugnance towards upper-class men openly entering such establishments onto the Israelites and presenting them as immoral by dressing them in the elaborate costume typically worn by courtesans in Greek sources. Sifre Numbers 131 is a satirical variation on the theme, the Israelites being tricked into entering the prostitute’s cubicle due to their ignorance of the (male elite Roman) stereotyping of female vendor markets as prostitutes and old women as bawds
Aesthetics · Ancient history · Archaeology · Art · Biblical studies · Eleventh · Elite · Exegesis · Hebrew Bible · Israelites · Judaism · Literature · Period (music · Political science · Biblical Studies and Interpretation · Colonialism, slavery, and trade · History · Law · Sex work and related issues
Sex or symbol
Menander's courtesans and the Greek comic tradition
Dress in Mediterranean Antiquity
Looking at Lovemaking
Bathing in Public in the Roman World
Fashion, Culture, and Identity
Problems of Dostoevsky's Poetics
Rabelais and his world
The Clothed Body in the Ancient World
Women in Ancient Societies
Prostitutes and Matrons in the Roman World
Continuity and Change in Hellenistic Jewish Exegesis and in Early Rabbinic Literature
Remember Amalek!”” Vengeance, Zealotry, and Group Destruction in the Bible According to Philo, Pseudo-Philo, and Josephus
History and Romance in Graeco-Oriental Literature
A Commentary on Pseudo-Philo's Liber Antiquitatum Biblicarum, with Latin Text and English Translation
Neither Gold nor Braided Hair (1 Timothy 2.9; 1 Peter 3.3)
Valerius Maximus
The Garden of Priapus
Anus
The Salvation of the Flesh in Tertullian of Carthage
Being Greek under Rome
Off with Her Head
Bilhah the Temptress
Hair and the Artifice of Roman Female Adornment
In the Wake of the Goddesses
A Talmudic Proverb in Petronius
Some Anti-Traditional Laws of Josephus
The Captive Woman
The Biblical Antiquities of Philo
| Citation velocity | historical |
|---|---|
| Highly cited | No |