Hannah’s Reviews > Mary Wept Over the Feet of Jesus: Prostitution and Religious Obedience in the Bible > Status Update

“The roots of our culture’s whorephobia are in the Bible. The New Testament writer Paul vigorously disapproved of prostitution, and this established whorephobia as THE Christian position on the subject. The result is that sex-for-pay between consenting adults is a criminal offense in most places on the globe… The secular reasoning has been influenced by Christianity.”

“Some Christians might not consider me to be a Christian, and maybe you’d agree with them. Whether I am one or not, I’m certainly religious. A person who has faith in secular materialism believes that consciousness developed out of matter, while those of us who are religious would say that matter developed out of consciousness.”

“On occasion, my adventures took me into what many people might call the ‘sexual underground,’ a place of… prostitution, heavy alcohol use, and other socially condemned practices. But I learned much in that world. I was given to see that what Jesus said about many prostitutes and sinners entering the kingdom of heaven before the righteous is as true today as it was when Jesus spoke.”
- Jim Marion

“The Yahwist religion was anti-woman, anti-sex, and anti-prostitution. Of course female prostitutes in Israel and Judah preferred the pro-woman, pro-sex, and pro-prostitution Goddess religion. Associating prostitution and idolatry together in the prostitution metaphor made sense because real-life prostitutes were associated with idolatry.”

“According to the book of HOSEA, the prophet Hosea married a prostitute named Gomer…

‘The men of Israel themselves consort with harlots and sacrifice with shrine-prostitutes.’ [HOSEA 4:14]

This seems to be a straightforward report of where men were finding prostitutes: at temples devoted to deities other than Yahweh… Temples devoted to deities other than Yahweh were largely funded by prostitutes.”

“I think Schaberg was partially right: The anointer represented spiritual authority in some way… all of the gospel writers downplay the spiritual authority of the anointer. I think all four of the canonical gospel writers knew that a prostitution named Mary had the spiritual authority to anoint Jesus as a christ, and all four of them were embarrassed about this…”

“All four of the canonical gospels contain a scene in which Jesus is anointed by a woman. The words ‘messiah’ and ‘christ’ both mean ‘anointed one’, so the anointing of Jesus is important…
That’s a point worth emphasizing: a prostitution made Jesus a Christ.”

“‘The gospel [of Luke] was clearly written by a person who could think about the community around Jesus from both the male and the female point of view.’ [Cooper]

Randel Helms is convinced that Luke was a woman:

‘In Luke, women are the first to believe and preach the resurrection faith. Only Luke stresses the unique depth of female faith and understanding.’ [Helms]”

“Again, the father in the parable [of the prodigal son] represents how our assumptions affect how we experience God. The older som obeys the father (symbolically, the son follows the Torah) and thinks that it should guarantee the love of his father (and a close relationship with God) and is resentful when it doesn’t. The younger son ignores ‘the rules’ and ends up being embraced by the father.”

“God is loving, but to experience God’s love you have to be receptive to it. The clue to why the master treats the slave-who-hid-the-talent harshly is that slave’s preconception of the master: the slave believes the master is harsh, and that the master ‘reaps what he doesn’t sow’. The master symbolizes, not how God really is, but how our preconceptions shape our experience of God.”