temple prostitute

plural temple prostitutes · alternative temple-prostitute

1. historicalbiblicalA prostitute who is employed at a temple.

   In the Madras Presidency alone there are about 12,000 of these temple prostitutes.

   1909, Iwan Bloch, The Sexual Life of Our Time in Its Relations to Modern Civilization, page 106

   2 more examples

   As to his daughters, this Hindu will strangle one at birth, train a second for marriage, and consecrate a third to the enrichment of his religion as a temple prostitute, thinking the last act even more meritorious than the marriage and the first quite as much within his "liberty."

   1895, Wilbur Fisk Crafts, Practical Christian Sociology, page 260

   Her supposed role as a temple prostitute has been thought to provide proof that her Israelite counterpart, the qědēšâ, likewise had a sexual function in the cult.

   2000, Carol Meyers, Ross Shepard Kraemer, Toni Craven, Women in Scripture, A Dictionary of Named and Unnamed Women in the Hebrew Bible, the Apocryphal/Deuterocanonical Books and the New Testament

2. historicalbiblicalAn individual, usually a woman, engaged in sexual acts as part of religious worship.