From: andronicus451@gmail.com   
      
   The story of the sanctified (holy) prostitution is present already in the   
   eldest known preserved Summerian tablet - the Epic of Gilgamesh.   
   It is believed to be 5,000 to 6,000 years old, so it is by right called the   
   eldest profession.   
      
   Prostitution seems to start around the first human settlements and the   
   first agrarian culture of the Summerian people.   
      
   What does the Epic say? When we compare it to the Biblical story of Nimrod,   
   the first mighty man who exalted himself as a ruler over the others in the   
   history after the great Deluge ... Though there were obvious evils in the old   
   world, or it wouldn't end in the first place, the evidence of Nimrod who   
   compelled the entire human race to build him a tower to Heaven was the   
   sign that the Flood did not stop the evil in the blood of humans.   
      
   God Creator intervened only to prevent the first totalitarian State: His   
   benign and non-violent solution mixed the languages of the people.   
   Now they could no longer understand each other, and they became   
   disinterested in the tower to Heaven, so they spread across the Earth.   
      
   But Nimrod appears to have had many wives, which would be expected   
   from a mighty ruler before monogamy was mandated by the Church,   
   yet this is a speculation. No written record in the Scriptures proves this.   
      
   Nimrod's main wife and mother was believed to be Semiramis.   
   Eventually, Semiramis became to be worshipped as a goddess.   
   Nimrod's deification goes different way - he died, underwent rebirth   
   and was born as a child of his wife Semiramis, called Tammuz.   
   (During the Babylonian exile, Hebrews adopted the name of the Babylonian   
   son of god as the name of one of their months. So certain bad events   
   happened to them in the month of Tammuz, which they believed in   
   their rabinic teaching to be a spell or destiny.)   
      
   So, Semiramis, who is connected with the holy and sanctified prostitution   
   cult that later became the Temple of Love dedicated to Ishtar (Ashtoreth   
   in the Old Testament, when it was adopted as worship by Solomon's   
   pagan wives, which he allegedly approved in his old age.)   
      
   This Semiramis became the first mother of Son of God, Tammuz, who   
   underwent the death-rebirth cycle. This Mother and Child figure is later   
   adopted throughout heathen religions. In fact, heathen is a better word,   
   because ritual cults involved carefully ordained ritual washing in   
   "water of purification" , which had some lye or a firefirm of soap,   
   after which the sanctified prostitute (kadesh in Hebrew) became clean,   
   pure and innocent again.   
      
   They also started to nurture art and culture just like later Geishas   
   in Japan or the Venetian courtesans.   
      
   The image and worship of the Mother of God became adopted through   
   this early Babylonian cult.   
      
   Second independent confirmation of this cult is from the very Epic of   
   Gilgamesh, where Gilgamesh and the Temple priestesses were offended   
   that wild Enkidu rejected their services, so they made a ploy to help   
   Gilgamesh subue him. Enkidu was not at all interested in politics, but in   
   animals and nature, but he could not suffer a man that wasn't subjected   
   to him as a ruler even if no threat to his throne. Eventually, the cult of   
   holy prostitution helped Gilgamesh finding Enkidu's weakness, after   
   which the king "overcame Enkidu like one overcomes a woman", after   
   which they became friends. Today this is commonly understood as an act   
   of homosexuality, but in Summerian it might have meant that Enkindu's   
   strength was lost like maybe Samson's (and a prostitute had a role in   
   discovering Samson's weakness, too.)   
      
   The cult of Ishtar was based that she was the first woman with such a divine   
   impact on men that she reached immortality through this cult of sexual   
   services and was ascended to heaven - so really Ishtar was the first   
   "Queen of Heaven".   
      
   In one version of the epic, she offered Gilgamesh marriage with lust   
   offers which he rejected with insults that prompt her to seek revenge   
   as rejected woman (an archetype seen in Genesis 39 when Joseph was   
   accused exactly of what he escaped from).   
      
   Ishtar in revenge sabotaged Gilgamesh's quest to find immortality.   
      
   Later, Ishtar is married to Son of God Tammuz, her own brother,   
   and she descends to the Underworld to save him from death, walking   
   through the nine gates.   
      
   At each gate, she has to leave a part of her apparel, so by the time   
   she gets to save the son of God she is completely naked. This prompts him   
   to mock her, at which she forgets that she came to save him and she curses   
   him, which is the probable reason for his next cycle of death and rebirth.   
      
   Throughout the religions of the nations, from that earliest point on, came   
   the notion that Father god marries a mortal woman, who gives birth to a   
   son of god, and she is granted immortality and becomes the Queen of   
   Heaven.   
      
   But eventually, we can discern the tree by its fruits.   
      
   The cult of Ishtar (Ashtoreth or Astarte) is the eldest known cult   
   in the recorded history, and she is the eldest worshipped deity   
   (of love and war).   
      
   But the idea where a prostitute or an immoral woman, cheating, adulterous   
   woman gets power by courting powerful men remained prevalent in society.   
   One of the most striking examples is that of Jezebel, wife of Israel's king   
   Ahab. The other example is Herodias and her daughter Salome who   
   cause the death of john the Baptist for he criticised against her marriage   
   with her former husband's brother. However, she thought that she was   
   above the Law of Moses due to her power and influence. Indeed, she   
   demonstrated the power to plot and successfully cause the holy   
   prophet's death.   
      
   Which then might impose a question: if John the Baptist was a prophet   
   of the Almighty God, why hasn't Almighty saved him like He saved Elijah?   
   But we know from the Scriptures that majority of the Hebrews in the   
   time continued to believe that John was the true prophet, as he confessed   
   their sins baptising them, and those who accepted the baptism of John   
   later also accepted Jesus Christ almost by the rule - the scribes and   
   the Pharisees thought they were too exalted for a man in skin and   
   virtually naked to baptise them, so they were unprepared for Jesus Christ,   
   did not recognise him, murdered him and brought condemnation upon themselves,   
   persisting later against the Stephen the first martyr   
   and the entire Path until it was eradicated from the Jews and it remained   
   only in the heathen Greece and Rome in Little Asia where the apostles   
   preached.   
      
   However, Jesus knew that all prostitues were not evil like those in power,   
      
   [continued in next message]   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)