Controversy About Tamar's Disguise

The question of Tamar's disguised identity has become an issue of contention in recent scholarship.

Which Type of Prostitute Was Tamar Disguised As?

In Hebrew, the word for "prostitute" and "cult prostitute" is the same, leading translators, editors and readers to follow a longtime assumption initiated by the Greek historian Herodotus: that so-called "sacred prostitution" existed in the ancient Near East.

Past theories interpreting Genesis 38 have speculated that if "temple prostitution" or "cultic prostituion" existed in ancient Israel, it must have occurred through Canaanite cults such as that of the goddess Asherah, consort of Ba'al, referred to in 2 Kings 23:7. This understanding has been perpetuated by several translations of Christian Bibles that referred to Tamar as a "temple prostitute."

Did Herodotus Invent the Myth of Sacred Prostitution?

However, more recent scholarship particularly in Mesopotamian languages and cultures has cast doubt on this understanding, according to Joan Goodnick Westenholtz of Tel Aviv University. Westenholtz and other scholars now contend that Herodotus, with Greek snobbery about both prostitution and barbarians (non-Greeks), made up a myth of "sacred prostitution" by misunderstanding what his Babylonian sources told him about the priestesses of their religions. Westenholtz says that Genesis 38 perpetuates this understanding by having Hirah the Adullahmite, Judah's friend, ask for the "cultic priestess" rather than just "the prostitute" when he tries to deliver the young goat Judah promised in payment.

Tamar Was Vindicated

Whether Judah thought her to be a prostitute or a cultic priestess, Tamar was vindicated soon after their encounter when Judah learned of Tamar's pregnancy. Thinking her guilty of fornication, he ordered his tribesmen to bring her out to be burned. When Judah demanded to know who had fathered her child, Tamar produced Judah's signet, belt and staff, announcing: "It was the owner of these who made me pregnant. Take note, please, whose these are, the signet and the cord and the staff."

Caught out, Judah acknowledged that by the levirate custom, Tamar had been right to seek pregnancy through her father-in-law in order to continue the line of her husband Er. Tamar was forgiven and returned to her father-in-law's family, where she gave birth to twin sons, Perez and Zerah. Thus she fulfilled her duty to her husband and her family, and helped fulfill God's promise to Abraham of many descendants.

Tamar Sources

• _{The Oxford Annotated Bible with Apocrypha, New Revision Standard Version (Oxford University Press, 1994).}
  
  
• _{The Jewish Study Bible, (Oxford University Press, 2004)}
  
  
• _{The Jewish Religion: A Companion, edited by Louis Jacobs (Oxford University Press, USA, 1995).}
  
  
• _{"Origin of ONANISM" Free Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary, http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/onanism?show=0&t=1296581819}
  
  
• _{"Herodotus on Babylonian 'Sacred Prostitution' "," Herodotus, Book I, para 199, Bible-History.com http://www.bible-history.com/quotes/herodotus_1.html}
  
  
• _{"Tamar, Qedesa, Quadistu and Sacred Prostitution in Mesopotamia," by Joan Goodnick Westenholtz, pages 245-68, Harvard Theological Review, 1989.}