(Ad)Dressing Foreign Women: Ancient Exegesis of Numbers 25 and Roman Prostitution

What is it about?

The root z-n-h covers a vast semantic field in the Hebrew Bible, including various types of illicit sexual practices. Drawing on this polysemy, an ancient Jewish exegetical tradition reads the infinitive (“fornicate”) in Num 25:1 as denoting prostitution. Four texts are discussed: the public exposure of the foreign women’s naked bodies in Biblical Antiquities 18:13, which reflects Roman norms relating to prostitutes; Philo’s explicit projection onto the Israelites of the Roman repugnance towards upper-class men openly entering brothels (On the Life of Moses 1.294–304) and attribution to them of the elaborate costume typically worn by courtesans in Greek sources (On Virtues 34–50); and the satirical variation on the theme in Sifre Num. 131, wherein the Israelites’ ignorance of the (male elite Roman) stereotyping of female vendor markets as prostitutes and old women as bawds leads them to enter the prostitute’s cubicle.

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