No Women Priestesses in the Old Testament. Regrettably, in his discussion of the role of women in the covenant community of ancient Israel, our author does not address the crucial question as to why women served as prophetesses but not as priestesses. An examination of this question could have provided a much-needed corrective to his claim that women exercised headship positions over men in the religious life of ancient Israel. The absence of priestesses shows otherwise. The reason women were precluded from ministering as priestesses is that priests served as representatives of God to the people. Their headship role could not legitimately be fulfilled by a woman. This fact alone constitutes a serious challenge to the author’s thesis.

Another author addressed the question, "Why not a woman priest in Israel?" in chapter 2 of the same symposium, Women in Ministry. Since our first author frequently refers to this scholar, we will briefly consider the two basic reasons our second author gives for the exclusion of women from the priesthood. The first is historical and the second is theological. His historical reason is that priestesses in the ancient Near East "were often associated with sacred prostitution." Thus for him, the absence of priestesses in ancient Israel "is to be understood as a reaction to pagan syncretism and sexual perversion."⁴⁶

This popular argument falls short on at least two counts. First, the fact that some of the pagan priestesses served as prostitutes cannot be a valid reason for God to exclude Israelite women from serving as exemplary priestesses at the sanctuary. A legitimate practice cannot be prohibited because of its perversion. The sons of Eli "lay with the women who served at the entrance to the tent of meeting" (1 Sam 2:22), but there is no indication that these prostitutions resulted in the abolition of male priesthood or of the ministry of women at the entrance of the sanctuary. If the argument were valid, then not even men should have functioned as priests because of the danger of male prostitution, which the Bible views as more abominable than female prostitution, calling male cult prostitutes "dogs" (Deut 23:18; Rev 22:15).

Second, there are indications that many, if not most, of the pagan priestesses in the ancient world lived chaste and devoted lives. Some of the Babylonian priestesses lived in cloisters.⁴⁷ The women priests who officiated, for example, at the temples of Vesta, Apollo, Athena, Polias, and Dionysius, as well as in the various mystery religions, were in most cases either celibate or very continent in their life-styles. This shows that the argument regarding the danger of "sacred prostitution" does not hold water.⁴⁸