ABSTRACT
The important distinction between a harlot and a prostitute is clear enough in English, as I will show. The corresponding distinction in early Christian, patristic, and Byzantine Greek writings, however, is not yet well recognized for two reasons. First and foremost, early Christian and patristic scholarship does not yet adequately appreciate the distinctive Septuagint legacy behind the ancient Greek word that corresponds to harlot' in English. The word in question is pome. Second, the word porne is also used in pre-Christian and Christian Greek texts to refer to a lower-class prostitute in ancient Greek society, as opposed to the hetaira or 'courtesan'. Porne in this sense probably stems from pernemi according to LSJ, and refers to the sale and exportation of captive female slaves for the sex trade in the ancient Mediterranean. In early Christian and patristic scholarship, the use of porne to refer to a prostitute seems the more familiar one. This sense has helped obfuscate how porne in the distinctive Septuagint sense 'harlot' comes strongly into normative play in early Christian, patristic and Byzantine writings. The purpose of my paper is to help clear up this semantic confusion and to explain why the Septuagint conception of porne is morally problematic. Scholars who study women called pornai in Christian Greek writings will in turn be better able to judge two points more precisely: what Christian Greek authors mean by calling women pornai, and why this term is likely to have a loaded significance that it does not have in pre-Christian Greek writings. I will begin by exploring the difference between a harlot and a prostitute, then I will explicate the Septuagint sense of porne, which corresponds to the term 'harlot' in English.
