Re: Henna in the Bible
Posted by Catherine Cartwright Jones on March 22, 2000 at 10:17:43:
In Reply to: Re: Henna in the Bible posted by Kalila on March 22, 2000 at 09:20:25:
Here's the context...
The Israelites went from Egypt where henna was not used as a
common decoration for living women's hands until after 1400 BCE (and
then mostly just by Syrian women married into the royal harem and
women who were "Songstresses of Amun Ra" ). They met the Canaanites
who were living in Palestine who had used henna as part of their
fertility-based religion for thousands of years . When the Israelites
first saw the Canaanite's hennaed hands, and associated it with
Canaanite fertility celebrations (which some of the young Israelites
joined in and commited abomnations; wheeeee, whoopie, yeehaw!) , they
associated the sexual practices with the henna , and stated in the
Second Book of Adam and Eve, that the Devil had taught the Canaanites
"how to dye red".
The Canaanites ALSO were using HARQUUS and FACIAL TATTOOING for
religious practice, women's fertility, and beauty. (I've got some of
these patterns charted out from ancient sculptures)(email me if ya
want'em). The Jews refused to do the tattooing (probably because in
Egypt the only tattooed ladies were of the courtesan and sexworker
class) but they did absorb the henna traditions .
Jehovah felt the need to assert his authority and his singularity
pretty frequetly, because the Canaanites had so MANY deities, and the
Jews frequently wanted to "join the party" (such as worshipping the
Golden Calf). The Jews worked pretty hard to keep their ethnic
identity and uniqueness in the Old Testament period, because they were
living in a land where another religion was well established,
dominant, and damned attractive. They ended up absorbing some of the
tradtions anyway. Henna was one. They did NOT adopt the facial
tattooing and harquus, which was kept up by women in Arab tribal
groups into the 20th century.
Sadly, one of the reasons that Muslim women kept up the practice of
facial tattooing was that Jewish ( and Christian) women did not .....
was since there was little legal or moral penalty for a Muslim man
raping or fornicating with a non-Muslim woman, Jewish women who had
no facial tattoos were targets of sexual abuse, while Muslim women
were somewhat protected.
