Nahum has come under recent censure for the term זונה (3:4). Scholars have argued that calling Nineveh a prostitute does not fit the brutal Neo-Assyrian Empire. This article argues that the book of Nahum charges Nineveh with multi-national human trafficking. Assyrian practices conform to the United Nations definition of human trafficking. The methods Assyria used to recruit, transport, and prostitute peoples match methods of modern slavers. The title זונה therefore is used because the city acted as a spiritual madam. Vast populations were kidnapped for economic purposes and much of the labor, money, and people acquired through conquest were used to serve the Assyrian pantheon.
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Judith E. Sanderson, “Nahum,” in The Women’s Bible Commentary (ed. Carol A. Newsom and Sharon H. Ringe; Louisville: Westminster/John Knox, 1992): 217-221.
Julia M. O’Brien, Nahum (Readings; London: Sheffield Academic, 2002), 81.
Julie Galambush, “Nahum,” in The Women’s Bible Commentary (Rev. and upd. ed.; ed. Carol A. Newsom, Sharon H. Ringe, and Jacqueline E. Lapsely; Louisville: Westminster/John Knox, 2012), 330.
For instance, Delbert R. Hillers, Treaty Curses and the Old Testament Prophets (BibOr 16; Rome: Pontifical Biblical Institute, 1964), 58-60.
Ibid., 67.
Zainab Bahrani, Women of Babylon: Gender and Representation in Mesopotamia (London: Routledge, 2001), 141.
Phyllis A. Bird, Missing Persons and Mistaken Identities: Women and Gender in Ancient Israel (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1997), 199.
Ibid., 211; emphasis original.
Ibid., 212.
United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, United Nations Convention Against Transnational Organized Crime and The Protocols Thereto (Vienna, Austria: United Nations, 2004), 42. Cited 6 May 2014. Online: https://www.unodc.org/documents/treaties/UNTOC/Publications/TOC%20Convention/TOCebook-e.pdf.
Rashida Valika, “Women Trafficking in Pakistan: A Tale of Misery and Exploitation,” Pakistan Journal of Women’s Studies 14, no. 1 (June 2007): 20-22.
Padam Simkhada, “Life Histories and Survival Strategies Amongst Sexually Trafficked Girls in Nepal,” Children & Society 22, no. 3 (May 2008): 244.
Oguzhan O. Demir, “Methods of Sex Trafficking: Findings of a Case Study in Turkey,” Global Crime 11, no. 3 (August 2010): 316.
Ibid., 317.
For instance, Michael Burger, The Shaping of Western Civilization: From Antiquity to the Enlightenment (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2008), 57. This number represents the total number of deportees that Neo-Assyrian texts record, and multiple sources cite it. Other scholars consider this number excessive. For example, “Estimates of the overall number of people deported in the [Neo-Assyrian] period range from 1.5 to 4.5 million. But even the lower of these figures is commonly considered to be impossibly high, not least because of the logistical problem facing the Assyrian administration in moving, in the largest contingent, some 208,000 persons.” Peter R. Bedford, “The Neo-Assyrian Empire,” in The Dynamics of Ancient Empires: State Power from Assyria to Byzantium (ed. Ian Morris and Walter Seidel; osee; Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009), 33. Whatever the actual total, the Neo-Assyrian Empire practiced kidnapping on a greater scale than the ancient Near East had ever witnessed.
“Black’s (1990) law dictionary defines a pimp as someone who obtains customers for a prostitute. The reality of most pimps, however, is that they use manipulation, threats, and violence to keep prostitutes from leaving the trade and live entirely off the women they recruit. Research has consistently revealed that pimps are often perpetrators of violence against prostituted women.” Alexis M. Kennedy et al, “Routes of Recruitment: Pimps’ Techniques and Other Circumstances That Lead to Street Prostitution,” Journal of Aggression, Maltreatment & Trauma 15, no. 2 (November 2007): 5.
George Smith, History of Ashurbanipal, Translated from the Cuneiform Inscriptions (London: Williams & Norgate, 1871), 264. Cited 7 May 2014. Online: http://archive.org.
Ibid., 538; ellipses mine.
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Nahum has come under recent censure for the term זונה (3:4). Scholars have argued that calling Nineveh a prostitute does not fit the brutal Neo-Assyrian Empire. This article argues that the book of Nahum charges Nineveh with multi-national human trafficking. Assyrian practices conform to the United Nations definition of human trafficking. The methods Assyria used to recruit, transport, and prostitute peoples match methods of modern slavers. The title זונה therefore is used because the city acted as a spiritual madam. Vast populations were kidnapped for economic purposes and much of the labor, money, and people acquired through conquest were used to serve the Assyrian pantheon.
All Time | Past 365 days | Past 30 Days | |
---|---|---|---|
Abstract Views | 431 | 60 | 4 |
Full Text Views | 213 | 2 | 0 |
PDF Views & Downloads | 120 | 5 | 0 |