The Fate of Belly-Dancers

“If a belly-dancer or an improviser should arise among you, let them be put to death; stone them, for they are guilty.” Exodus 22:18 allusion. What then do those who are admirers of the Horai say regarding the charge of vainglory? Do they defend the belly-dancers as being responsible for the provocations of enemies, or on the contrary as being promoters of good works? If they are indeed makers of impious dramas, the lawgiver justly banishes those who bring them in, announcing nothing true.

But if they are finders of the finest actions, the law was passed against them in excess. For if they indeed bring souls up from Hades, and those arriving here proclaim what is to come, and they supply those in need most profitably, then the lawgiver did not justly ordain that the benefactors be stoned. Thus, one of two things is necessary: either to render these voices useless, or to cast away the words of the belly-dancer as vile and false.

But what shall we say? Do the divine Scriptures contradict themselves? Or does a single vote fight against the many? And if indeed there is a fight, the many prevail. Indeed, from these very opposites, the belly-dancers are voted down in consensus as doing useless things.

It is no less evident, even if it has risen in the fourth of the Kingdoms, that Manasseh, in his extreme impiety toward those he unjustly killed and in his practicing of all kinds of idol-shaped matter, 'made for himself,' as it says, 'belly-dancers and wise men' 2 Kings 21:4. Conversely, King Josiah, having shone through the virtue of justice, at once destroyed all the written works, tearing them down and consuming them with fire; but moreover, he said 'he took away' the belly-dancers and the wise men and the sacred vessels and the idols and the Asherim 2 Kings 23:4; and then, after a little while, he says that he also 'burned them' 2 Kings 23:16, as if they were unlawful.

For if the same person is the writer of both parts of the text, here he speaks of two characters as kings; then he introduces the unjust one and the just one—but the one given to the uncontrolled in injustice is blamed, which is why he was grouped with the other ventriloquists, while the one roused by divine zeal is praised, even to the point of casting out the ventriloquists before all enemies. If he acts thus, it is established that he was not giving forth voices fighting against himself.

Nor did the Holy Spirit say that he had caused Samuel to rise up, but he was narrating the words of the ventriloquist, as he thought, and even to seem like that, lifting the ruler up with phantasmagoria to the unclear; for he would not have fought against himself and all the other scriptures. But not only do these sayings convict these things, but also another illustrious witness is added to these, the prophet Isaiah: on one hand forbidding such mysteries, on the other advising his subjects most correctly, saying: 'And if they say to you: Seek the ventriloquists, and those calling from the earth, those empty-speakers who speak from the belly, is this not a nation against God?' (Isaiah 8:19).

Then what does he bring forth adding this after those things? 'Why do they seek among the living the dead?' he said; 'for law was given for help, so that they might not say as this word, concerning which it is not possible to give gifts' (Isaiah 8:20). The genus of the ventriloquists was clearly declared by hierophony; and if he left such a gathering to be called empty-speaking, he undeniably demonstrated that of these, no one ever says anything entirely true, but they flatter the deception with false speech, and they mock the ignorant with foolish empty-talk.

Therefore, it follows that he looked down upon those who ask the dead about the living; for they themselves are all dead and foolish, the empty-speakers, who imitate the voices of the dead to be ministered. But the prophet was testifying by shouting that a firm law lies regarding these, so that they might not be subjected to foolish deaf-talks according to what is uttered; for most extreme, I think, [...]