This special phase of asceticism was altogether foreign to the traditions of Israel, averse as they were to all restrictions upon the full physical development of man. Enjoying, apparently, no conception of a future existence, the earlier Hebrews had no incentive to sacrifice the pleasures of the world for those of a Heaven of which they knew nothing; nor was the gross polytheism, which the monotheistic prophets combated, of a nature to lead to ascetic practices. The worship of Ashera—probably identical with the Babylonian Beltis or Mylitta—undoubtedly consecrated the sacrifice of chastity as a religious rite, and those who revered the goddess of fertility as one of the supreme deities were not likely to impose any restrictions on the exercise of her powers.[1] We see, indeed, in the story of Judah and Tamar, and in the lamentation of the daughter of Jephthah, that virginity was regarded almost as a disgrace, and that child-bearing was considered the noblest function of woman; while the institution of levirate marriage shows an importance attributed to descendants in the male line as marked as among the Hindu Arya. The hereditary character of the priesthood, moreover, both as vested in the original Levites, and the later Tsadukim and Baithusin, indicates conclusively that even among the orthodox no special sanctity attached to continence, and that the temporary abstinence from women required of those who handled the hallowed articles of the altar (_I. Samuel xxi. 4-5_) was simply a distinction drawn between the sacerdotal class and the laity, for in the elaborate instructions as to uncleanness, there is no allusion made to sexual indulgence, though the priest who had partaken of wine was forbidden to enter the Tabernacle, and defilement arising from contact with the dead was a disability (_Levit. x., xxi., xxii._),[2] while the highest blessing that could be promised as a reward for obedience to God was that “there shall not be male or female barren among you” (_Deut. vii. 14_). In fact, the only manifestation of asceticism as a religious ordinance, prior to the Second Temple, is seen in the vow of the Nazirites, which consisted merely in allowing the hair to remain unshorn, in the abstinence from wine and in avoiding the pollution arising from contact with the dead. Slender as were these restrictions, the ordinary term of a Nazirate was only thirty days, though it might be assumed for life, as in the cases of Samson and Samuel; and the vows for long terms were deemed sufficiently pleasing to God to serve as means of propitiation, as in the case of Hannah, who thus secured her offspring Samuel, and in that of Helena, Queen of Adiabene, who vowed a Nazirate of seven years if her son Izaces should return in safety from a campaign.[3] The few references to the custom in Scripture, however, show that it was little used, and that it exercised no visible influence over social life during the earlier periods.