Based on contemporary scholarship, it seems plausible that a group such as the *mitnabot* would practice gender equality. The role of prophetesses throughout the ancient Near East, including among the Israelites, is well documented. Additionally, Near Eastern prophetic activity was also characterized by gender fluidity. Scholar of the ancient Near Eastern Martti Nissinen suggests that many prophets were gender "queer". I suggest we imagine that the Mitnabot preserved in secret a tradition of queer prophetic gender identity which they received from their spiritual ancestors among the various Northwest Semitic sister peoples. Their tradition remained underground until our own day, in which queer equality and fluidity could once again flourish in the open, although still under threat of violent persecution. Below are selections from Martti Nissinen's *Ancient Prophecy - Near Eastern, Biblical, and Greek Perspectives* that touch on the themes of gender equality and fluidity: >The prophetic action as such is not gender-specific. Anyone can achieve an altered state of consciousness required for prophesying, and there is no difference between men and women in this respect....[I]n the ancient Eastern Mediterranean, prophecy was open to both, or should we say, all genders. > >Whatever local variations there might have been in the relative status of prophets representing different genders, it appears as a continuing pattern that in the ancient Eastern Mediterranean, the prophetic role—like that of a magician—could be assumed by women and men alike. This cannot be said of most professions...Technical divination in particular (astrology, extispicy, augury, and the like) was a male domain in which women seem not to have been involved in Mesopotamia...[T]he prophetic role appears to be clearly less dependent on gender than other methods of divination. > >The same could apply to sexually ambivalent or intersex people; indeed, the representation of non-male persons other than women deserves full attention...In Mesopotamia, devotees of Ištar called *assinnu*...are mentioned in several texts from different periods featuring in different roles including cross-dressing, ritual dance, battle-scenes, healing, lament, and prophecy. The gender performance of these people is unconventional, combining male and female features... > >The *assinnus* and their colleagues are impossible to classify in modern gender categories. The sources do not inform us about their sexual orientation or bodily appearance. In recent scholarship, their sexual otherness has been both emphasized and disregarded. They have traditionally been called “transvestites,” “bisexuals,” even “cult homosexuals,” but these designations are all misleading since they all derive from the modern understanding of “sexuality.” ==Perhaps the best word to describe them is “queer,” because that is what they were even in the eyes of their contemporaries. Their unconventional non-gender or third-gender role was probably not considered “normal” in the sense of the average; nevertheless, their marked difference from other people was divinely sanctioned. They were what they were by divine ordinance, and their very appearance conveyed a message to the people.== Their existence had a mythological explanation, and their role was institutionalized because they “existed between myth and reality and embodied the divine Otherness.” This was also the justification of their manifest transgression of conventional sexual roles: being neither men nor women, they were not expected to engage in ordinary family life or to conform to the dominant and active sexual role of a male citizen. Rather, they reflected Ištar’s alterity, emulating her power to transgress sexual boundaries, thus highlighting acceptable gender roles by way of manifestly violating them. ==Even though the documentation of the prophetic involvement of the queer people is not very extensive, it nevertheless demonstrates the gender flexibility of prophecy.== > >Even the Hebrew Bible, while not recognizing female priesthood, acknowledges female prophets, some of them assuming important roles, such as Huldah in the initial phase of the Josianic reform (2 Kgs 22:14–20), or Noadiah as the primary opponent of Nehemiah (Neh. 6:14). That their number is considerably smaller than that of male prophets, however, makes women prophets look like an exception rather than the rule. To what extent the paucity of women prophets conforms to the historical reality, or reflects a patriarchal bias of the editors of the biblical texts, remains a matter of dispute. >[...] >The idea of the female deity’s intimacy with the world of the humans, as well as her prophetic agency within the divine council, is not restricted to Mesopotamian sources but, interestingly and importantly, finds a clearly recognizable echo in the figure of Lady Wisdom in early Judaism. Lady Wisdom’s lovers, like those of *Inanna/Ištar*, are both divine and human. The language used of her in Proverbs 8:22–31 subtly suggests an intimate relationship with God, something that Philo of Alexandria develops further in his description of the cosmogonic union between Wisdom and the creator, as the result of which Wisdom receives the seed of God and becomes the mother and the wet nurse of the universe. In Wisdom of Solomon, too, Wisdom and God are presented in terms of a divine marriage: Wisdom is called God’s *paredros* (Wisd. 9:4), who lives in a *symbiōsis* with him, her function being the mystis of God’s knowledge (8:3–4). But she is also the companion of her student, King Solomon, who is engaged in a love relationship with her (6:12–25; 7:7–14; 8:2–21); this compares well to the virtual equation of Wisdom with a wife in Proverbs 8:35 and 18:22. (Nissinen, _Ancient Prophecy - Near Eastern, Biblical, and Greek Perspectives_) Note on same-sex relationality. The clandestine Torah of the Mitnabot was of course accepting of all loving relationality, hetero, homo and non-binary. Can the acceptance of homosexuality also be traced to ancient prophetic circles? I'm not sure. Some of Nissinen's language above would suggest that they might. But it is not quite explicit. Ancient Greek culture obviously accepted homosexuality, and so did other ancient cultures, but I'm not sure yet about the sources of the Mitnabot's Torah on this point. Ideas are welcome :)