I received this book on time and in wonderful condition.I am enjoying it quite well. Angela Miller

I loved the Ender books by this author so I thought I'd branch out of the SciFi realm and read something else he wrote. Wow...this book was crap. If you're going to write a novel based on just a few parts of the Bible, at least work on some character development, make it interesting. I felt like I was in Sunday School, being punished for missing confession and my punishment was this book.
The worst part is that sweet, intelligent, eager to help Rebekah turns into this simpering, over-sexed old woman (while still a teenager mind you) as soon as she meets her husband-to-be.
Save your time and your money.

My husband got me 3 of the Women in Gen series for my birthday, and I am so glad he did. These are written as "fiction" but it is evident that there is a lot of research put into it as well. Card portrays an honest view of Jewish life far surpassing the vulgar cave-man "Red Tent" version. My copy of Rebekah has an endorsement from the Jerusalem Post on first page which says a lot about it's accuracy. Also commendable is the fact that Card does not alter the Genesis account. What he adds gives deeper meaning and a higher understanding of what is already in the scriptures. There are hints that some of Rebekah was loosely taken from other ancient texts as well. As an example;

Jasher 24: 39 ... and they gave him Rebecca, the daughter of Bethuel, for a wife for Isaac. 40 And the young woman was of very comely appearance, she was a virgin, and Rebecca was ten years old in those days.

Early on in the Book Card mentions Rebekah being 10 years old, and makes a point that she was very mature for her age. Her age is mentioned in such a way that most readers will not realize how young she was when married though. Card also mentions the book of Noah in reference to another account of the flood - and the Book of Noah does actually exist, you can buy it on Amazon, usually in combination with the works of Enoch.

He also discretely brings up the Israelite Goddess Asherah, AKA, Heavenly Mother. If you don't mind, I would like to provide some additional background on Asherah to anyone interested in reading this, or any other books related to Jewish histories. The existence of a Heavenly Mother is not just Mormon doctrine - although I do not want to misrepresent the LDS either, they do not worship Her, they only admit to Her existence. In Genesis 21:33 Abraham planted a tamarisk tree (tree of life representing feminine child bearing ability) and called there on the name of Yahweh el Olam (a combination of two divine names). In Genesis 30:13 Leah names her son Ahser whose names means "with Asherah's help". Perhaps the most beautiful description of Asherah in the Bible is the Proverbs 3:13-18 inclusio (happy, wisdom, and tree of life are all "discrete" translations of the Hebrew words Ashre, chokmah, and ets chayyum). Asherah is very much a part of the Old Testament. Just as Abraham sacrificing Isaac represents Heavenly father sacrificing Jesus, I strongly suspect Sarah, Abraham's beautiful wife, represents Asherah. The many righteous barren women combined with the polygamy throughout the OT possibly symbolic of Mary, not Asherah, becoming the mother of Their "only" begotten son. The background of the ever so important baptism as being an actual "birth"... a birth respecting the free agency of the "children" in which divine Parents are chosen rather than forced upon a spirit through a physical birth... Also adding to the reason that Jesus was baptized, not to take away sin, or to become a child of Heavenly Father... the words "This is my beloved son" perhaps being spoken by a female voice after Jesus' baptism. Of course inappropriate worship of the beautiful Asherah lead to Her presence being hidden, the commandment of not worshipping images. Ex 19: 4 Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image, or any likeness of any thing that is in heaven above - this commandment does not come about until Ex, so Abraham and others are perhaps not really doing something that was wrong at the time although the idea of men protecting and respecting the sanctity of womanhood was in place starting with Adam. Card points out the fact that the Jewish people do not dare utter the name of Heavenly Father and protect Asherah even more vehemently. The great sin of inappropriately worshipping Her much worse than using the Lord's name in vain. (I know the account surrounding Rebekah's mother is fictional, but the points made by the story are very real).

If Orson happens across my ramblings, I apologize for overanalyzing your fictional work. Perhaps I read too much into it, or combine it with things I should not... or perhaps I am right, and just not as discreet at introducing some subjects as Card is...

In any event, Rebekah is a beautiful read, perhaps I misrepresent it, I do not think it is meant to be a scholarly research paper, it reads like a best-seller novel, although to those who have read some other things, there are elements in it that are much deeper than perhaps the uneducated reader might grasp - which is what makes all of Card's books so intriguing. Disturbing how accurately Card, a male, is able to portray all that is female. Beautiful that he is able to reveal the real power women had and still have to those who do not yet understand the nobility of being a mother and wife. I will pass this book along to others not only as a testimony builder that brings the scriptures to life, but also as a book that reveals the beauty of male and female roles and the appropriate honest way people from "Mars and Venus" can come to respect and support one another.

My deepest thanks to Bro. Card for all of his work.

I enjoyed reading Rebecca so much! I am reading the old testament and am loving that as well! It's neat to compare the scriptures with the book and seeing how Orson Scott Card can use his God given talents to draw us in!I would recommend reading the series of the Women of Genesis-it's amazing the incredible strength these women had and what great examples of what to do and not to do!I would recommend the hard cover copies for they are worth keeping in your library!

The plot was okay other then too much dialouge and people argueing, but after reading three books in the series of Women in Genensis I was increasingly trouble by things the books claim didn't happen. Of course I know this is fiction and the author has every right to fill in missing places of the Bible with speculation and imagination, but to repeatly have the characters claim a part of the Bible isn't true distrubs me. At least twice in two of the books it's said that Isaac never tried to pass his wife off as his sister like Abraham did. However the Bible says they did. If the author didn't like that part of the story he could have just left it out, not called the Bible false. There are other Bibical problems with the books, but I wouldn't fault the author for not being totally bibically correct. We can't memorize the whole Bible and get every detail right. I may have kept reading his books anyway because I do really like that a central theme in the books is that there's only God and He loves us and has a wonderful plan for us even when it doesn't seem likely. However something I read in the afterword of the book Sarah made me reject any more of his books. If you don't mind the quote it said, "...I believe in the Bible so seriously that I think it really is what it claims to be - a record, written by men, of stories that seemed important and truthful to them at the time of writing, using the standards of truth available to them at the time. This means that the idea of inerrancy of Biblical scripture is silly on its face."
The Bible never claims to be just a book of records. It is inerrant as evidence by how little it has changed over the centuries. We can't just pick and choose what we want to believe or there really isn't a guidline. Maybe next an author will say not all of the ten comandments are real and God probably didn't really tell people not to murder. Maybe that's unlikely, but you get the idea.