The fact that Rebecca was Isaac's child bride is so embarrassing for Christians they are finding it difficult not accept it. Even though we have proven from the Hebrew bible the language and academic biblical scholars that Rebecca was a child bride, Christians still play the blind game. What's worse they try to refute this fact by saying Rebecca could not have been a child bride because of a certain information found in the bible regarding Rebecca? Let's find out what this information is which Christians are latching on thinking they can debunk the proven fact that Rebecca was a child bride.
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Before he had finished praying, Rebekah came out with her jar on her shoulder. She was the daughter of Bethuel son of Milkah, who was the wife of Abraham’s brother Nahor. The woman was very beautiful, a virgin; no man had ever slept with her. She went down to the spring, filled her jar and came up again.
Then the servant ran to meet her, and said, "Please let me drink a little water from your jar." She said, "Drink, my lord"; and she quickly lowered her jar to her hand, and gavehim a drink. After she had given him a drink, she said, "I'll draw water for your camels too, until they have had enough to drink." So she quickly emptied her jar into the trough, ran back to the well to draw more water, and drew enough for all his camels. (Genesis 24:16-20)
The above passage is a typical refutation made by Christians regarding Rebecca's age when she got married. Their claim is how can Rebecca be a Child/Infant (NAAR in Hebrew) when she was able to to carry jar/jug on her shoulder?
A very weak and desperate attempt to challenge an irrefutable proof which destroys the notion that child marriage never took place in the bible. The problem is majority of Christians do not study their own bible nor do they want to learn from people who are experts in that field. Rather majority of Christians make up their own interpretations so it fits the way they find it convenient without having a proper understanding of the texts.
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Let's now show our Christian friends how carrying a jar of water and emptying it in a trough so the camels can drink from could be problematic when it comes to new findings!
Camels were not domesticated in Israel until centuries after the Age of the Patriarchs – when Abraham, Jacob and Issac are said to have lived - between 2,000 and 1,500 BC.
Dr Erez Ben-Yosef and Dr Lidar Sapir-Hen of Tel Aviv University's Department of Archaeology and Near Eastern Cultures used radiocarbon dating to pinpoint the moment when domesticated camels arrived in the southern Levant. They found camels came in the 9th century BC, not the 12th as previously thought.
"This is a very good example that the stories were written at a much later time than they supposedly took place. The editor of these stories knew the camel was a draft animal used in his time for traveling across the desert, so of course Abraham, Jacob and David used camels. We call it an anachronism; he projected the reality that he knew at his own time," says Ben-Yosef.
Carol Meyers, a professor of religious studies at Duke University, about what such anachronisms tell us about the genesis of religious texts says :
"Pretty much so. In other words, stories about Abraham having a lot of camels, figuring in the story of Rebecca at the well - those stories are purported to take place hundreds of years before the camel was around, was on the scene as a domesticated animal. The storyteller who's shaping those legends is using what information he knows, which is after the camels are domesticated. And if he wants to show that Abraham is a very important, wealthy figure, what better way than to say that he's got the most expensive vehicle available? It'd be like saying he has a fleet of Jaguars or something like that today. We know that Jaguars didn't exist 200 years ago. We have an idea of our history of technology, but somebody formulating the story in, say, the 7th or 6th century BCE, they wouldn't have known that camel"
In short there was no camels in the same region as Abraham,Isaac, Jacob which means Rebecca could not have given water to the CAMELS?. If the scribes can make up such a lie just to improve the story it's obvious Rebecca would not have had carried the jar in the first place. Our Christian friend may say doesn't this also mean that Rebecca may not have been a child or even got married if the scribes can make up the Camels just to improve the story?. That may not be the case since child marriage was very common those days and Rebecca was no exception to that. The fact that Rebecca married Isaac would not be doubtful to any historian, archeologist, but digging up the past as archeologist do could indeed change history as we know it. By finding out Camels were not present at a certain area does not dismiss two people getting married.
