Abstract
Many Americans learn more about the Bible through popular culture than through reading the Bible itself or its interpretation in scholarly sources, and popular culture often sorts biblical women into either “good” or “bad” categories—virtuous or villainous. This dissertation asks if that trend has continued by analyzing the characterization of Rebekah—wife of Isaac and mother of Jacob and Esau—in the Masoretic Text of Genesis (esp. Gen 24:1–28:9) and in over 150 narrative retellings (called hypertexts) written in English, published in the United States between 1990 and 2019, and cataloged with the Library of Congress. The hypertexts are compared to the biblical text of Genesis, and the analysis points out where gaps in the biblical narrative have been filled by the hypertexts, especially as those filled gaps contribute to Rebekah’s characterization, whether positive, negative, or neutral. The project concludes that these recent portrayals of Rebekah do not conform to the late-nineteenth-century tendency to vilify Rebekah but instead present a more complicated portrait of her character. The overabundance of children’s Bibles published in this thirty-year period even creates a trend toward more positive characterizations.
Degree Date
Spring 2023
Document Type
Dissertation
Degree Name
Ph.D.
Department
Religious Studies
Advisor
Roy L. Heller
Second Advisor
Serge Frolov
Third Advisor
Dan Moss
Fourth Advisor
Lesleigh Cushing
Subject Area
Humanities, Religion
Number of Pages
312
Format
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 4.0 License
Recommended Citation
Spinnato, Kelsey, "Rebekah Retold: A Functional Reception-Historical Analysis of Rebekah in Narrative Retellings of Genesis" (2023). Religious Studies Theses and Dissertations. 37.
https://scholar.smu.edu/religious_studies_etds/37
