And Rebekah lifted up her eyes, and when she saw Isaac she lighted off the camel.
-Genesis 24:64
Only begotten bridegroom, thy Gentile bride, loving thee, leapt down from the height of an unclean body.
-from The Greek Anthology, Book I, 69, On Rebecca
So this is what an anonymous Greek epigrammatist who knew the Gentile Old Testament had to say about Rebecca. After watering Abraham’s servant’s herd and putting him up for the night and agreeing to marry Abraham’s son Isaac sight unseen and travelling rough to his far off land to live among his people, when she finally lays eyes upon her husband-to-be and jumps off her camel to greet him…the Greek says only that she has been riding upon an unclean body. But what about, and I ask this question as one who himself has travelled rough and far by camel, her own unclean body?