Volume 2

Rebecca's School
297
long tunic, and lastly a long gown fastened in front with
buttons. They wound their heads in a veil or with several
rows of ruffs, such as are worn nowadays around the
neck.
I saw that they studied in Rebecca's time the religion
of Abraham: the creation of the world, about Adam and
Eve and their entrance into Paradise, Eve's seduction by
Satan, and the Fall of the first man and woman by their
violation of the abstinence commanded them by God. By
the eating of the forbidden fruit arose sinful appetites in
man. The young girls were taught also that Satan had
promised our first parents a divine illumination and
knowledge, but that after sin they were blinded. A film
was drawn over their eyes; they lost the gift of vision
they had possessed. Now they had to labor in the sweat
of their brow, bring forth children in pain, and with
difficulty acquire the knowledge of which they had need.
They learned, too, that to the woman a son was promised
who should crush the serpent's head. They were taught
about Abel and Cain and the latter's descendants, who
became degenerate and wicked. The sons of God,
seduced by the beauty of the daughters of men, formed
unions with them from which sprang a mighty, godless
race of giants, powerful in enchantment and the art of
magic, a race that discovered and taught to others all
kinds of pleasure and false wisdom, all that buried the
soul in sin and tore it away from God, a race that had so
seduced and corrupted men that God resolved to destroy
them all with the exception of Noe and his family. This
people had fixed their principal abode on a high mountain
range up which they ever pressed higher and higher.
But in the Deluge that mountain was submerged, and a
sea now covers its site. They (the scholars of Rebecca's
school) learned also all about the Deluge, about Noe's
escape in the ark, about Sem, Cham, and Japhet, about
Cham's sin, and the reiterated wickedness of men at the