Ab, (father) is found as the first member of several compound Hebrew proper names—such as Abner, father of light; Abiezer, father of help; etc.By a process which it is not difficult to conceive, the idea of a natural father became modified into that of author, cause, source (as when it is said, 'has the rain a father?'—Job 38:28). So that, in course of time, the original meaning was so far modified that the word was sometimes applied to a woman, as in Abigail, father of joy.
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Ab is the Chaldee name of that month which is the fifth of the ecclesiastical and eleventh of the civil year of the Jews. It commenced with the new moon of our August, and always had 30 days. This month is preeminent in the Jewish calendar as the period of the most signal national calamities. The 1st is memorable for the death of Aaron (Numbers 33:38). The 9th is the date assigned to the following events:—the declaration that no one then adult, except Joshua and Caleb, should enter into the Promised Land (Numbers 14:30); the destruction of the first Temple by Nebuchadnezzar (to these first two 'the fast of the fifth month,' in Zechariah 7:5; Zechariah 8:19, is supposed to refer); the destruction of the second Temple by Titus; the devastation of the city Bettar, and the slaughter of Ben Cozîbah (Bar Cocâb), and of several thousand Jews there; and the plowing up of the foundations of the Temple by Turnus Rufus—the two last of which happened in the time of Hadrian.
The 9th of the month is observed by the Jews as a fast, in commemoration of the destruction of the first Temple: the 15th is the day appointed for the festival of the wood-offering, in which the wood for the burnt-offering was stored up in the court of the Temple: to which Nehemiah alludes in Nehemiah 10:34, and Nehemiah 13:31. Lastly, the 18th is a fast in the memory of the western lamp going out in the Temple in the time of Ahaz (2 Chronicles 29:7, where the extinction of the lamps is mentioned as a part of Ahaz's attempts to suppress the Temple service). For an inquiry into what is meant by the western or evening lamp, see the article Candlestick.
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John Kitto was an English biblical scholar of Cornish descent.Born in Plymouth, John Kitto was a sickly child, son of a Cornish stonemason. The drunkenness of his father and the poverty of his family meant that much of his childhood was spent in the workhouse. He had no more than three years of erratic and interrupted education. At the age of twelve John Kitto fell on his head from a rooftop, and became totally and permanently deaf. As a young man he suffered further tragedies, disappointments and much loneliness. His height was 4 ft 8 in, and his accident left him with an impaired sense of balance. He found consolation in browsing at bookstalls and reading any books that came his way.
From these hardships he was rescued by friends who became aware of his mental abilities and encouraged him to write topical articles for local newspapers, arranging eventually for him to work as an assistant in a local library. Here he continued to educate himself.
One of his benefactors was the Exeter dentist Anthony Norris Groves, who in 1824 offered him employment as a dental assistant. Living with the Groves family, Kitto was profoundly influenced by the practical Christian faith of his employer. In 1829 he accompanied Groves on his pioneering mission to Baghdad and served as tutor to Groves's two sons. In 1833 Kitto returned to England via Constantinople, accompanied by another member of the Groves mission, Francis William Newman. Shortly afterwards he married, and in due course had several children.
A London publisher asked Kitto to write up his travel journals for a series of articles in the Penny Magazine, a publication read at that time by a million people in Britain, reprinted in America and translated into French, German and Dutch. Other writing projects followed as readers enquired about his experiences in the East amidst people living in circumstances closely resembling those of Bible times.
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