Abi´athar (Father of abundance), the tenth high-priest of the Jews, and fourth in descent from Eli. When his father, the high-priest Abimelech, was slain with the priests at Nob, for suspected partiality to the fugitive David, Abiathar escaped the massacre; and bearing with him the most essential part of the priestly raiment, the ephod [PRIEST], repaired to the son of Jesse, who was then in the cave of Adullam (1 Samuel 22:20-23; 1 Samuel 23:6). He was well received by David, and became the priest of the party during its wanderings. As such he sought and received for David responses from God. When David became king of Judah, he made Abiathar high-priest. Meanwhile Zadok had been appointed high-priest by Saul, and continued to act in this capacity while Abiathar was high-priest in Judah. The appointment of Zadok was not only unexceptionable in itself, but was in accordance with the divine sentence of deposition which had been passed upon the house of Eli (1 Samuel 2:30-36). When, therefore, David acquired the kingdom of Israel, he had no just ground on which Zadok could be removed, and Abiathar set in his place; and the attempt to do so would probably have been offensive to his new subjects. The king got over this difficulty by allowing both appointments to stand; and until the end of David's reign Zadok and Abiathar were joint high-priests. As high-priest Abiathar must have been perfectly aware of the divine intention that Solomon should be the successor of David: he was therefore the least excusable, in some respects, of all those who were parties in the attempt to raise Adonijah to the throne. So his conduct seems to have been viewed by Solomon, who, in deposing him from the high-priesthood, plainly told him that only his sacerdotal character, and his former services to David, preserved him from death. This deposition of Abiathar completed the doom long before denounced upon the house of Eli, who was of the line of Ithamar, the younger son of Aaron. Zadok, who remained the high-priest, was of the elder line of Eleazer (1 Kings 1:7; 1 Kings 1:19; 1 Kings 2:26-27).
This Encyclopedia of Biblical Literature is a 6 volume set in 1 book. It has over 2Read More
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.
Wikipedia