Caper´naum, a city on the north western side of the Lake of Gennesareth, and on the border of the tribes of Zebulun and Naphtali. The infidelity and impenitence of the inhabitants of this place, after the evidence given to them by our Savior himself of the truth of his mission, brought upon them this heavy denunciation—'And thou, Capernaum, which art exalted unto heaven, shalt be brought down to hell: for if the mighty works which have been done in thee had been done in Sodom, it would have remained unto this day,' etc. (). This seems to have been more than any other place the residence of Christ after He commenced His great mission; and hence the force of the denunciation, which has been so completely accomplished, that even the site of Capernaum is quite uncertain. Dr. Robinson is inclined to look for the site in a place marked only by a mound of ruins, called by the Arabs, Khan Minyeh. This is situated in the fertile plain on the western border of the Lake of Gennesareth, to which the name of 'the land of Gennesareth' is given by Josephus. This plain is a sort of triangular hollow, formed by the retreat of the mountains about the middle of the western shore. In this plain there are now two fountains, one called 'Ain el Madauwarah, the 'Round Fountain'—another called 'Ain et-Tin, near the northern extremity of the plain, and not far from the lake. This is the fountain which Dr. Robinson inclines to regard as that which Josephus mentions under the name of Capharnaum; and which we may conclude was not far from the town, and took its name from it. Near this fountain is a low mound of ruins, occupying a considerable circumference, which certainly offer the best probability that has yet been produced of being the remains of the doomed city: and if these be all its remains, it has, according to that doom, been brought low indeed.
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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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