This word, which we have adopted from the Greek, has, in its literal sense, the harmless meaning of 'bed-keeper,' i.e. one who has the charge of beds and bed-chambers; but as only persons deprived of their virility have, from the most ancient times, been employed in Oriental harems, and as such persons are employed almost exclusively in this kind of service, the word 'bed-keeper' became synonymous with 'castratus.' In fact there are few eastern languages in which the condition of those persons is more directly expressed than by the name of some post or station in which they are usually found. The admission to the recesses of the harem, which is in fact the domestic establishment of the prince, gives the eunuchs such peculiar advantages of access to the royal ear and person, as often enables them to exercise an important influence, and to rise to stations of great trust and power in Eastern courts. Hence it would seem that, in Egypt, for instance, the word which indicated an eunuch was applied to any court officer, whether a castratus or not (; ).
Authority would be superfluous in proof of a matter of such common knowledge as the employment of eunuchs, and especially of black eunuchs, in the courts and harems of the ancient and modern East. A noble law, which, however, evinces the prevalence of the custom prior to Moses, made castration illegal among the Jews (; ). But the Hebrew princes did not choose to understand this law as interdicting the use of those who had been made eunuchs by others; for that they had them, and that they were sometimes, if not generally, blacks, and that the chief of them was regarded as holding an important and influential post, appears from;;;;;;; . Samuel was aware that eunuchs would not fail to be employed in a regal court; for he thus forewarns the people, 'He (the king) will take the tenth of your seed and of your vineyard, and give to his eunuchs [A.V. 'officers'] and to his servants' ().
Under these circumstances, the eunuchs were probably obtained from a great distance, and at an expense which must have limited their employment to the royal establishment: and this is very much the case even at present.
In , the term 'eunuch' is applied figuratively to persons naturally impotent. In the same verse mention is also made of persons 'who have made themselves eunuchs for the kingdom of heaven's sake;' which is a manifestly hyperbolical description of such as lived in voluntary abstinence (comp. ); although painful examples have occurred (as in the case of Origen) of a disposition to interpret the phrase too literally.
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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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