Hit´tites or children of Heth, one of the tribes of Canaanites which occupied Palestine before the Israelites (;; ). They lived in and about Hebron; and Abraham, when he abode in that neighborhood, was treated by them with respect and consideration (; ). This intimacy led to Esau's marriage with two women of this nation, to the grief and annoyance of his parents (; ). The Hittites are described in , along with the Amorites, as 'dwelling in the mountains,' that is, in what were afterwards called 'the mountains of Judah,' of which Hebron was the chief town. Uriah, who had the high honor of being one of David's thirty 'worthies,' is called a Hittite (;; ). He was, doubtless, a proselyte, and probably descended from several generations of proselytes; but the fact shows that Canaanitish blood was in itself no bar to advancement in the court and army of David. Solomon subjected the remaining Hittites to the same tribute of bond-service as the other remnants of the Canaanite nations (). Of all these the Hittites appear to have been the most important, and to have been under a king of their own: for 'the kings of the Hittites' are, in , coupled with the kings of Syria as purchasers of the chariots which Solomon imported from Egypt. The Hittites were still present in Palestine as a distinct people after the Exile, and are named among the alien tribes with whom the returned Israelites contracted those marriages which Ezra urged, and Nehemiah compelled, them to dissolve (, etc.; comp. ). After this we hear no more of the Hittites, who probably lost their national identity by intermixture with the neighboring tribes or nations.
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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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