One who acts as the less or inferior agent, in obedience or subservience to another, or who serves, officiates, etc., as distinguished from the master or superior. In the Old Testament the term is applied to Joshua as the minister of Moses (), and to Elisha as the minister to Elijah (). Persons thus designated sometimes succeeded to the office of their principal, as did Joshua and Elisha. The word is applied to the angels,; comp.;; and also to the Jews in their capacity as a sacred nation, 'Men shall call you the ministers of our God' (); and to the priests (;;; ). In the New Testament the term is applied to Christian teachers,;; and to Christ,; to the collectors of the Roman tribute, in consequence of the divine authority of political government, 'they are God's ministers.' The word diakonos, 'minister,' is applied to Christian teachers,;;;;; to false teachers,; to Christ,;;; to heathen magistrates,; in all which passages it has the sense of a minister, assistant, or servant in general, as in; but it means a particular sort of minister, 'a deacon,' in;; . Another word similarly rendered is applied to Christian ministers,;; . The word denotes, in , the attendant in a synagogue who handed the volume to the reader, and returned it to its place. In it is applied to 'John whose surname was Mark,' in his capacity as an attendant or assistant on Barnabas and Saul. It primarily signifies an under-rower on board a galley, of the class who used the longest oars, and consequently performed the severest duty, as distinguished from the rower upon the upper bench of the three, and from the sailors or the marines: hence in general a hand, agent, minister, attendant, etc.
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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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