Tibe´rias is a small town situated about the middle of the western bank of the Lake of Gennesareth; according to Joliffe, about twenty English miles from Nazareth and ninety from Jerusalem. Tiberias was chiefly built by the tetrarch Herodes Antipas, and called by him after the Emperor Tiberius.
From the time of Herodes Antipas to the commencement of the reign of Herodes Agrippa II, Tiberias was the principal city of the province. It was one of the four cities which Nero added to the kingdom of Agrippa. Sepphoris and Tiberias were the largest cities of Galilee. In the last Jewish war the fortifications of Tiberias were an important military station.
According to Josephus, the inhabitants of Tiberias derived their maintenance chiefly from the navigation of the Lake of Gennesareth, and from its fisheries. After the destruction of Jerusalem Tiberias was celebrated during several centuries for its famous Rabbinical academy.
Not far from Tiberias, in the immediate neighborhood of the town of Emmaus, were warm mineral springs, whose celebrated baths are sometimes spoken of as belonging to Tiberias itself. These springs contain sulfur, salt, and iron; and were employed for medicinal purposes.
According to Joliffe (Travels, pp. 48-49, sq.), the modern Tabaria has about four thousand inhabitants, a considerable part of whom are Jews.
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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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