Considerable obscurity attends the use of this word in the English Version, which arises from the translators having merged the various meanings of the same original word, and even of several different words, in one common term 'generation.' The following instances seem to require the original words to be understood in some or other of their derivative senses—, 'These are the generations,' rather 'origin,' 'history,' etc. The same Greek words, , are rendered 'genealogy,' etc., by recent translators: Campbell has 'lineage.' , 'The book of the generations' is properly a family register, a history of Adam. The same words, , mean a history of Jacob and his descendants; so also , and elsewhere. , 'In this generation' is evidently 'in this age.' , 'In the fourth generation' is an instance of the word in the sense of a certain assigned period. , 'The generation of his fathers' Gesenius renders 'the dwelling of his fathers,' i.e. the grave, and adduces . , 'The generation of thy children' is 'class,' 'order,' 'description;' as in . , 'Who shall declare his generation?' Lowth renders 'manner of life.' Michaelis renders it 'Where was the providence that cared for his life?' Gesenius and Rosenmüller, 'Who of his contemporaries reflected?' Seiler, 'Who can describe his length of life?' In the New Testament, , it is a series of persons, a succession from the same stock. , is well rendered by Doddridge and others 'brood of vipers.' , means the generation or persons then living contemporary with Christ. , 'in their generations,' etc. wiser in regard to their dealings with the men of their generation. , is 'a chosen people.' The ancient Greeks, and, if we may credit Herodotus and Diodorus Siculus, the Egyptians also, assigned a certain period to a generation. The Greeks reckoned three generations for every hundred years, i.e.33¼ years to each. This is nearly the present computation. The ancient Hebrews also reckoned by the generation, and assigned different spaces of time to it at different periods of their history. In the time of Abraham it was one hundred years (comp. , 'in the fourth generation they shall come hither'). This is explained in , and in , to be four hundred years. Caleb was fourth in descent from Judah, and Moses and Aaron were fourth from Levi. In , Moses uses the term for thirty-eight years. In later times it clearly means ten years. In , it means a single descent from father to son [].
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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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