In the first period of their history the Hebrews led an unsettled pastoral life, such as we still find among many Oriental tribes. One great object of the Mosaical polity was to turn them from this condition into that of fixed cultivators of the soil. Pasturage was, however, only discouraged as a condition of life unfriendly to settled habits and institutions, and not as a pursuit connected with agriculture. Hence, although in later times the principal attention of the Hebrews was given to agriculture, the tending of sheep and cattle was not at any time neglected.
The shepherds who move about with their flocks from one pasture-ground to another, according to the demands of the season, the state of the herbage, and the supply of water, are called nomads—that is, not merely shepherds, but wandering shepherds. They feed their flocks on the 'commons,' or the deserts and wildernesses, which no settled or cultivating people have appropriated. At first, no pastoral tribe can have any particular property in such tracts of ground in preference to another tribe; but, in the end, a particular tract becomes appropriated to someone tribe, or section of a tribe, either from long occupation, or from digging wells therein. According to the ideas of the East, the digging of a well is so meritorious an act, that he who performs it acquires a property in the waste-lands around. In the time of the patriarchs, Palestine was but thinly peopled by the Canaanites, and offered many such tracts of unappropriated grounds fit for pasturage. In these they fed their flocks, without establishing any exclusive claims to the soil, until they proceeded to dig wells, which, being considered as an act of appropriation, was opposed by some of the inhabitants (). After the conquest of Canaan, those Israelites who possessed large flocks and herds sent them out, under the care of shepherds, into the 'wildernesses,' or commons, of the east and south, where there are rich and juicy pasturages during the moist seasons of the year,;;;; .
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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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