Proseucha, a word signifying 'prayer,' and always so translated in the Authorized Version. It is, however, applied, per meton., to a place of prayer—a place where assemblies for prayer were held, whether a building or not. In this sense it seems also to be mentioned in , where the words rendered by our translators, 'in prayer to God,' might rather signify, 'in an oratory of God,' or a place that was devoted to his service, especially for prayer. In the same sense the phrase must, still more certainly, be understood in , where the Syriac has, 'because there was perceived to be a house of prayer;' and the Arabic, 'a certain place which was supposed to be a place of prayer.' That there really were such places of devotion among the Jews is unquestionable. They were mostly outside those towns in which there were no synagogues, because the laws or their administrators would not admit any. They appear to have been usually situated near a river, or the sea-shore, for the convenience of ablution (Joseph. Antiq. xiv. 10, 23). Sometimes the proseucha was a large building, as that at Tiberias (l. c. § 54), so that the name was sometimes applied even to synagogues. But, for the most part, the proseuchae appear to have been places in the open air, in a grove, or in shrubberies, or even under a tree, although always, as we may presume, near water, for the convenience of those ablutions which with the Jews always preceded prayer.
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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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