Riddle, literally, 'something intricate or complicated.' An example of a riddle occurs in , where Samson proposes to the thirty young Philistines who attended his nuptials, an enigma, derived from the circumstance of his having lately found a swarm of bees and honey in the skeleton of the lion, which he had killed some months before, when he had come to espouse his wife. This riddle or enigma, though unfair in regard to those who accepted the pledge to unravel it, because they were ignorant of the particular fact by the knowledge of which alone it could be explained by them, nevertheless answers to the approved definition of an enigma, as consisting of an artful and abstruse proposition, put in obscure, ambiguous, and even contrary terms, in order to exercise the ingenuity of others in finding out its meaning.
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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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