Zo´ar a town originally called Bala, and one of the five cities of the plain of Siddim. It was doomed with the rest to destruction, but spared at the intercession of Lot as a place to which he might escape. He alleged the smallness of the city as a ground for asking this favor; and hence the place acquired the name of Zoar, or 'smallness' (; ; ; ; ; ). It is only again mentioned in ; ; ; which passages indicate that it belonged to the Moabites, and was a place of some consequence. Eusebius and Jerome describe it as having in their day many inhabitants, and a Roman garrison. Stephen of Byzantium calls it a large village and fortress. In the Ecclesiastical Notitia it is mentioned as the seat of a bishop of the Third Palestine, down to the centuries preceding the Crusades. The Crusaders seem to have found it under the name of Segor, and they describe the place as pleasantly situated, with many palm-trees. Dr. Robinson supposes that it must have lain on the east of the Dead Sea, and he thinks that Irby and Mangles have rightly fixed its position at the mouth of the Wady Kerak, at the point where the latter opens upon the isthmus of the long peninsula which stands out from the eastern shore of the lake towards its southern end. At this point Irby and Mangles discovered the remains of an ancient town. Here 'stones that have been used in building, though for the most part unknown, are strewed over a great surface of uneven ground, and mixed with bricks and pottery. This appearance continues without interruption, during the space of at least half a mile, quite down to the plain, so that it would seem to have been a place of considerable extent. We noticed one column, and we found a pretty specimen of antique variegated glass. It may possibly be the site of the ancient Zoar' (Travels, p. 448).
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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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