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isbe[1601]='Bondage`bon\'-daj: Used in two senses in Scripture, a literal and a metaphorical sense.<P>(1) In the former sense it refers<P>(a) to the condition of the Hebrews (\'abhodhah) in Egypt (<a onClick="return mV(\'Exd\',1,14);">Ex 1:14</a> the King James Version; <a onClick="return mV(\'Exd\',2,23);">Ex 2:23</a> and often) which is frequently called "the house of bondage" ("slaves," \'abhadhim), <a onClick="return mV(\'Exd\',13,3,14);">Ex 13:3, 14</a>; <a onClick="return mV(\'Exd\',20,2);">20:2</a>; <a onClick="return mV(\'Deu\',5,6);">De 5:6</a> and often. It also refers to the condition of the Hebrews in Babylonia (<a onClick="return mV(\'Isa\',14,3);">Isa 14:3</a>, the King James Version) and in Persia (<a onClick="return mV(\'Ezr\',9,8);">Ezr 9:8</a>f), where a slightly different form of the same root (\'abhedhuth) is used in the original. In both these cases the bondage was not so much personal as national. As a rule individuals were not subject to individuals, but the whole Hebrew people were subject to the Egyptian, Babylonian and the Persian states. They were forced to labor on public works, and otherwise, and were denied their own freedom when the exigencies of state seemed to demand it. The former word \'abhodhah is also used in <a onClick="return mV(\'Neh\',5,18);">Ne 5:18</a> as descriptive of the subject and depressed conditions of the Hebrews in Palestine during the earlier years after their return from captivity, when they were still living under Persian suzerainty.<P>(b) The word bondage (\'abhadhim) is also used to describe the slavery into which the poor Jews were being forced by their more prosperous brethren in the earlier years under the Persians in Palestine (<a onClick="return mV(\'Neh\',5,5);">Ne 5:5</a>). Here true personal, though temporary, slavery is meant.<P>(c) Marriage is once referred to as a bondage (<a onClick="return mV(\'1Cr\',7,15);">1Co 7:15</a>) (verb douloo).<P>(2) It is used in the metaphorical sense only in New Testament. he douleia, "bondage," is the power of physical corruption as against the freedom of life (<a onClick="return mV(\'Rom\',8,21);">Ro 8:21</a>), the power of fear as over against the confidence of Christian faith (<a onClick="return mV(\'Rom\',8,15);">Ro 8:15</a>; <a onClick="return mV(\'Hbr\',2,15);">Heb 2:15</a>), and especially is it the bondage of the letter, of the elements, of a ceremonial and institutional salvation which must be scrupulously and painfully observed, as contrasted with the freedom of the sons of God, emancipated by faith in Jesus Christ. This bondage is a peculiarly Pauline idea since he was fighting for Christian freedom (<a onClick="return mV(\'Gal\',2,4);">Ga 2:4</a>; <a onClick="return mV(\'Gal\',4,3,9,24,25);">4:3, 9, 24-25</a>; <a onClick="return mV(\'Gal\',5,1);">5:1</a>). In <a onClick="return mV(\'2Pe\',2,19);">2Pe 2:19</a> the idea is essentially different. Libertinism, masquerading under the name of freedom, is branded as bondage, in contrast with the true freedom of righteous living.`<a href="./study/isbe/search.html?string=SLAVERY">SLAVERY</a>`114';
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isbe[1602]='Bondmaid`bond\'-mad: Occurs but three times in the King James Version (<a onClick="return mV(\'Lev\',19,20);">Le 19:20</a>; <a onClick="return mV(\'Lev\',25,44);">25:44</a>; <a onClick="return mV(\'Gal\',4,22);">Ga 4:22</a> (the Revised Version (British and American) "handmaid")). The first instance is that of Hebrew girl who has by birth, purchase or otherwise come into temporary slavery. The word here is shiphchah. It occurs often in the Old Testament, but is elsewhere translated "maid," "handmaid," "woman servant," "maidservant," etc. The other instance (<a onClick="return mV(\'Lev\',25,44);">Le 25:44</a>) refers to foreign slave girls and has different word, \'amah, which also occurs number of times, but is elsewhere translated "handmaid," etc. The New Testament instance (<a onClick="return mV(\'Gal\',4,22);">Ga 4:22</a>) refers to Hagar, Abraham\'s Egyptian slave girl. The original word paidiske, occurs several other times, but in the King James Version is elsewhere translated "maid," "damsel," etc. It means a slave girl.`<a href="./study/isbe/search.html?string=SLAVERY">SLAVERY</a>`114';
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isbe[1603]='Bondman`bond\'-man: One of the translations of the word \'ebhedh, very common in the Old Testament. It refers to the ordinary slave, either foreign (<a onClick="return mV(\'Gen\',43,18);">Ge 43:18</a>; <a onClick="return mV(\'Gen\',44,9,33);">44:9, 33</a>; <a onClick="return mV(\'Lev\',25,44,46);">Le 25:44, 46</a>) or Hebrew (<a onClick="return mV(\'Lev\',25,42);">Le 25:42</a>; <a onClick="return mV(\'2Ki\',4,1);">2Ki 4:1</a>). Hebrews were forbidden to enslave Hebrews, but did it nevertheless. It also refers to the Israelites in the bondage of Egypt (<a onClick="return mV(\'Deu\',15,15);">De 15:15</a>, and often), and in the exile of Babylonia (<a onClick="return mV(\'Ezr\',9,9);">Ezr 9:9</a>). The intended treatment of the men of Judah in Samaria (<a onClick="return mV(\'2Ch\',28,10);">2Ch 28:10</a>) was apparently to sell them into ordinary slavery or bondage. The word is used once in the New Testament (<a onClick="return mV(\'Rev\',6,15);">Re 6:15</a>) to translate doulos, where it evidently means a slave in contrast with a freeman.`<a href="./study/isbe/search.html?string=SLAVERY">SLAVERY</a>`114';
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isbe[1604]='Bondservant`bond\'-sur-vant: Appears only once in the King James Version (<a onClick="return mV(\'Lev\',25,39);">Le 25:39</a>) where it translates \'ebhedh, "a slave": "Thou shalt not cause him to render the service of a bondservant" or slave. the Revised Version (British and American) frequently uses bondservant (doulos) instead of the word "servant" of the King James Version (<a onClick="return mV(\'Jhn\',8,34,35);">Joh 8:34-35</a>; <a onClick="return mV(\'1Cr\',7,21);">1Co 7:21</a>; <a onClick="return mV(\'Gal\',4,7);">Ga 4:7</a>).`<a href="./study/isbe/search.html?string=SLAVERY">SLAVERY</a>`1';
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isbe[1605]='Bone; Bones`bon (\'etsem, \'otsem; Aramaic gerem, by extension used for "bony frame," "body," "strength," <a onClick="return mV(\'Psa\',35,10);">Ps 35:10</a>; "the whole man"; <a onClick="return mV(\'Luk\',24,39);">Lu 24:39</a>, "flesh and bones" = the solid and tangible framework of the body; figuratively the substance, the idea of a thing, the thing, per se): Figurative: Very often we find the use of these words in metaphorical phrases, in which a disease or a discomfort of the body denotes certain emotions or mental attitudes. Thus the expression "rottenness of the bones" (<a onClick="return mV(\'Pro\',12,4);">Pr 12:4</a>; <a onClick="return mV(\'Pro\',14,30);">14:30</a>) signifies the feelings of a man whose wife causes him shame and confusion, or is equivalent to "envy," "jealousy." The translation of the Septuagint in these passages by skolex, "worm," and ses, "maggot," "moth," is incorrect. The same phrase is used in <a onClick="return mV(\'Hab\',3,16);">Hab 3:16</a> for utter dejectedness through the anticipation of approaching evil. Similarly the "shaking of the bones" (<a onClick="return mV(\'Job\',4,14);">Job 4:14</a>) is expressive of fear, and denotes dejection and sadness in <a onClick="return mV(\'Jer\',23,9);">Jer 23:9</a>. The "burning of the bones" is found as a symptom of J ob\'s disease (<a onClick="return mV(\'Job\',30,30);">Job 30:30</a>), and stands for grief, depression of spirits in <a onClick="return mV(\'Psa\',102,3);">Ps 102:3</a> and <a onClick="return mV(\'Lam\',1,13);">La 1:13</a>, and also for the feeling of Jeremiah, when he attempted to hold back the Divine message (<a onClick="return mV(\'Jer\',20,9);">Jer 20:9</a>), while "dryness of bones" (<a onClick="return mV(\'Pro\',17,22);">Pr 17:22</a>) is the opposite of "good health." Other similar expressions of mental distress are the "piercing of the bones" (<a onClick="return mV(\'Job\',30,17);">Job 30:17</a>), the bones are "troubled" (<a onClick="return mV(\'Psa\',6,2);">Ps 6:2</a>), "out of joint" (<a onClick="return mV(\'Psa\',22,14);">Ps 22:14</a>), "consumed" (<a onClick="return mV(\'Psa\',31,10);">Ps 31:10</a> the King James Version), "wasted away" or "waxed old" (<a onClick="return mV(\'Psa\',32,3);">Ps 32:3</a>), "broken" (<a onClick="return mV(\'Psa\',51,8);">Ps 51:8</a>; <a onClick="return mV(\'Lam\',3,4);">La 3:4</a>), "ill at rest" (<a onClick="return mV(\'Psa\',38,3);">Ps 38:3</a>), "bone of my bones," etc. (<a onClick="return mV(\'Gen\',2,23);">Ge 2:23</a>), having the same nature, and the nearest relation (<a onClick="return mV(\'2Sa\',5,1);">2Sa 5:1</a>) and affection (<a onClick="return mV(\'Eph\',5,30);">Eph 5:30</a>). In the last-mentioned passage, the Revised Version (British and American) omits "of his flesh, and of his bones" as an interpolation from <a onClick="return mV(\'Gen\',2,23);">Ge 2:23</a>. The figs. in <a onClick="return mV(\'Mic\',3,2,3);">Mic 3:2-3</a> are expressive of the most cruel oppression and murder.``106';
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isbe[1606]='Bonnet`bon\'-et: In the King James Version the designation of the special headdress of the rank and file of the priesthood, the Revised Version (British and American) "head-tire" (<a onClick="return mV(\'Exd\',28,40);">Ex 28:40</a>). It consisted of a long swath of fine white linen wound around the head in oriental fashion. The Hebrew word found in <a onClick="return mV(\'Exd\',29,9);">Ex 29:9</a> the Revised Version (British and American), "to bind head-tires," literally "to wind head-tires," means, in the light of usage, "to form an egg-shaped turban." Compare Josephus, Ant, III, vii, 3; and see Rich, Dict. Roman and Greek Ant, under the word pileus, for illustration of the egg- shaped cap of Ulysses, with which Jerome compared the priestly turban.`<a href="./study/isbe/search.html?string=DRESS">DRESS</a>; <a href="./study/isbe/search.html?string=MITRE">MITRE</a>`1';
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isbe[1607]='Book`book (cepher; he biblos):<P>1. Definition<P>2. Inward Books<P>3. Publication<P class="in15">(1) Mechanical Copies<P class="in15">(2) Personal Copies<P>4. Oral Transmission<P>5. Manuscripts<P class="in15">(1) Epigraphy<P class="in15">(2) Sphragistics<P class="in15">(3) Numismatics<P class="in15">(4) Diplomatics<P class="in15">(5) Paleography<P>6. Printed Books<P>7. Variations<P>8. Textual Criticism<P>9. Higher Criticism<P>10. Literary Criticism<P>11. Origin of New Forms<P>12. Survival<P>13. Book Collections<P>14. Early History of Books in Bible Lands<P>LITERATURE</b><hr /><P>A book is any record of thought in words. It consists of a fixed form of words embodied in some kind of substance.<P>1. Definition:<P>The form of words is the main factor, but it has no existence without the record. The kind of record is indifferent; it may be carved on stone, stamped on clay, written or printed on vellum, papyrus or paper, or only stamped on the mind of author or hearer, if so be it keeps the words in fixed form. Looked on as a form of words the book is called a work, and looked on as a record it is called a volume, document, inscription, etc., as the case may be; but neither volume nor work has any real existence as book save as united.<P>The Biblical words for book, both Greek and Hebrew, oscillate in meaning (as they do in all languages) between the two elements, the form of words and the material form. The common words for book in the New Testament, from which too the word "Bible" comes, refer back to the papyrus plant or the material on which the book is written, just as the English word "book" was long supposed to be derived from the beech tree, on whose bark the book was written. The usual word in the Hebrew of the Old Testament (cepher) may possibly refer to the act of writing, just as the Greek word grammata and the English "writings" do, but more likely, as its other meanings of "numbering" and "narration" or even "missive" indicate, it refers neither to the material nor to the writing process but to the literary work itself. It suggests at least the fact that the earliest books were, indeed, books of tallies. The knot-books and various notchbook tallies are true books. In the King James\' version the "word" (dabhar) is sometimes translated book, and, althoug h changed in these places in the Revised Version (British and American) to "acts" or "deeds," it was nevertheless quite properly translated a book, just as the "word" in Greek is used for book, and indeed in English when the Bible is called the Word. Besides these terms commonly translated book in the English Versions of the Bible, various book forms are referred to in the Bible as roll or volume (which is the same in origin), tablet, and perhaps rock inscription (<a onClick="return mV(\'Job\',19,23,24);">Job 19:23-24</a>).<P>The fact that the Bible is a book, or indeed a library of many kinds of books, makes necessary that to approach its study one should have some systematic idea of the nature of the book; the origin of new forms and their survival, oral and manuscript transmission, the nature of the inward book and the various kinds of inward books. Apart from the matter of general archaeological use for historical interpretation, the questions of inspiration, the incarnate, creative, and indwelling word and many other doctrines are wholly bound up with this question of the nature of the book, and many phrases, such as the Book of Life, can hardly be understood without knowing with some degree of clearness what a book is.<P>The archaeology, text criticism and higher criticism of the past few years have revolutionized book history and theory in their respective fields. Above all the young science of experimental psychology has, in its short life, contributed more even than the others to an understanding of the book and The Book, the word of God and the Word of God, the Bible and Jesus Christ.<P>2. Inward Books:<P>Modern experimental psychology by its study of inward images, inward speech, inward writings and other kinds of inward book forms has, in particular, thrown on Biblical inspiration, higher criticism and text criticism and the various aspects of the doctrine of the word, an unexpected light. Inward books, it appears, are not only real, but of many kinds, visual and auditory, oral and written, sensory and motor, and these different kinds have perhaps a material basis and local habitation in different parts of the brain. At least they have real existence; they are real records which preserve a fixed form of words, to be brought out of the recesses of the mind from time to time for re-shaping, re-study or utterance. (See Dittrich, Sprachpsychologie, 1903; LeRoy, Le langage, Paris, 1905; Van Ginneken, Principes de linguistique psychol., 1907; A. Marty, Untersuch. Sprachphilosophie, 1908; Macnamara, Human Speech, 1909; the classical work is Wundt, Volkerpsychologie: Die Sprache, Leipzig, 1900.)<P>Inward books may be originals or copies. Every book is, to begin with, inward. Men sometimes speak of an autograph as the "original," but it is in fact only a first-hand copy of the original, which is inward, and never by any chance becomes or can become outward. Besides these originals there are also inward copies of the books of others. The fact that a book may be memorized is no new thing, but the analysis of the process is. It seems that a book may be inwardly copied through eye or ear or touch or any sense from some outward book; or again it may be copied back and forth within, from sense copy to motor copy, from visual to oral, auditory to inward writing. In reading aloud the visual image is copied over into oral; in taking dictation the auditory image is copied over into inward writing. Many men, even in reading from print, cannot understand unless they translate as they go into oral images or even move their lips. Many others either hearing or reading a French book, e.g. have to translate inwardly into English and have in the end two memory copies, one French and one English, both of which may be recalled. In whatever way they are recorded, these memory impressions are real copies of outward books, and in the case of tribal medicine men, Vedic priests, the ancient minstrels, village gossips, and professional story-tellers of all kinds, the inward collection of books may become a veritable library.<P>3. Publication:<P>The end for which a book is created is in general to reach another mind. This means the utterance or copying into some outward material and the re-copying by another into memory. The commonest modes of utterance are oral speech and writing; but there are many others, some appealing to eye, some to ear, some to touch: e.g. gesture language of the Indian and the deaf mute, pressure signs for the blind and deaf, signal codes, drum language, the telegraph click, etc. If the persons to be reached are few, a single oral speech or manuscript may be enough to supply all needs of publication, but if there are very many the speech or writing must somehow be multiplied. This may be done by the author himself. Blind Homer, it is alleged, repeated the Iliad in many cities; and the modern political orator may repeat the same speech several times in the same evening to different audiences. So too the author may, as many Latin writers did, copy out several autographs. If the audience is still too great to be reached by authors\' utterances, the aid of heralds, minstrels, scribes and the printing- press must be called in to copy from the autographs or other author\'s utterances; and in case of need more help yet is called in, copies made from these copies, and copies again, and so on to perhaps hundreds of copyings. This process may be represented as x plus x1 plus x2 plus x3 plus xn where x = an original, x1 a first-hand copy of author\'s utterance, x2 a second-hand copy, x3 a third-hand, etc.<P>Books may thus be divided into originals, first-hand or authors\' copies and re-copies. Re-copies in turn whether at second-, third-, fourth- or nth-hand, may be either mechanical or personal, according as the copy is direct from outward material to outward material or from the outward material to a human memory.<P>(1) Mechanical Copies:<P>Mechanical copies include photographic copies of manuscripts, or of the lips in speaking, or of gesture, or any other form of utterance which may be photographed. They include also phonographic records, telegraph records, and any other mechanical records of sound or other forms of utterance. Besides photographic and phonographic processes, mechanical copies include founding, stamping by seal or die, stereographic, electrotype, stencil, gelatine pad and printing-press processes, any processes, in short, which do not pass via the human mind, but direct from copy to copy by material means. They do not include composition in movable types or by type-setting machines, typewriting machines and the like, which, like writing, require the interposition of a human mind. These mechanical copies are subject to defects of material, but are free from psychological defects and error, and defect of material is practically negligible.<P>(2) Personal Copies:<P>Personal copies include inward copies, or memory books, and the re-uttered copies from these copies, to which latter class belong all copied manuscripts. The memory copy may be by eye from writing, or from the lips of a speaker in the case of the deaf. Or it may be by ear from oral speech, telegraph key, drum or other sound utterances. Or it may be again from touch, as in the case of finger-tip lip-reading or the reading of raised characters by the blind. Each of these kinds may perhaps be located in a different part of the mind or brain, and its molecular substratum may be as different from other kinds of inward record as a wave of light is different from a wave of sound, or a photograph from the wax roll of a phonograph; but whatever the form or nature, it somehow records a certain fixed form of words which is substantially equivalent to the original. This memory copy, unlike the mechanical copy, is liable to substantial error. This may arise from defects of sense or of the inward processes of record and it is nearly always present. Why this need be so is one of the mysteries of human nature, but that it is, is one of the obvious facts; and when memory copies are reuttered there is still another crop of errors, "slips of tongue and pen," equally mysterious but equally inevitable. It comes to pass, therefore, that where oral or manuscript transmission exists, there is sure to be a double crop of errors between the successive outward copies. When thus a form of words is frequently re-copied or reprinted via the human mind the resulting book becomes more and more unlike the original as to its form of words, until in the late manuscript copies of early works there may often be thousands of variations from the original. Even an inspired revelation would thus be subject to at least one and perhaps two or three sets of errors from copying before it reached even the autograph stage.<P>4. Oral Transmission:<P>Before the knowledge of handwriting became general, oral publication was usual, and it is still not uncommon. The king\'s laws and proclamations, the works of poets and historians, and the sacred books were in ancient times published orally by heralds and minstrels and prophets; and these primitive publishers are survived still by town criers, actors, reciters, and Scripture readers.<P>Up to the point of the first impression on another mind, oral publication has many advantages. The impression is generally more vivid, and the voice conveys many nice shades of feeling through inflection, stress, and the delicate variations in tone quality which cannot be expressed in writing. When it comes to transmission, however, oral tradition tends to rapid deterioration with each re-copy. It is true that such transmission may be quite exact with enough painstaking and repetition; thus the modern stage affords many examples of actors with large and exact repertories, and the Vedas were, it is alleged, handed down for centuries by a rigidly trained body of memorizers. The memorizing of Confucian books by Chinese students and of the Koran by Moslem students is very exact. Nevertheless, exact transmission orally is rare, and exists only under strictly artificial conditions. Ear impressions, to begin with, tend to be less exact than eye impressions, in any event, because they depend on a brief sense impression, while in reading the eye lingers until the matter is understood. Moreover, the memory copy is not fixed and tends to fade away rapidly; unless very rigidly guarded and frequently repeated it soon breaks up its verbal form. This is readily seen by the great variety in the related legends of closely related tribes; and in modern times in the tales of village gossips and after-dinner stories, which soon lose their fixed verbal form, save as to the main point.<P>There is great difference of opinion as to the part which oral transmission played in the composition of the Old Testament. The prevailing theory of the higher critics of the 19th century made this the prime factor of transmission to at earliest the 8th century BC, but the recent remarkable revelations of archaeology regarding the use of written documents in Palestine at the time of the Exodus and before has changed the situation somewhat. The still more recent developments as to the Semitic character of Palestine before the invasion of the Israelites, together with the growing evidence of the prevailing use of handwriting all over Palestine by not later than the 9th century, point in the same direction. It is now even asserted (Clay, Amorites) that the Semitic wave was from the north rather than the south, in which case the only possible ground for ascribing illiteracy to the Hebrews at the time of the conquest, and therefore exclusive oral tradition, would be removed.<P>Whatever may be the facts, it may be said with some definiteness that theory which implies two sets of traditions, handed down for several centuries and retaining a considerable amount of verbal likeness, implies written tradition, not oral, for no popular tradition keeps identical verbal forms for so long a time, and there is little ground for supposing artificial transmission by professional memorizers. The schools of the prophets might, indeed, have served as such, but there is no evidence that they did; and it would have been curious if, writing being within easy reach, this should have been done. As in almost all literatures, it is far more likely that the popular traditions are derived from and refreshed by literary sources, than that literature was compiled from traditions with long oral transmission.<P>Biblical references to oral publication are found in the references to heralds (see under the word), to Solomon\'s wisdom as "spoken" (<a onClick="return mV(\'1Ki\',4,\'32-34\');">1Ki 4:32-34</a>), proclamations and edicts, the public reading of the law in the Old Testament, and the reading in the synagogue in the New Testament. All the oracles, "thus saith the Lord" and "the word of Yahweh," to Moses, etc., and all allusions to preaching the word, belong to this class of oral publication and transmission. A direct allusion to oral transmission is found in <a onClick="return mV(\'Psa\',44,1);">Ps 44:1</a>, "We have heard with our ears, O God, our fathers have told us."<P>5. Manuscripts:<P>The distinction of handwriting as against oral utterance lies first in the permanence of the record, but it has also a curious psychological advantage over speech. The latter reaches the mind through hearing one letter at a time as uttered. With writing, on the other hand, the eye grasps three to six letters at a time, and takes in words as wholes instead of spelling them out. The ear always lags, therefore, the eye anticipates, although it may also linger if it needs to. While therefore impressions from hearing may perhaps be deeper, one may gather many more in the same time from reading.<P>When it comes to transmission, the advantage of handwriting is obvious. In the first place, even the poorest ink hardly fades as rapidly as memory. Then at best few men reach a hundred years, and therefore no memory, copy, while on the other hand the limit to the life of writing has never been reached. We have writings that have lasted 6,000 years, at least; while if the Palermo stone, e.g. had been orally transmitted it must needs have passed through some 200 copyists at least, each producing two sets of errors. The advantage of manuscript transmission over oral tradition in its permanence is thus very great. It is true, of course, that in the case of fragile material like papyrus, paper, or even leather, transmission ordinarily implies many re-copyings and corresponding corruption, but even at worst these will be very much better than the best popular oral tradition.<P>In the broad sense manuscripts include all kinds of written books without regard to material, form or instruments used. In the narrowest sense they are limited to rolls and codices, i.e. to literary manuscripts. Inscriptions are properly written matter engraved or inscribed on hard material. Documents, whether private letters or official records, are characteristically folded in pliable material. Literary works again are usually rolls or else codices, which latter is the usual form of the printed books as well. These three classes of written books have their corresponding sciences in epigraphy, diplomatics and paleography.<P>(1) Epigraphy:<P>Epigraphy has to do primarily with inscriptions set up for record in public places. These include published laws, inscriptions, biographical memorials like the modern gravestone inscriptions and those on memorial statues, battle monuments and the like. It includes also votive inscriptions, inscriptions on gems, jewels, weights and measures, weapons, utensils, etc. Seals and coins from all points of view belong here and form another division under printing. These have their own sciences in numismatics and sphragistics. The chief Biblical reference is to the "tables of stone" (<a onClick="return mV(\'Exd\',24,12);">Ex 24:12</a>).<P>See <a href="./study/isbe/search.html?string=TABLE">TABLE</A>; <a href="./study/isbe/search.html?string=ALPHABET">ALPHABET</A>; <a href="./study/isbe/search.html?string=WEIGHT">WEIGHT</A>; <a href="./study/isbe/search.html?string=WRITING">WRITING</A>; etc.<P>(See Lidzbarski, Handb. nordsemit. Epigr., 1898-.)<P>(2) Sphragistics:<P>Sphragistics is the science of seals. Scripture references to the seal or signet (<a onClick="return mV(\'Gen\',38,18);">Ge 38:18</a>; <a onClick="return mV(\'Job\',38,14);">Job 38:14</a>; <a onClick="return mV(\'Rev\',5,1);">Re 5:1</a>; etc.) are many.<P>See <a href="./study/isbe/search.html?string=SEAL">SEAL</a>; <a href="./study/isbe/search.html?string=SIGNET">SIGNET</a>.<P>(3) Numismatics:<P>Numismatics has to do with inscriptions on coins and medals, and is becoming one of the greatest sources of our knowledge of ancient history, especially on account of the aid derived from coins in the matter of dating, and because of the vast quantity of them discovered.<P>See <a href="./study/isbe/search.html?string=MONEY">MONEY</a>.<P>(4) Diplomatics:<P>Diplomatics, or the science of documents, has to do with contracts of sale and purchase (<a onClick="return mV(\'Jer\',3,8);">Jer 3:8</a>; <a onClick="return mV(\'Jer\',32,14);">32:14</a>), bills of divorce (<a onClick="return mV(\'Deu\',24,1);">De 24:1</a>) and certificates of all sorts of the nature of those registered in the modern public records. These may be on clay tablets, as in Babylonia and the neighboring regions, or on ostraca as found especially in Egypt, but everywhere in the ancient Mediterranean world, and notably for Biblical history, in Samaria, as discovered by the Harvard expedition. Multitudes of the Egyptian papyri discovered in modern times are of this character as well as the Italian papyri until papyrus was succeeded by vellum. Many are also found on wax, gold, silver, brass, lead tablets, etc.<P>See <a href="./study/isbe/search.html?string=LETTERS">LETTERS</a>; <a href="./study/isbe/search.html?string=OSTRACA">OSTRACA</a>; <a href="./study/isbe/search.html?string=PAPYRUS">PAPYRUS</a>.<P>(5) Paleography:<P>Paleography has to do with volumes or books of considerable bulk, chiefly. It has, therefore, to do mainly with literary works of all sorts, but it shades into diplomatics when official documents, such as collections of laws (e.g. Deuteronomy), treatises, such as the famous treaty between the Hittites and Egypt, and modern leases are of such bulk as to be best transmitted in volume form. It has to do chiefly with the clay tablets, papyrus, leather, vellum and paper volumes. The clay tablet is mentioned in the Old Testament at various points (see <a href="./study/isbe/search.html?string=TABLET">TABLE</a>T), the roll in both Old Testament and New Testament (see <a href="./study/isbe/search.html?string=ROLL">ROLL</a>). The leather roll is the traditional form for the Hebrew Scriptures up to the present day, although the codex or modern volume form had been invented before the conclusion of the New Testament, and the earliest extant copies are in this form. The books of the Old Testament and New Testament were all probably first written on rolls. For the different methods of producing these var ious forms<6D>graving, casting, pressing, pen and ink, etc., see <a href="./study/isbe/search.html?string=WRITING">WRITING</a>.<P>6. Printed Books:<P>Printing differs from writing chiefly in being executed in two dimensions. In writing, a chisel or brush or pen follows a continuous or interrupted line, while printing stamps, a letter or a part of a letter, a line, a page, or many pages at a stroke. The die, the wedge for clay tablets, seals, molds, xylographic plates, as well as the typewriter, movable type or electrotype plates, etc., belong properly to printing rather than writing. The wedge stamp, or single-letter die, the typewriter, the matrix and movable type form, however, a sort of transition between the pen point and the printing-press in that they follow letter after letter. Coins and seals, on the other hand, differ little from true printing save in the lengths of the writings; Babylonian seals and the rotary press are one in principle. Sphragistics, or the science of seals, and numismatics, or the science of coins, medals, etc., belong thus with printing from this point of view, but are more commonly and conveniently classed with epigraphy, on the principle that they depend on the light and shade of incision or relief in one color as distinguished from the color contrasts of ink or paint. Printed books include the xylographic process of Chinese and early European printing, page and form printing from movable type, and all electrotype, stencil, gelatine pad, etc., processes.<P>The advantage of printing over writing is in the more rapid multiplication of copies, and still more in the accuracy of the copies. The first setting in movable type is as liable to error as any written copy, but all impressions from this are wholly without textual variations. For printed editions of the Bible see <a href="./study/isbe/search.html?string=TEXT+AND+MANUSCRIPTS+OF+THE+NEW+TESTAMENT">TEXT AND MANUSCRIPTS OF THE NEW TESTAMENT</a>; <a href="./study/isbe/search.html?string=TEXT+OF+THE+OLD+TESTAMENT">TEXT OF THE OLD TESTAMENT</a>; <a href="./study/isbe/search.html?string=VERSIONS">VERSIONS</a>, etc.<p>7. Variations:<P>In the natural process of transmission all reprints in movable type, manuscripts or oral repetitions accumulate variations with each re-copying. These are, in general, errors, and the process is one of degeneration. In oral transmission the average error with each generation is very great, and it is only with incredible pains that the best copies are made equal to even the average manuscript, which in turn at its best only equals the first type-set copy. The same expenditure of care on this type-set copy produces thousands of copies in printing where it produces one in manuscript. The phonograph, the typewriter, type-bar composition, photographic and electrotype methods have reduced the average error in modern books to a very low point. But even after incredible pains on the part of the authors and professional proofreaders, the offered reward of a guinea for each detected error in the Oxford revised version of the Bible brought several errors to light. This version is however about as nearly free from textual error as any large book ever made, and millions of copies of it are now printed wholly without textual variation.<P>But textual errors are not the only variations. It often happens that the author or someone else undertakes to correct the errors and makes substitutions or additions of one sort or another. The result is a revised edition, which is, in general, an improvement, or evolution upward. Variations are thus of two kinds: involuntary and intentional, corresponding pretty well with the words "copies" and "editions" of a work.<P>Strictly speaking, every book with intentional changes is a new work, but colloquially it is counted the "same work" until the changes become so great that the resemblance of the form of words to the original is hard to recognize. It is a common thing for a work to be edited and reedited under a certain author\'s name (Herzog), then become known by the joint name of the author and editor (Herzog-Plitt or Schaff-Herzog), and finally become known under the name of the latest editor (Hauck). In this case it is often described for a time on a title-page as "founded" on its predecessor, but generally the original author\'s name is dropped from the title-page altogether when no great portions retain the original verbal form. All editions of a work are recognized in common use in some sense as new works; and in the bookshop or library a man is careful to specify the latest edition of Smith, or Brown\'s edition of Smith, to avoid getting the older and outdated original work.<P>Sometimes the original work and the additions, corrections, explanations, etc., are kept quite separate and distinct<63>additional matter being given in manuscripts in the margins, or between lines, and in printed books as footnotes or in brackets or parentheses. This is commonly the case with the text-and-comment editions of Biblical books and great writers. Sometimes, as often in ancient manuscripts, it happens in copying that what were marginal and interlinear notes become run in as an undistinguished part of the text and, still more often, what was indicated as quotation in an original work loses its indications and becomes an undistinguished part of the work. In the case of the paraphrase the comment is intentionally run in with the words of the text; and most editors of scientific works likewise make no attempt to distinguish between the original matter and additions by another hand, the whole responsibility being thrown forward on the editor. Sometimes the original work itself to begin with is largely made up of quotation, or is a mere compilation or collection of works in which the "originality" is confined to title-page or preface or even a mere title, as in the case of the Old Testament, the New Testament, and the Bible, and the order of arrangement of parts.<P>Almost all books are thus composite. Even in a manuscript copy of a manuscript, or an oral repetition of an oral tale, two human minds have contributed to the net result, and the work of each may perhaps be distinguished from that of the other. In the case of a new edition by the same author, the result is still composite<74>a new work composed of old and new material. With all new editions by other authors the compositeness increases until, e.g. an edition of the Bible with textual variants and select comments from various writers becomes the combined work of thousands of writers, each distinguished as to his work from all the rest by his name or some symbol.<P>The work proper or work unchanged, save for involuntary error, includes thus copies, translates, abridgments, selections and quotations; the revised work or work with voluntary changes includes editions and paraphrases (which are simply texts with commentary run into the text), digests, redactions, etc., and perhaps compilations.<P>These two kinds of variations give rise to the two sciences of text-criticism and higher or historical criticism. The former distinguishes all accidental errors of transmission, the latter all the voluntary changes; the former aims to reconstruct the original, the latter to separate in any given book between the work of the original and each editor.<P>In this connection it must not be forgotten that the original itself may be a composite work<72>containing long quotations, made up wholly of selections or even made up of whole works bound together by a mere title. In these cases textual criticism restores not the original of each, but the original text of the whole, while higher criticism takes up the task of separating out the elements first of later editions and redactions of this original, then of the original itself.<P>8. Textual Criticism:<P>The involuntary variations of manuscripts or oral tradition give rise to the science of text-criticism. The point of the science is to reconstruct exactly the original form of words or text. Formerly the method for this was a mere balancing of probabilities, but since Tregelles it has become a rigid logical process which traces copies to their near ancestors, and these in turn farther back, until a genealogical tree has been formed of actual descent. The law of this is in effect that "like variations point to a common ancestor," the biological law of "homology," and if the groupings reveal as many as three independent lines of copies from the original, the correct text can be constructed with mathematical precision, since the readings of two lines will always be right against the third<72>granting a very small margin of error in the psychological tendency of habit in a scribe to repeat the same error. The method proceeds<P>(1) to describe all variations of each manuscript (or equally of each oral or printed copy) from the standard text;<P>(2) to group the manuscripts which have the most pronounced variations;<P>(3) to unite these groups on the principle of homology into larger and larger groups until authors\' utterances have been reached and through these the inward original. The results are expressed in a text and variants<74>the text being a corrected copy of the original, and the variants showing the exact contribution of each copyist to the manuscripts which he produced.<P>It is carefully to be remembered that text-criticism proper has only to do with a particular form of words. Every translation or edition is a separate problem complete in itself when the very words used by translator and the editor have been reconstructed. These may in turn be useful in reconstructing the original, but care must be had not to amend, translate or edition from the original, and the original in turn, when it contains quotations from other writers, must not be amended from the originals of these writers. The task of textual criticism is to set forth each man\'s words<64>each original author, each copyist, each translator, each editor, just as his words were<72>no more and no less.<P>See <a href="./study/isbe/search.html?string=TEXT+OF+THE+OLD+TESTAMENT">TEXT OF THE OLD TESTAMENT</a>; <a href="./study/isbe/search.html?string=TEXT+AND+MANUSCRIPTS+OF+THE+NEW+TESTAMENT">TEXT AND MANUSCRIPTS OF THE NEW TESTAMENT</a>.<P>9. Higher Criticism:<P>Higher criticism has to do with voluntary variations or variations in subject-matter. Like text-criticism it has to do with distinguishing the share of each of several cooperators in a composite work; and like it higher criticism traces the contributions of various authors each to its source. It differs, however, in dealing with original matter. While the variations by officious scribes, or intelligent scribes who correct spelling, grammar, wrong dates and the like, come pretty closely into the region of editing, and on the other hand the redactor is sometimes little more than an officious copyist, still the line of involuntary and voluntary change holds good, whether it be the grafting into an original work by the author of many quotations, or the grafting onto the work by others of the work of themselves or of other authors. It is not the business of the textual critic to separate out either of these (it is expressly his business not to), although his work may greatly help and even furnish results which can be used automatically. The whole of this double field of composite authorship belongs to higher criticism.<P>In the case of most modern works the task of the higher critic is a simple one. Quotation marks, a growing ethical feeling against plagiarism, the mechanical conveniences of typographical display, and the like, all contribute to a careful separation of the work of each contributor. Nevertheless, in many cases as, for example, in the editing of textbooks and newspapers, this is not regarded. While the signed article in the encyclopedia is now nearly universal, the signed review more and more common, the signed editorial is still rare, and the others by no means universal. It is still a matter of interest to many to pick out by his "style" the author of an unsigned article, review or editorial<61>which is higher criticism.<P>In ancient literature, where there were few such mechanical conveniences in discriminating, and little or no conscience had been developed about incorporating anything which suited the purpose of the writer in part or as a whole, the result was often a complete patchwork of verbal forms of many writers. The task of higher criticism is to sort out the original and each of its literary variants, and to trace these variants to their originals. The net result in the case of any work does not differ much from an ordinary modern work with quotation marks and footnotes referring to the sources of the quotations. It restores, so to speak, the punctuation and footnotes which the author omitted or later copyists lost. It includes many nice questions of discrimination through style and the historical connection of the fragments with the works from which they were taken; and after these have been analyzed out, many nice questions also of tracing their authorship or at least the time, place and environment of their composition. It includes thus the questions of superhuman authorship and inspiration.<P>10. Literary Criticism:<P>Literary criticism has to do with originals as originals, or, in composite works, the original parts of originals. An original work may include quotations from others or be mainly quotations, and its "originality" consists in part in the way these quotations are introduced and used. By "original," however, is meant in the main new verbal forms. The original work must not plagiarize nor even use stereotyped phrases, although it may introduce proverbs or idiomatic phrases. In general, however, originality means that literary food has been digested<65>reduced to its chemical elements of word or briefest phrase and rebuilt into a wholly new structure in the mind. The building in of old doorways and ornaments may be a part of the literary architect\'s originality, but they themselves were not "original" with him.<P>The literary critic has thus to do with a man\'s originality<74>the contribution that he has made to the subject, the peculiar quality of this in its fitness to influence other minds which is effected by the "reaction of the whole personality," all his learning and emotional experience, on every part of his material<61>what in short we call style. This involves a judgment or comparison with all other works on the same subject as to its contribution of new matter and its readability.<P>11. Origin of New Forms:<P>The chief problems of book science may be described in the words of biological science as<P>(1) the origin of new forms,<P>(2) survival.<P>The question of the origin of a new literary work and its survival is so like that of the origin of a new species and its survival that it may be regarded less as analogy than as falling under the same laws of variations, multiplication, heredity and natural selection. The origin of variant forms of the same original through involuntary and voluntary changes has been traced above up to the point where editorial variants overwhelm the original and a new author\'s name takes the place of the old. After this step has been taken it is a new work, and at bottom the origin of all new works is much the same. The process is most clearly seen in treatises of some branch of science, say physics. A general treatise, say on Heat, is published, giving the state of knowledge on the subject at that time. Then monographs begin to be produced. The monograph may and generally does include, in bibliographical or historical outline, the substance of previous works, and in every event it implies the previous total. The point of the monograph itself is, however, not the summary of common knowledge but the contribution that it makes, or, in the language of natural science, the "useful variant" of the subject which it produces. After some accumulation of these monographs, or useful variants of previous treatises, some author gathers them together and unites them with previous treatises into a new general treatise or textbook, which is in effect the latest previous treatise with all variants developed in the meantime.<P>In either case a permanent new form has been produced<65>the old common knowledge with a difference, and the process goes on again: the new work is multiplied by publication into many like individuals; these like individuals develop each its variations; the variations in the same direction unite in some new accepted fact, idea or law, expressed in a monograph; common knowledge with this new variation forms a new general work which again is multiplied, and so on.<P>And what is true of scientific monographs is just as true in substance of literature, of oral tradition and of the whole history of ideas. It is the perpetual putting together of variations experienced two or more times by one individual or one or more times each by two or more individuals, with the common body of our ideas, and producing thus a new fixed form. Popular proverbs, for example, and all poetry, fiction and the like, come thus to sum up a long human experience.<P>And carrying the matter still farther back, what is true of the scientific book and of poetry and of folk-literature, is true also of the inward evolution of every thought, even those phrased for conversation or indeed for self-communion<6F>it is the result of a series of variations and integrations. The workings of the scientist\'s mind in producing a contribution and the workings of the farmer\'s mind in evolving a shrewd maxim, are alike the result of a long series of these observations, variations and integrations. Repeated observations and the union of observations which vary in the same direction is the history of the thought process all the way along from the simplest perception of the infant, up through the ordinary thinking of the average man, to the most complex concept of the philosopher.<P>Through all the processes of inward thought and outward expression thus the same process of evolution in the production of a new form holds good: it is the synthesis of all works on a given subject (i.e. any more or less narrow field of reality), the multiplication of this synthetic work, the development of new variations in it and the reunion again of all these variations in a more comprehensive work.<P>12. Survival:<P>When it comes to the matter of the survival of a new work when it has been produced, the problem is a double one:<P>(1) the survival of the individual book, and<P>(2) the survival of the work, i.e. any copy of the original whose text does not vary so far that it may not be recognized as the "same" work.<P>The original book is in a man\'s mind and survives only so long as its author survives. In the same sense that the author dies, the individual book dies. No new book, therefore, survives its author. If, however, by survival is meant the existence of any copy, or copy of a copy of this original, containing much (but never quite) the same form of words, then the book survives in this world, in the same sense that the author survives, i.e. in its descendants; it is the difference between personal immortality and race immortality. At the same time, however, the survival of species depends on the individual. A work or a species is no metaphysical reality, but a sum total of individuals with, of course, their relations to one another.<P>On the average, the chance of long survival for any individual copy of a book is small. Every new book enters into a struggle for existence; wind and weather, wear and tear conspire to destroy it. On the whole they succeed sooner or later. Some books live longer than others, but however durable the material, and however carefully treated they may be, an autograph rarely lasts a thousand years. If survival depended on permanence of the individual, there would be no Bible and no classics.<P>The average chance of an individual book for long life depends<P>(1) on the intrinsic durability of its material, or its ability to resist hostile environment,<P>(2) on isolation.<P>The enemies to which books are exposed are various: wind, fire, moisture, mold, human negligence and vandalism, and human use. Some materials are naturally more durable than others. Stone and metal inscriptions survive better than wood or clay, vellum than papyrus or paper.<P>On the other hand, however, if isolated or protected from hostile environment, very fragile material may outlast more substantial. Papyrus has survived in the mounds of Egypt, and unbaked clay tablets in the mounds of Babylonia, while millions of stone and metal inscriptions written thousands of years later have already perished. Here the factor of isolation comes in. Fire and pillage, moth and rust and the bookworm destroy for the most part without respect of persons. It is only those books which are out of the way of destructive agencies which survive. An unbaked tablet which has survived 5,000 years under rubbish may crumble to dust in 5 years after it has been dug up and exposed to the air. This isolation may be accidental or "natural," as when tablets and papyri are preserved under ruins, but it may also be artificial and the result of human care. A third factor of survival is therefore the ability of a work to procure for itself human protection, or artificial isolation. In brief this ability is the "value" of a book to its owner. This value may lie in the material, artistic excellence, association or rarity. Any variation in the direction of value which may be expressed financially tends to preserve. In fire or shipwreck, these are the ones saved, in pillage the ones spared. They are the ones for whom fireproof buildings and special guardians are provided. An exception to this rule is when the material is more valuable for other than book purposes. In times of war the book engraved on gold or lead or paper may be melted down for coin or bullets or torn up for cartridges, while stone and vellum books are spared. The general law is, however, that value tends to preserve, and it has been remarked that all the oldest codices which have survived in free environment are sumptuous copies.<P>Literary value on the other hand is, on the whole, a factor of destruction for the individual rather than of survival. The better a book is the more it is read, and the more it is read, the faster it wears out. The worthless book on the top shelf outlasts all the rest. In cases of fire or shipwreck an owner will save books which cannot be replaced and the books most easily replaced are those with literary value. A man will sometimes save his favorite books, and does treat them often with a certain reverent care, which tends to preservation but, on the whole, literary value tends to destruction.<P>When it comes to the survival of the work or race survival, matters are reversed. Literary value is the prime factor. It is the ability of a book to get itself multiplied or re-copied which counts<74>the quality, whatever it may be, which tends to make a man wish to replace his copy when it is worn out, and to make many men wish to read the work.<P>This literary interest operates first to produce a large number of copies in order to meet the demand, each of which copies has its chance of survival. It operates also by inducing men to use the very best material, paper, ink, binding, etc., which results in giving each individual book a longer time to produce a new copy.<P>The modern newspaper published in a million copies is ephemeral, in the first place, because it is printed upon paper which cannot last, save in very favorable conditions of isolation, for more than forty or fifty years. In the second place, it is very rarely reprinted save for an occasional memorial copy. Books like the Bible or Virgil, Dante or Shakespeare, on the other hand, are reprinted in multitudes of editions and in many instances in the most permanent material that art can devise.<P>It often happens that a book is popular for a short time, but will not survive a changed environment. The newspaper is popular for a few hours, but the time environment changes and interest is gone. It sometimes happens that a book is very popular in one country and wholly fails to interest in another. Millions of copies of Uncle Tom\'s Cabin and Ben Hur were required to fill the demand of one generation where a few hundreds may suffice for the next.<P>All the time popular taste, which is only another name for average human experience, is judging a book. A book survives because it is popular<61>not necessarily because it is popular with the uneducated majority, but because it appeals continually to the average human experience of some considerable class, good or bad. Survival is, therefore, natural. Skilled critics help popular judgment, and select lists aid, but in the long run the test is simply of its correspondence with human experience; in short, it is because men "like" it that a book survives.<P>There is thus going on all the time a process of struggle and "natural selection" which in the end is a survival of the fittest in the true evolutionary sense, i.e. books survive because fitted to their environment of human experience or taste. There grows up, therefore, continually in every country a certain class of books which are counted classics. These are those which have survived their tests, and are being still further tested. Some have been tested from remote antiquity, and it is the books which survive the test of many periods of time, many kinds of geographical environment, and many varieties of intellectual environment, i.e. which appeal to many classes of readers, which are the true classics and which, on the other hand, show that they do correspond with the fundamental facts of human experience, simply because they have survived. In general it is the religious books which have survived in all nations, and the only books which have been tested in all lands and ages and appeal to Oriental and Western, ancient and modern alike, are those of the Christian Bible.<P>13. Book Collections:<P>It has been noticed above that the process of forming a new work is the bringing together of all works on the same subject in order to unite all their variations in the new work. It is for this purpose that every student brings together the working library on his specialty; it is what the librarian does when he brings together all the books on a subject for the use of students. Every man who reads up on a subject is performing the same task for himself, and likewise every man who does general reading.<P>There are few libraries, however, which attempt to get together all the books on a subject. Most libraries are select libraries containing the best books on the subject: by this is meant all books which have anything new or in short have a useful variation. This is an artificial process of the critical human mind, but in humanity in general it is going on all the time as a natural process. Men are perpetually at work choosing their "five-foot shelves," the collections of the very "best of best books." The reason for this lies in the fact that the average human mind can read and hold only a limited number of books; an unconscious process is all the time going on tending to pick out the small number of books which on the whole contain the greatest amount of human experience to the average page. The mass of world\'s books, however enormous, is thus boiled down by a natural selection to a few books, which contain the essence of all the rest. The process tends to go on in every country and every language. The most universal example is the Bible, which represents a long process of natural selection through many periods of time and considerable variety of geographical influence. It unites the quintessence of Semitic ideas with the corresponding quintessence of Indo-European ideas, each embodied in a correspondingly perfect language<67>for language itself is in the last analysis the quintessence of the experience of any people in its likeness and unlikeness to other peoples. It is therefore by the mere fact of "survival" and "natural selection" proved to be the "fittest" to survive, i.e. that which corresponds most nearly to universal human experience. Councils do not form the canon of Scripture: they simply set a seal upon a natural process. The Bible is thus the climax of evolution among books as man is among animals. It is as unique among books as man is unique among all living things.<P>See <a href="./study/isbe/search.html?string=LIBRARIES">LIBRARIES</a>.<P>14. Early History of Books in Bible Lands:<P>The history of books begins at least with the history of writing. Some of the pictures on the cave walls of the neolithic age (Dechelette, Man: Archaeol., Prehist. (1908), 201-37) seem to have the essential characteristics of books and certainly the earliest clay tablets and inscriptions do. These seem to carry back with certainty to at least 4,200 years BC. By a thousand years later, tablet books and inscriptions were common and papyrus books seem to have been well begun. Another thousand years, or some time before Hammurabi, books of many sorts were numerous. At the time of Abraham, books were common all over Egypt, Babylonia, Palestine, and the eastern Mediterranean as far at least as Crete and Asia Minor. In the time of Moses, whenever that may have been, the alphabet had perhaps been invented, books were common among all priestly and official classes, not only in Babylonia, Assyria and Egypt, but at least in two or three scores of places in Palestine, north Syria and Cyprus. In the time of D avid not only was historical, official and religious literature common in Egypt and Assyria, but poetry and fiction had been a good deal developed in the countries round about Palestine; and very soon after, if not long before, as the Moabitic, Siloam, Zkr, Zenjirli, Baal-Lebanon, Gezer and Samaritan inscriptions show, Semitic writing was common all over Palestine and its neighborhood.<P>LITERATURE.<P>Articles by Dziatzko on "Buch" and "Bibliotheken," in Pauly-Wissowa, Real-encyclopedia d. class. Altertumsw., V,5,and his Antikes Buchwesen, Leipzig,1900,are mines of material, and the bibliographical reference thorough. The rapid developments in the history of most ancient books may be followed in Hortzschansky\'s admirable annual volume, Bibliographie des Bibliotheks und Buchwesens, Leipzig, 1904ff. For a first orientation the little book of O, Wiese, Schrift und Buchwesen in alter u. neuer Zeit (3rd edition, Leipzig, 1910), or in English, the respective articles in the Encyclopedia Britannica, are perhaps best. On the scientific side the best introductions are Vol I of Iwan Muller\'s Handb. d. klass. Altertumsw. and T. Birt\'s D. antike Buchwesen (Berlin, 1882). For Biblical aspects of the Book, the best of all, and very adequate indeed, is the long article of E. von Dobschutz on the "Bible in the Church" in the Hastings\' Encyclopedia of Religion, II, 579-615, and especially on account of the bibliographical apparatus at the end of each section. These little bibliographies give a complete apparatus on many of the above subjects. Paragraphs with bibliographies on others of above topics will be found in the W. Sanday article on "Bible," just preceding.``147';
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isbe[1608]='Book of Abraham``<a href="./study/isbe/search.html?string=APOCALYPTIC+LITERATURE">APOCALYPTIC LITERATURE</a>`1';
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isbe[1609]='Book of Enoch``<a href="./study/isbe/search.html?string=ENOCH,+BOOK+OF">ENOCH, BOOK OF</a>`1';
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isbe[1610]='Book of Jubilees``<a href="./study/isbe/search.html?string=APOCALYPTIC+LITERATURE">APOCALYPTIC LITERATURE</a>; <a href="./study/isbe/search.html?string=APOCRYPHA">APOCRYPHA</a>`1';
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isbe[1611]='Book of Life`(cepher chayyim; he biblos tes zoes, "book of life"): The phrase is derived from the custom of the ancients of keeping genealogical records (<a onClick="return mV(\'Neh\',7,5,64);">Ne 7:5, 64</a>; <a onClick="return mV(\'Neh\',12,22,23);">12:22-23</a>) and of enrolling citizens for various purposes (<a onClick="return mV(\'Jer\',22,30);">Jer 22:30</a>; <a onClick="return mV(\'Eze\',13,9);">Eze 13:9</a>). So, God is represented as having a record of all who are under His special care and guardianship. To be blotted out of the Book of Life is to be cut off from God\'s favor, to suffer an untimely death, as when Moses pleads that he be blotted out of God\'s book<6F>that he might die, rather than that Israel should be destroyed (<a onClick="return mV(\'Exd\',32,32);">Ex 32:32</a>; <a onClick="return mV(\'Psa\',69,28);">Ps 69:28</a>). In the New Testament it is the record of the righteous who are to inherit eternal life (<a onClick="return mV(\'Phl\',4,3);">Php 4:3</a>; <a onClick="return mV(\'Rev\',3,5);">Re 3:5</a>; <a onClick="return mV(\'Rev\',13,8);">13:8</a>; <a onClick="return mV(\'Rev\',17,8);">17:8</a>; <a onClick="return mV(\'Rev\',21,27);">21:27</a>). In the apocalyptic writings there is the conception of a book or of books, that are in God\'s keeping, and upon which the final judgment is to be based (<a onClick="return mV(\'Dan\',7,10);">Da 7:10</a>; <a onClick="return mV(\'Dan\',12,1);">12:1</a>; <a onClick="return mV(\'Rev\',20,12,15);">Re 20:12, 15</a>; compare <span class="noTag">Book Jubilees 39:6; 19:9</span>).`<a href="./study/isbe/search.html?string=BOOK+OF+REMEMBRANCE">BOOK OF REMEMBRANCE</a>; <a href="./study/isbe/search.html?string=APOCALYPSE">APOCALYPSE</a>; <a href="./study/isbe/search.html?string=BLOT">BLOT</a>; <a href="./study/isbe/search.html?string=JUDGMENT,+LAST">JUDGMENT, LAST</a>`1';
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isbe[1612]='Book of Noah``<a href="./study/isbe/search.html?string=APOCALYPTIC+LITERATURE">APOCALYPTIC LITERATURE</a>`1';
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isbe[1613]='Book of Remembrance`re-mem\'-brans (cepher zikkdron, "book of record"): Is related in meaning to the "Book of Life." It refers to a list of the righteous, recorded in a book that lies before God (<a onClick="return mV(\'Mal\',3,16);">Mal 3:16</a>; compare <a onClick="return mV(\'Dan\',7,10);">Da 7:10</a>).`<a href="./study/isbe/search.html?string=BOOK+OF+LIFE">BOOK OF LIFE</a>`1';
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isbe[1614]='Books of Adam``<a href="./study/isbe/search.html?string=APOCALYPTIC+LITERATURE">APOCALYPTIC LITERATURE</a>; <a href="./study/isbe/search.html?string=ADAM,+BOOKS+OF">ADAM, BOOKS OF</a>`1';
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isbe[1615]='Boot`boot (ce\'on; the King James Version battle; the American Standard Revised Version "armor"; the American Revised Version, margin "boot"): The word ce\'on, found only in <a onClick="return mV(\'Isa\',9,5);">Isa 9:5 (Hebrew 4)</a>, is probably a loanword from the Assyrian senu, meaning "shoe," "sandal." The root has the same meaning in Aramaic and Ethiopic. The passage should be translated "every boot of the booted warrior."``1';
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isbe[1616]='Booth`booth, booth: The Hebrew word cukkah (rendered in the King James Version "booth" or "booths," eleven times; "tabernacle" or "tabernacles," ten times; "pavilion" or "pavilions," five times; "cottage" once) means a hut made of wattled twigs or branches (<a onClick="return mV(\'Lev\',23,42);">Le 23:42</a>; <a onClick="return mV(\'Neh\',8,15);">Ne 8:15</a>). In countries where trees are abundant such wattled structures are common as temporary buildings as they can be constructed in a very short time. Cattle were probably housed in them (<a onClick="return mV(\'Gen\',33,17);">Ge 33:17</a>). Such hurriedly-made huts were used by soldiers (<a onClick="return mV(\'2Sa\',11,11);">2Sa 11:11</a>; <a onClick="return mV(\'1Ki\',20,12);">1Ki 20:12</a>) and by harvesters<72>hence, the name feast of "booths" or "tabernacles" (see <a href="./study/isbe/search.html?string=TABERNACLES,+FEAST+OF">TABERNACLES, FEAST OF</a>). <a onClick="return mV(\'Job\',27,18);">Job 27:18</a> uses booth (parallel moth\'s house) as a symbol of impermanence. Similar huts were erected in vineyards, etc., to protect them from robbers and beasts of prey. The isolated condition of Jerusalem in the time of the prophet Isaiah is compared to a "booth in a vineyard" (<a onClick="return mV(\'Isa\',18,\'1-\');">Isa 18</a>).``103';
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isbe[1617]='Booths, Feast of``<a href="./study/isbe/search.html?string=FEASTS+AND+FASTS">FEASTS AND FASTS</a>`1';
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isbe[1618]='Booty`boot\'-i (baz and baz): "Booty" is the translation of baz or baz, usually rendered "prey" and "spoil" (<a onClick="return mV(\'Jer\',49,32);">Jer 49:32</a>); of malqoach, "prey," "booty" (<a onClick="return mV(\'Num\',31,32);">Nu 31:32</a>, "the booty<74>the rest of the prey," the Revised Version (British and American) "the prey, over and above the booty," baz); of meshiccah, "spoil" (<a onClick="return mV(\'Hab\',2,7);">Hab 2:7</a>; <a onClick="return mV(\'Zep\',1,13);">Ze 1:13</a>; the Revised Version (British and American) "spoil"); of opheleia, "gain" (2Macc 8:20). "Booty respects what is of personal service to the captor; spoils whatever serves to designate his triumph; prey includes whatever gratifies the appetite and is to be consumed" (Crabb, English Synonymes). Persons (for slaves, etc.) might be part of the booty.`<a href="./study/isbe/search.html?string=SPOIL">SPOIL</a>`185';
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isbe[1619]='Booz`bo\'-oz (TR, Booz; Westcott and Hort, The New Testament in Greek, Boes): the King James Version, Greek form of Boaz (thus, the Revised Version (British and American)) (<a onClick="return mV(\'Mat\',1,5);">Mt 1:5</a>; <a onClick="return mV(\'Luk\',3,32);">Lu 3:32</a>).``1';
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isbe[1620]='Bor-Ashan`bor-ash\'-an: A correction of the Massoretic Text in the American Standard Revised Version in <a onClick="return mV(\'1Sa\',30,30);">1Sa 30:30</a> for the King James Version "Chor-ashan" and the English Revised Version "Cor-ashan." Probably the same as <a href="./study/isbe/search.html?string=ASHAN">ASHAN</a> (<a onClick="return mV(\'Jos\',15,42);">Jos 15:42</a>; <a onClick="return mV(\'1Ch\',4,32);">1Ch 4:32</a>; <a onClick="return mV(\'1Ch\',6,59);">6:59</a>), which see.``1';
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isbe[1621]='Border; Borders`bor\'-der: Indicating in both singular and plural the outlines or territory of a country. In the sense of "limits," "boundaries" or "territory," it occurs as a translation of gebhul (and its feminine gebhulah, in <a onClick="return mV(\'Psa\',74,17);">Ps 74:17</a>) in numerous passages in Old Testament, especially in Joshua. yerekhdh = "the flank," "the side," "the coast," hence, "the border" occurs in <a onClick="return mV(\'Gen\',49,13);">Ge 49:13</a>; qatseh = "an extremity" "brim," "brink," "edge" (<a onClick="return mV(\'Exd\',16,35);">Ex 16:35</a>; <a onClick="return mV(\'Exd\',19,12);">19:12</a>; <a onClick="return mV(\'Jos\',4,19);">Jos 4:19</a>); micgereth = something enclosing, i.e. "a margin" (<a onClick="return mV(\'Exd\',37,12,14);">Ex 37:12, 14</a>; <a onClick="return mV(\'1Ki\',7,28);">1Ki 7:28</a>f; <a onClick="return mV(\'1Ki\',7,31);">31</a>f; <a onClick="return mV(\'1Ki\',7,35);">35</a>f the King James Version; <a onClick="return mV(\'2Ki\',16,17);">2Ki 16:17</a> the King James Version); saphah or sepheth = "the lip" (as a natural boundary) hence, "a margin" "brim," "brink," "edge" (<a onClick="return mV(\'Exd\',28,26);">Ex 28:26</a>; <a onClick="return mV(\'Exd\',39,19);">39:19</a> the King James Version); qets = "an extremity" "end" (<a onClick="return mV(\'2Ki\',19,23);">2Ki 19:23</a> the King James Version); totsa\'ah = "exit," hence, "boundary" (<a onClick="return mV(\'1Ch\',5,16);">1Ch 5:16</a>); tor = "a succession" "a string" "row," hence, "border" (<a onClick="return mV(\'Sgs\',1,11);">So 1:11</a> the King James Version); yadh = "hand," used in a great variety of applications, both literally and figuratively, proximate and remote; but how it should be translated with "border" in <a onClick="return mV(\'1Ch\',7,29);">1Ch 7:29</a> is not clear; better would be: "in the hands of the children of Manasseh." Three Greek words occur for the idea: kraspedon = "a margin," "fringe" (<a onClick="return mV(\'Mat\',23,5);">Mt 23:5</a>; <a onClick="return mV(\'Mar\',6,56);">Mr 6:56</a>; <a onClick="return mV(\'Luk\',8,44);">Lu 8:44</a>); horion = "a limit," "a boundary line" (<a onClick="return mV(\'Mat\',4,13);">Mt 4:13</a>); methorios = "contiguous" (neuter plural as noun, "frontier," "border" in <a onClick="return mV(\'Mar\',7,24);">Mr 7:24</a>).``77';
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isbe[1622]='Borderer`bor\'-der-er (parakeimenous): One who dwells on the borders or confines of a country. Only in 2Macc 9:25, "The princes that are borderers and neighbors unto my kingdom."``1';
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isbe[1623]='Bore`bor: According to the Book of the Covenant (<a onClick="return mV(\'Exd\',20,\'20-\');">Ex 20:20-23:33</a>) a slave whom his master had purchased was to be released after six years. Should he choose to remain in his master\'s service a religious ceremony was necessary to ratify his decision. "Then his master shall bring him unto God" (better than "unto the judges" of the King James Version), "and shall bring him to the door, or unto the doorpost; and his master shall bore his ear through with an awl" (<a onClick="return mV(\'Exd\',21,6);">Ex 21:6</a>). It is highly improbable that "unto God" means "to a sanctuary"; for there was no special reason for performing this ceremony near the door of a sanctuary. On the other hand the entrance to a private house was a sacred spot. According to primitive thinking near the door dwelt the household gods whose function it was to guard the house and its occupants, e.g. against the entry of disease. It was natural that the ceremony of attaching the slave permanently to the master\'s household should be performed in the presence of the household gods. "The boring of the ear of slaves was a common practice in antiquity, possibly to symbolize the duty of obedience, as the ear was the organ of hearing" (Bennett). The Deuteronomist (<a onClick="return mV(\'Deu\',15,17);">De 15:17</a>) rejects the religious aspect of the ceremony<6E>probably as a relic of Canaanite religion<6F>and looks upon it as a secular and symbolical operation. According to his view, the awl was thrust through the ear of the slave to the door. The slave in question was permanently attached to the household.``103';
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isbe[1624]='Borith`bo\'-rith: Mentioned in the genealogical table which traces the descent of Esdras (Ezra) from Aaron (2Esdras 1:2). In 1Esdras 8:2, his name appears as <a href="./study/isbe/search.html?string=BOCCAS">BOCCAS</a> (which see), and in <a onClick="return mV(\'1Ch\',6,5,51);">1Ch 6:5, 51</a>; <a onClick="return mV(\'Ezr\',7,4);">Ezr 7:4</a>, <a href="./study/isbe/search.html?string=BUKKI">BUKKI</a> (which see).``1';
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isbe[1625]='Born``<a href="./study/isbe/search.html?string=BEAR;+BORN">BEAR, BORN</a>`1';
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isbe[1626]='Born Again``<a href="./study/isbe/search.html?string=REGENERATION">REGENERATION</a>`1';
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isbe[1627]='Borne``<a href="./study/isbe/search.html?string=BORN">BORN</a>`1';
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isbe[1628]='Borrowing`bor\'-o-ing:<P>(1) In the Old Testament period loans were not of a commercial nature, i.e. they were not granted to enable a man to start or run a business. They were really a form of charity, and were made by the lender only to meet the pressure of poverty. To the borrower they were esteemed a form of misfortune (<a onClick="return mV(\'Deu\',28,12);">De 28:12</a>f), and by the lender a form of beneficence. Hence, the tone of the Mosaic legislation on the subject.<P>(2) Laying interest upon the poor of Israel was forbidden in all the codes (see <a onClick="return mV(\'Exd\',22,25);">Ex 22:25</a> (JE); <a onClick="return mV(\'Deu\',23,19);">De 23:19</a>; <a onClick="return mV(\'Lev\',25,36);">Le 25:36</a> H), because it was looked upon as making unwarranted profit out of a brother\'s distress: "If thou lend money to any of my people with thee that is poor, thou shalt not be to him as a creditor; neither shall ye lay upon him interest...and it shall come to pass, when he crieth unto me, that I will hear; for I am gracious."<P>(3) The Law, however, allowed interest to be taken of a foreigner, or non-Jew (<a onClick="return mV(\'Deu\',23,20);">De 23:20</a>: "Unto a foreigner thou mayest lend upon interest"; compare <a onClick="return mV(\'Deu\',15,3);">De 15:3</a>); and even among Jews pledges were allowed under limitations, or taken against the law (<a onClick="return mV(\'Deu\',24,10);">De 24:10</a>; compare <a onClick="return mV(\'Job\',24,2,3);">Job 24:2-3</a> "There are that remove the landmarks...they take the widow\'s ox for a pledge"). In <a onClick="return mV(\'Deu\',15,1);">De 15:1</a>ff there is a remarkable law providing a "release" by the creditor every "seven years," a "letting drop of loans" (see Driver in the place cited.). In <a onClick="return mV(\'Exd\',3,22);">Ex 3:22</a>, the King James Version "shall borrow" is rendered "shall ask" in the Revised Version (British and American).``47';
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isbe[1629]='Boscath`bos\'-kath.`<a href="./study/isbe/search.html?string=BOZKATH">BOZKATH</a>`1';
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isbe[1630]='Bosom`booz\'-um: In the ordinary signification of the anterior upper portion of the trunk of the body, choq or cheq, "inlet", "lap" (<a onClick="return mV(\'Exd\',4,6,7);">Ex 4:6-7</a>; <a onClick="return mV(\'Num\',11,12);">Nu 11:12</a>; <a onClick="return mV(\'Deu\',13,6);">De 13:6</a>; <a onClick="return mV(\'Deu\',28,54,56);">28:54, 56</a>; <a onClick="return mV(\'Rth\',4,16);">Ru 4:16</a>; <a onClick="return mV(\'Psa\',74,11);">Ps 74:11</a>; <a onClick="return mV(\'Isa\',65,6,7);">Isa 65:6-7</a>; <a onClick="return mV(\'Lam\',2,12);">La 2:12</a>). "A present in the bosom" (<a onClick="return mV(\'Pro\',21,14);">Pr 21:14</a>): bribes carried ready for use in the fold of the robe. chetsen = "bosom" (with special reference to that portion of the body which is between the arms), occurs in <a onClick="return mV(\'Psa\',129,7);">Ps 129:7</a>; chobh = "a cherisher," hence, "the bosom" (<a onClick="return mV(\'Job\',31,33);">Job 31:33</a>); tsallachath = something advanced or deep, "a bowl"; figurative "the bosom" (<a onClick="return mV(\'Pro\',19,24);">Pr 19:24</a> the King James Version; <a onClick="return mV(\'Pro\',26,15);">Pr 26:15</a> the King James Version). The Greek employs kolpos (<a onClick="return mV(\'Luk\',6,38);">Lu 6:38</a>; <a onClick="return mV(\'Jhn\',13,23);">Joh 13:23</a>). For <a href="./study/isbe/search.html?string=ABRAHAM\'S BOSOM">Abraham\'s bosom</A>, see separate article.<P>Figurative: In a figurative sense it denotes intimacy and unrestrained intercourse (<a onClick="return mV(\'Gen\',16,5);">Ge 16:5</a>; <a onClick="return mV(\'2Sa\',12,8);">2Sa 12:8</a>); tender care and watchfulness (<a onClick="return mV(\'Isa\',40,11);">Isa 40:11</a>); closest intimacy and most perfect knowledge (<a onClick="return mV(\'Jhn\',1,18);">Joh 1:18</a>); "into their bosom" (<a onClick="return mV(\'Psa\',79,12);">Ps 79:12</a>) indicates the bosom as the seat of thought and reflection.``77';
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isbe[1631]='Bosom, Abraham\'s`booz’-um (kolpos Abraam; kolpoi Abraam): Figurative. The expression occurs in <a onClick="return mV(\'Luk\',16,22,23);">Lu 16:22-23</a>, in the parable of the Rich Man and Lazarus, to denote the place of repose to which Lazarus was carried after his death. The figure is suggested by the practice of the guest at a feast reclining on the breast of his neighbor. Thus, John leaned on the breast of Jesus at supper (<a onClick="return mV(\'Jhn\',21,20);">Joh 21:20</a>). The rabbis divided the state after death (Sheol) into a place for the righteous and a place for the wicked (see <a href="./study/isbe/search.html?string=ESCHATOLOGY+OF+THE+OLD+TESTAMENT">ESCHATOLOGY OF THE OLD TESTAMENT</a>; <a href="./study/isbe/search.html?string=SHEOL">SHEOL</a>); but it is doubtful whether the figure of Jesus quite corresponds with this idea. "Abraham’s bosom" is not spoken of as in "Hades," but rather as distinguished from it (<a onClick="return mV(\'Luk\',16,23);">Lu 16:23</a>)<29>a place of blessedness by itself. There Abraham receives, as at a feast, the truly faithful, and admits them to closest intimacy. It may be regarded as equivalent to the "Paradise" of <a onClick="return mV(\'Luk\',23,43);">Lu 23:43</a>. See <a href="./study/isbe/search.html?string=HADES">HADES</a>; <a href="./study/isbe/search.html?string=PARADISE">PARADISE</a>.``132';
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isbe[1632]='Bosor`bo\'-sor (Bosor):<P>(1) A city named among those taken by Judas Maccabeus "in the land of Gilead" (1Macc 5:26,36). From the towns named it is evident that this phrase is elastic, covering territory beyond what is usually called the land of Gilead. Possibly therefore Bosor may be identical with Bucr el-Chariri, in the Luchf, southeast of el-Leja\'.<P>(2) In <a onClick="return mV(\'2Pe\',2,15);">2Pe 2:15</a> the King James Version, the Greek form of <a href="./study/isbe/search.html?string=BEOR">BEOR</a> (which see).``1';
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isbe[1633]='Bosora`bos\'-o-ra (Bosora): One of the strong cities of Gilead taken by Judas Maccabeus (1Macc 5:26,28). It is identical with the Roman Bostra, the city whose extensive ruins lie on the southeast border of the Hauran, on the old Roman road that runs between Der\'ah and Calkhad. The modern name is Bosra eski-Sham. It cannot be identified with <a href="./study/isbe/search.html?string=BOZRAH">BOZRAH</a> either (1) or (2), as it lies much too far north. It appears for the first time in history in the passage noted above. The ruins show it to have been a pla ce of great strength and importance. In the time of Herod the Great it was in the hands of the Nabateans. When Aulus Cornelius Palma conquered these regions, Bostra was made capital of the province under the name of Nova Trajana Bostra, in honor of the emperor Trajan. This was in 105 AD, from which year the Bostrian era was reckoned. It was taken by the Moslems under Khalid<69>"the sword of God." It resisted the attack of Baldwin III. Later it fell on evil days. Now, if it be true, as the proverb says, that "the prosperity of Bocra is the prosperity of the Chauran," the case of the latter is sad indeed.``54';
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isbe[1634]='Boss`bos: Occurs only in the plural as a translation of gabh = "arch," or "protuberance," referring to the curved ornaments of a shield (<a onClick="return mV(\'Job\',15,26);">Job 15:26</a>), the central knob of the buckler.``1';
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isbe[1635]='Botany`bot\'-a-ni.<P>1. General Characteristics of Palestinian Flora:<P>On account of the great diversity in the climatic and topographical conditions Palestine is peculiarly rich in the variety of its flora<72>the best authority, Post, distinguishes 3,500 species. The land as a whole belongs to the botanical area known as the "Mediterranean region," a region characterized climatically by very dry, hot summers and fairly mild winters. Plants here grow in spring, rest in the hot, dry season and grow again in autumn; the long-continued, scorching sunlight and the absence of water for five or six months at a time, lead to the destruction of vast quantities of seeds and young plants imported by various natural means and by human agency. Among these xerophile or drought-resisting plants, some of the most characteristic features are a thick, leathery rind admitting of little transpiration, e.g. cactus, stonecrops, etc., and the presence of bulbs, rigid stalks, or fleshy leaves, of which the flora of Palestine abounds with examples. Equally characteristic are dry, much-branched spiny trees or shrubs with scanty foliage and small leaves, such as the acacias and the thorny burnet. In connection with this last, it may be mentioned that, next to the strong sunlight and drought, the great enemy of vegetation over a great part of the "Mediterranean region"<22>emphatically so in Palestine<6E>is the goat. He is one of the most destructive of animals, and as he has for long ages been allowed to graze freely all over the hillsides, it is not wonderful that in many spots it is only plants like the thorny burnet with its powerful spines which have survived.<P>The common plants of Palestine will be referred to in order shortly, but among those especially characteristic of the whole region are the olive and the fig, the ilex oak and the bay laurel, the arbutus and the sumach.<P>2. Plants Introduced Since Bible Times:<P>A number of trees and shrubs which have been imported into this region within comparatively recent times have become so acclimatized as to be today among the most noticeable plants. Prominent among these is the well-known opuntia or prickly pear, an introduction from the continent of America; so characteristic is this of modern Palestine scenery that it is a common feature in pictures by artists who have painted Scripture scenes in the Holy Land. The common variety, Opuntia ficus- Indica with its innumera ble sharp prickles makes impenetrable hedges round many of the village gardens, while the Opuntia cochinillifera, cultivated specially round Nablus and introduced from tropical America with the cochineal insect, is almost unarmed. The American aloe (Argave Americana)<29>quite a different plant be it noted from either the <a href="./study/isbe/search.html?string=ALOES">ALOES</a> (which see) of the Bible or the well-known medicinal aloes<65>has established itself in many parts as a garden ornament and will doubtless in time become thoroughly indigenous. More important and more recent of introduction is the group of eucalypti or gum trees, of which some half-dozen varieties have been imported. As is well known, they all come from Australia, where they flourish in climatic conditions somewhat similar to those of the Mediterranean region. Seeds of eucalypti were first introduced into Europe in 1854, having been sent from Melbourne to Paris, and from that center they have found their way to all parts. The most common variety is the Eucalyptus globulus which is now to be found everywhere in the Mediterranean region. It was introduced into Palestine through the late Baron E. de Rothschild of Paris, and great plantations of it have been made specially in the neighborhood of the Jewish colonies. In the marshy plains between Sammarin and Caesarea over a million have been planted, and here, and also on the marshy shores of Lake Huleh, this tree has attained magnificent proportions. Many specimens will be found with trunks two or three feet in circumference and of a height of upward of 100 feet. This size is nothing for a eucalyptus, many of these trees attaining in their native habitat a height of 300, or even 400 ft., but time is required, and it may be that eventually many of the eucalypti of the Holy Land will also acquire giant proportions. That this group of trees has come to stay is evident. Not only in small forests such as those mentioned, but also in isolated groups all over the land they may be found. Their quick growth, fresh, evergreen foliage and their reputed health-giving properties account for their wide cultivation. Concerning this last it may be said that the virtues of the eucalyptus as a prophylactic against malaria have been much exaggerated. The most malignant cases of malaria may sometimes be found in houses shaded by eucalyptus boughs, and the Anopheles, or malarial-bearing mosquito, in such situations will be found swarming among its leaves. Probably the beneficial action of the eucalyptus is simply one of drying up marshy lands by absorbing great quantities of water into its deep-running roots.<P>Other trees which have been recently introduced but now flourish even better than the indigenous trees are the locust tree (Robinia pseudo-acacia), from America, the "Pride of India" (Melia Azedaracht) called in Arabic zinzilukt, a stranger from India, very extensively grown, the so-called "Spanish pepper tree" (Schinus molle), the Casuarina stricta from Australia, the very common ailanthus (A. glandulosus), a native of China, and many others. Of fruit trees the apricot, mulberry, orange, citron, lemon an d prickly pear have all been introduced into Syria within historic times; as have almost all the best varieties of the indigenous fruits.<P>3. Fertility and Climate in Modern and Ancient Palestine:<P>A question of great interest to Bible students is, How far has the fertility of the land altered in historic times? Two facts are important in answering this:<P>(1) The general features of the climate have been the same since the days of the patriarchs, probably since the dawn of history. We may gather this from the many Biblical references to the seasonal rain (<a onClick="return mV(\'Lev\',26,4);">Le 26:4</a>)<29>the "early" and the "latter" (e.g. <a onClick="return mV(\'Deu\',11,14);">De 11:14</a>; <a onClick="return mV(\'Jer\',5,24);">Jer 5:24</a>; <a onClick="return mV(\'Hsa\',6,3);">Ho 6:3</a>); to the frequent droughts (e.g. <a onClick="return mV(\'1Ki\',17,\')-\';">1Ki 17</a>; <a onClick="return mV(\'Amo\',4,6,7);">Am 4:6-7</a>); to the grateful mention of the "dew" (<a onClick="return mV(\'Deu\',32,2);">De 32:2</a>; <a onClick="return mV(\'2Sa\',1,21);">2Sa 1:21</a>; <a onClick="return mV(\'2Sa\',17,12);">17:12</a>; <a onClick="return mV(\'Mic\',5,7);">Mic 5:7</a>, etc.); to the repeated mention of the most characteristic products of modern Palestine<6E>the olive and fig, the vine and almond, the oak and the terebinth. It is further confirmed by the presence everywhere of the ruins of ancient terraces on the hillsides and of the "broken cisterns" which are found at every site where once cultivation flourished.<P>(2) It is undeniable that the destruction of forest and thicket all over the land has been immense during the past fifty years. The increasing demands for fires by resident Europeans and the development of steam mills, the result of European enterprise, are largely responsible. The firewood brought to Jerusalem comes from ever-increasing distances, as the wood in the neighborhood is consumed, and the destruction has been increasingly ruthless. First the branches are cut, then the trunks are leveled, and finally the very roots are dug out of the soil. At a greater distance, as for example in the once extensive forests east of the Jordan, a terrible destruction is being wrought by the charcoal burners. Thousands of sacks of charcoal arrive in Jerusalem during the autumn months, chiefly in the care of Circassian settlers in the East Jordan lands; but a similar work is pursued by other charcoal burners in the northern parts of upper Galilee. All the tree trunks are soon destroyed and then the rising branches are cut as soon as they reach any size, so that miles of country which, within the memory of many now living, were forest are now either entirely treeless or covered with nothing but brushwood. This last consists of dwarf oak, carob, terebinth, arbutus, wild olive and hawthorn<72>all capable of development into noble trees. The process having been commenced by the hand of man is assisted by the goats who crop the tender leaves and shoots, and thus keep stunted many of the bushes. Older inhabitants can remember that between Bethlehem and Hebron, where today scarcely a twig is visible, there were trees and brushwood all the way, and in the 7th century the pilgrim Arculphus writes of a pine wood as existing south of Bethlehem. This destruction is common all over the land. The only trees which have any chance of surviving are those which from their near proximity to some sacred Wely or grave, or in some case from their own traditional sanctity, have been left uninjured from motives of superstition. Such "holy" trees occur all over the land, sometimes singly, at others in groves; they may be any species of tree. Commonly they are oaks, terebinths, carob, meis (nettle tree), sidr (zizyphus) or hawthorn.<P>Besides the willful destruction of trees for firewood or charcoal another agent has in places been in operation. It is a common thing for the fellahin to clear a large area for plowing by burning all the vegetation; such fires sometimes extend far beyond the area intended (compare <a onClick="return mV(\'Psa\',83,14);">Ps 83:14</a>). There is a large and almost entirely sterile district, chiefly of bare rock, between Cafed and Jebel Jermuk in Galilee which was swept a few years ago by a raging fire which eyewitnesses state blazed for a week. The destruction of all this vegetation has led to the washing away of almost all the soil, so that now great labor would be required to make this area productive. The removal of the natural vegetation produces sterility in two ways. Firstly, whereas the deep roots of trees and shrubs support the soil even on hillsides of considerable slope, and slowly but surely cause the disintegration of the underlying rocks, while their stems and branches by accumulating decaying leaves and twigs ever make more and richer soil, so the destruction of these plants leads to the washing away of the soil by the torrential winter\'s rain, until the bare rock<63>never on the hillslopes very far from the surface<63>is laid open to the sky. Secondly, the rainfall, which was once largely absorbed by this soil, now rapidly rushes off the denuded rocks and flows away to the valleys. The consequent result of this<69>combined with the destruction of many miles of the artificial soil-surfaces of terraces<65>is that a large proportion of the rainfall which once found its way slowly through the soil to the sources of the springs<67>never very deep in Palestine<6E>now rapidly runs down the valley bottoms to the lower grounds. The whole mountain region thus suffers from drought. It is a common saying that "trees bring rain." Probably the truth is simply that vegetation modifies the climate almost entirely by retaining moisture in the soil, and in the surface air near the soil; by preventing rapid evaporation for the surface through the shade they afford, and by increasing the output of the springs in the way described above. Remove the vegetation, and the soil gradually leaves the hillsides and the rainfall is largely wasted. This is what has happened over large districts in the Holy Land, and the consequent diminution of some of the springs even within half a century has been scientifically noted.<P>While therefore, from the permanent climatic conditions, Palestine could never have been a land of verdure such, for example, as England, yet we know with certainty that its native vegetation has much diminished within the memory of many now living. But besides this, we have abundant historical evidence that at several periods it was much more productive. This is shown, for example, abundantly in the writings of Josephus, and, for later periods, in the accounts of many pilgrims. But indeed the mere fact that for many centuries Palestine had a population far greater than today is in itself a proof; for as things are, modern Palestine is not able to support a much greater population than at present. Great expenditure of capital and labor on the restoring of ancient terraces, the construction of dams and systems of irrigation and the planting of trees is one essential preparation for any considerable development of the land. For any of these things to be possible a radical change in the attitude of the Turkish gover nment is an essential preliminary.<P>With regard to Bible evidence it is clear from very many references in the historical books of the Old Testament that "forest" or "woodland" was very plentiful in those days. In a large proportion where the word ya\'ar (translated "forest") occurs it is definitely associated with trees. (For references see <a href="./study/isbe/search.html?string=FOREST">FOREST</a>.) Whether these references are always to tall trees or also to the brushwood such as is plentiful in parts of Galilee today, is immaterial, as the latter consists of the same elements as the former, only stunted through the interference of man. It would certainly appear probable that at the time of the arrival of the Hebrews there were considerable forests of trees<65>oaks, terebinths, pines, etc.<2E>over a great part of the higher mountains. In <a onClick="return mV(\'Jos\',17,\'14-18\');">Jos 17:14-18</a> we have reference to Joshua\'s twice-repeated command to the people to cut down the "forest," as the inhabited areas were too narrow for them. In later ages, e.g. in New Testament times, the cultivation of the land must have been so thorough that, to the west of the Jordan especially, the area left for forest trees must necessarily have been much circumscribed; but the land then with its millions of olive trees and countless vineyards in the mountains and its great palm groves at Jericho and the coast, not to mention all kinds of imported fruit trees, must have presented a very different appearance from its present comparative barrenness. As a single example we may compare the glowing description by Josephus of the extraordinary fertility of Gennesaret with its present condition (Josephus, BJ, III, x, 8). Two periods in history stand out preeminent in the history of Palestine as times of prosperity and fertility: that about and immediately succeeding the rise of Christianity and that of the Latin kingdom of Jerusalem (see Conder, The Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem, 239-41: "The present culture of Palestine does not, perhaps, attain to a tenth of that which enriched the Latins in the 1st century of their rule"). In both these periods the land was highly cultivated and the population large, in the former more so than the latter. That the blight of the Ottoman Turks is largely responsible for the decay of agriculture and progressive deforestation in recent centuries is undoubted, but it is more than possible that at one if not at both these periods another factor was at work. It is difficult to believe that in the days when Palmyra was a vast city and Petra a great emporium, the home of a highly developed civilization, these sites were not better supplied by springs than at present; at those times great tracts of country east of the Jordan, now swallowed up by the desert, were sites of flourishing cities whose melancholy and lonely ruins are the wonder of all. No afforestation and no increased cultivation will account for the supplies of water which must have sustained such a development; and it is only reasonable to suppose, and there is much to support such a view, that there must have been then a rainfall somewhat greater or more prolonged than today. It must be remembered the increased rainfall of, say, only one inch per annum over a long series of years, or a sustained extension of the rainfall to two or three inches later in the season, or even a few degrees of greater cold producing heavy snow instead of rain, would, any of them, greatly improve the fertility of the soil and the output of the springs. All the evidence seems to confirm theory that there have been cycles of greater and of lesser rainfall extending over centuries, and that the periods we have mentioned, certainly the Roman period, coincided with one of the former cycles. At the present time there is some evidence that the rainfall has, on the whole, been increasing during the last 50 years and the cultivated area of the land, as contrasted with the natural "forest" land, is also slowly extending.<P>4. Plant Zones in the Holy Land:<P>In dealing briefly with some of the more characteristic and remarkable of the plants of the Holy Land we must recognize at least four distinct plant zones:<P>(1) The coast plains and the western mountains, with a distinctly "Mediterranean flora";<P>(2) The Jordan valley or Ghor, with a very peculiar semi-tropical flora in which a considerable number of African forms occur;<P>(3) The steppe or desert zones, specially those east of the Jordan and to the south. The higher western slopes to the east of the Jordan also have a very similar flora;<P>(4) The Lebanon and Anti-Lebanon above 4,000 ft. in which Alpine forms occur, and in the higher regions of which there is a flora entirely distinct from the three other zones.<P>These divisions are necessarily somewhat artificial. Everywhere the western slopes are more fertile than the eastern, so that the land to the east of the water parting in western Palestine partakes more of the desert flora than that opposite to it on the east. Vegetation in all parts is more abundant on t he hill slopes with a northern aspect, as it gets more shade; this is particularly noticeable in the drier areas.<P>(1) The Coast-Plains and Western Mountains.<P>(a) In the maritime plain there is a rich red alluvial soil with abundance of water deep under the surface. The annual mean temperature is 70 degrees F.; frost is extremely rare, and the atmosphere is distinctly humid, though the rainfall is less than in the higher hills. Citrons, oranges and lemons here flourish, palms grow in places on the coast, melons and pomegranates reach perfection. Vines have been extensively planted by Jewish colonists in the neighborhood of Jaffa. Cereals<6C>wheat, barley and Egyptian maize (Sorghum annuum)<29>are extensively grown. The wild flora is similar to that of the mountains. The sycamore fig (Arabic jummeiz) flourishes around Jaffa<66>it is a tree which requires a warm climate; it was in Talmudic writings one of the distinctions between "lower" and "upper" Galilee that the sycamore fig flourished in the former and not in the latter. It is evident it was far more plentiful in olden times (see <a href="./study/isbe/search.html?string=SYCAMORE">SYCAMORE</a>). A closely allied tree, the mulberry, is common everywhere, though not really indigenous. Two varieties occur, the Morus nigra (Arabic tut-shami) a native of central Asia, cultivated for its delicious fruit, and the M. alba (Arabic tut beledi) a native of China introduced as food for silk worms. See <a href="./study/isbe/search.html?string=SYCAMINE">SYCAMINE</a>. Another tree which reaches perfection only in the warmer regions of the plain<69>and that too in the Jordan valley<65>is the tamarisk (Arabic athl) of which Post recognizes 9 species. It is characterized by its brittle feathery branches covered by minute scale-like leaves; a bedraggled, wind-torn tamarisk half buried in sea-sand is a characteristic sight all along the Syrian coast. Under favorable conditions some species attain considerable size. See <a href="./study/isbe/search.html?string=TAMARISK">TAMARISK</a>.<P>(b) In the higher mountain regions there is an average temperature of 62 degrees F. and extreme variations between a maximum of 100 degrees or 80 degrees in the shade in the summer and a few degrees of frost in the winter. Here the fig, vine and olive do admirably, their late fruiting corresponding with the "dew"<22>or clouds of fine mist<73>which settle over the mountains after sunset, particularly in the north. Apricots, mulberries, quince, apples and pears (chiefly from imported grafts), peaches and plums, almonds and walnuts do well in sheltered spots. Wheat and barley are grown on hill slopes or in valley bottoms all over the mountain region.<P>In the valleys where there is running water the oleander (Nerium oleander; Arabic difleh) abounds<64>a plant beautiful in foliage and flower but poisonous and not uncommonly imparting its poison to the water in which it grows. In similar situations occurs the Vitex (V. Agnus Castris), a variety of verbena whose lilac or purple flowers are, wherever they occur, a sure sign of the presence of water on or near the surface.<P>In similar situations flourishes the oriental plane (Platanus orientalis; Arabic dilb), a tree which often attains great size (see <a href="./study/isbe/search.html?string=PLANE+TREE">PLANE TREE</a>), and also the alder (Alnus orientalis; Arabic naght), a tree of humbler growth. There are some 8 varieties of willow (Arabic sifsaf), a tree very common along the water courses (see <a href="./study/isbe/search.html?string=WILLOW+TREE">WILLOW TREE</a>). Poplars (Arabic chaur) are plentiful in places, especially near water. Three native varieties are known, but the cylindrical Lombardy poplar, an imported variety, is most widely cultivated (see <a href="./study/isbe/search.html?string=POPLAR">POPLAR</a>). The southern hackberry or nettle tree (Celtis australis; Arabic mais) a member of the Urticaceae closely allied to the elm, is an indigenous tree which is widely planted; it is not uncommonly seen beside Moslem shrines. It grows to a height of 20 to 30 ft., and yields a close-grained timber taking a high polish. The walnut (Juglans regia; Arabic jauz) is a valuable timber tree and grows to noble proportions. It flourishes around Damascus, being a water-loving tree: some of the most magnificent specimens occur at Sheba\', a village in the lower slopes of Hermon. The walnut is really an imported tree, its native home being Persia and the Himalayas, but it has been long naturalized.<P>The carob (Ceratonia siliqua; Arabic kharrub) is a handsome evergreen tree whose dense, dark glistening foliage renders it everywhere conspicuous. It is widely distributed, especially in the lower mountain regions. Its pods are the <a href="./study/isbe/search.html?string=HUSKS">HUSKS</a> (which see) of <a onClick="return mV(\'Luk\',15,16);">Lu 15:16</a>. Oaks are among the most important and characteristic of all the trees and shrubs of Palestine: the evergreen oak which forms, it is estimated, two-thirds of all the shrubby vegetation of Carmel and attains noble proportions at some of the Moslem shrines, the Valonica oak, plentiful on the hills east of Nazareth, and the ilex or holm oak, commonest near the coast, are among the more important. The recent destruction of timber in the Holy Land has especially fallen upon the oaks, which afford the best of all fuel; as their growth is very slow and there is no attempt to plant young trees this is most regrettable. (For fuller account see <a href="./study/isbe/search.html?string=OAK">OAK</a>.) Closely allied to the oak both in the Old Testament and with the modern inhabitant<6E>though botanically very distinct<63>is the terebinth or turpentine tree (Pistacia terebinthus; Arabic butm), one of the finest trees in Palestine, although from a distance superficially like an oak, the foliage is very different. In many spots in Palestine where terebinths are for various reasons regarded as "sacred" they have obtained splendid proportions. See <a href="./study/isbe/search.html?string=TEREBINTH">TEREBINTH</a>.<P>Pines, although they flourish on the coast and lower mountain slopes, are, together with cypresses, junipers and cedars, reserved to the discussion of the flora of the fourth division of the country<72>the Alpine regions.<P>The hawthorn (Crataegus; Arabic za\'rur), of which there are 4 varieties, occurs as a shrub or small tree everywhere, its sweet-scented white or pink blossom being much in evidence in the spring.<P>Among the more important shrubs which make up the thickets over the limestone hills the following may be briefly enumerated:<P>The sumach (Rhus conaria), usually a shrub but occasionally a small tree, grows in considerable quantities in fertile spots in the mountains; from its fruit an acid drink is concocted and the fruit, bark and young leaves are used in tanning.<P>A plant closely allied to this, and also to the terebinth, is the lentesk (Pistacia lentiscus; Arabic serres), a common shrub in the lower mountain region, e.g. on Carmel, which yields mastich, a white gum, thought by many to be the <a href="./study/isbe/search.html?string=BALM">BALM</a> of the Old Testament (which see).<P>The bay laurel (Laurus nobilis; Arabic el ghar) occurs in clumps in many places. It is the Daphne of the Greeks and was sacred to Apollo. From its large, leathery, shining leaves were made the laurel crowns of victory in classical times. This, it may be mentioned in passing, is quite a distinct plant from our familiar "cherry laurel," which is allied to the cherry.<P>The butchers\' broom (Ruscus aculeatus) is very plentiful. It is a plant peculiar in having its leaf petioles flattened out like a leaf (phillodia), so that the flower and berry appear to arise from the middle of the midrib of the leaf.<P>The myrtle (Myrtus communis; Arabic rihan or aas) is exceedingly common, especially in NorthernPalestine, and when it grows near water it attains a good size. See <a href="./study/isbe/search.html?string=MYRTLE">MYRTLE</a>.<P>A showy shrub, which sometimes attains to the dimensions of a tree 20 or 30 ft. high, is the arbutus (Arabic qotlib) or strawberry tree. Two kinds occur, the less common Arbutus unedo or true "strawberry tree" which has a rough, warty fruit of a scarlet color, and Arbutus andrachne with a smooth, red bark, which when peeled off leaves a reddish inner surface. It has small orange-colored, non-edible berries. The red stems of this arbutus may be seen conspicuous in thickets all over the land, but very few are allowed to come to full growth.<P>Among some of the more showy shrubs we may mention the oleaster (Eleagnus hortensis; Arabic zaizafan) with its beautiful silvery leaves and white blossom (see <a href="./study/isbe/search.html?string=OIL+TREE">OIL TREE</a>).; the styrax (Styrax officinale; Arabic haz or \'abhar), a shrub or small tree, with beautiful white flowers, somewhat resembling orange blossoms, the dried juice from whose bark is the officinal <a href="./study/isbe/search.html?string=STORAX">STORAX</a> (which see); the Judas tree (Cercis siliquaestrum; Arabic zemzariq), a straggling shrub or tree with very showy pink flowers, and the caper (Capparis spinosa; Arabic el acaf), which is very common on old walls and about ruins (see <a href="./study/isbe/search.html?string=CAPER+BERRY">CAPER BERRY</a>). The beautiful rockrose or Cistus (Arabic ghibrah) is found on many shrubby hillsides, even on the bare mountain tops. The C. villosus has pink and the C. salviaefolus white blossoms, the petals being curiously crumpled. and falling off almost at once when the flower is picked. From the Cistus is obtained the gum called Ladanum (Arabic ladhanun; Hebrew lot) for which see <a href="./study/isbe/search.html?string=MYRRH">MYRRH</a>. Many of the hill tops near the watershed, which should be clothed by forests of oaks and pines, are now almost bare and support upon the dry and scanty soil nothing but low bushes of thorny burnet, mingled with wild thyme and mint, with, in places, small bushes of the Cistus. This thorny burner (Poterium Spinosum; Arabic ballan) is almost ubiquitous; its long thorns and tiny leaves enable it to survive the goats. It is of considerable economic importance, as from masses of this plant the fellahin fire almost all the limekilns in the land; and they use it extensively too for their ovens. It is a common sight in the late summer, after the harvest is gathered in, to see companies of peasants gathering this plant into clumps all over the hillsides, and conveying it on the women\'s heads in huge masses to the kilns. They pile around the kilns enormous heaps, enough to keep the furnace continually burning for several days. They may well be the "thorns under the pot" of <a onClick="return mV(\'Ecc\',7,6);">Ec 7:6</a>. See <a href="./study/isbe/search.html?string=THORNS">THORNS</a>.<P>Of the myriad spring flowers which make such a brilliant annual display it is impossible here to write in any detail. Earliest after the rains appear the crocuses and the cyclamen, then the narcissi, anemones<65>scarlet, white and purple<6C>the scarlet ranunculi, gladioli, irises, dwarf orchids, pink and yellow flax, mountain lilies, borage and bugloss, the primrose-colored Palestine scabious, and vast numbers of small Composites all appear in quick succession. When these fade many brilliant thistles continue to add some color to the otherwise dry roadsides, and last of all, in the late summer, numbers of tall stalks of squill, shot from the now leafless bulbs, remain scattered in groups over the dry and leafless ground as last survivors of the season\'s display. The varieties of flowers are enormous, but those mentioned are almost universally present.<P>Of cultivated vegetables-mention may be made of <a href="./study/isbe/search.html?string=CUCUMBER">CUCUMBER</a> (which see), lettuce, onions, <a href="./study/isbe/search.html?string=GARLIC">GARLIC</a> (which see), <a href="./study/isbe/search.html?string=MELONS">MELONS</a> (which see), cauliflower and cabbage, potatoes (a fairly recent introduction), sweet potatoes, the egg plant (Melongena badinjan), artichokes (which also grow wild) and the bamieh (Hibiscus esculentus).<P>(2) The Jordan Valley.<P>The flora of this region is of a very special kind, and has affinities to Africa. Several trees and shrubs are of great interest. Firstly, mention may be made of the group of true acacias. One variety, the \'anbar (Acacia Farnesiana), is by no means peculiar to the Ghor, but is used for making hedges in many parts of the land; its little yellow, fluffy, scented flowers are a great favorite with the natives; it is usually a shrub rather than a tree. The remaining acacias are desert inhabitants and in many places are the only trees. The seyyal, which includes A. tortilis and A. seyal, flourishes on the west shores of the Dead Sea, at \'Ain Jidy and southward; from it is obtained the gum arabic of commerce; it probably yielded the wood known in the Old Testament as <a href="./study/isbe/search.html?string=SHITTIM+WOOD">SHITTIM WOOD</a> (which see).<P>The semitropical Ghor is the home of many other thorny trees. Extremely characteristic of the whole region are the jujube trees of which the nabk or sidr tree (Zizyphus spina-Christi), is the most common. It has rounded yellowish fruit; under favorable conditions it develops into a tall and handsome tree. Somewhat less common is the \'ennabh (Z. vulgaris) which bears an edible fruit of the shape and size of an olive. A third kind, the dom (Z. lotus), is merely a shrub and has small pea-sized fruit. These various kinds of jujube trees are found in every part of the Jordan depression and of the valleys approaching it. Closely allied botanically to these thorny shrubs is the samur (Paliurus aculeatus) or "Christ thorn," widely used for the making of hedges (see <a href="./study/isbe/search.html?string=BRIER">BRIER</a>). Another common shrub, or small tree, in the hotter parts of the Ghor near Jericho and the Dead Sea, is the zaqqum (Balanites AEgyptiaca) from whose oval berries the monks of Jericho extract a resinous substance which they term "Balm of Gilead."<P>The dibk (Cordia myxa), a giant borage, which grows to a tree of 7 or 8 ft. high is widely cultivated but grows in the Ghor spontaneously. The fruit, which is edible, is used principally for making bird lime.<P>A very striking tree near Jericho and the Dead Sea is the \'oshr (Calotropis procera), a member of the Natural Order Asclepiadeae. It has large obovate leaves, cabbage-like in consistence<63>a great contrast to the small, dry, dull-colored leaves of most of its neighbors. The trunk has a cork-like bark and white, milky juice and the fruit consists of queer apple-like follicles which, though solid looking, are only inflated with air and contain but silk threads and seeds. These have been supposed to be the apples of Sodom of Josephus, which he describes as looking like tempting fruit but which on examination prove to contain but dust. A much more likely theory is that he refers to the equally common colocynth (Citrullus colocynthus). See <a href="./study/isbe/search.html?string=GOURD,+WILD">GOURD, WILD</a>.<P>Another abundant herb is the Solanum coagulans (Arabic khadak), whose apple-like fruit has also received (without serious claim) the name of "apple of Sodom."<P>Then there are in the immediate neighborhood of the Dead Sea a whole group of salt-loving plants which grow in the saline marshes such, for example, as the samphire or glasswort (Salicornia fructosa and S. herbacea). The latter of these is called the kali plant, because it is burnt in order to obtain potash (el kali). Another group is included under the name of sea blite or sueda (Arabic suweid) of which there are several varieties.<P>Along the banks of the Jordan willows (Silex safsaf) and tamarisks (especially Tamarix Jordanis) abound.<P>At various parts of the Jordan valley, but particularly to the north of Lake Huleh, flourishes the papyrus reed (Cyperus papyrus), known in Arabic as babir, the source of the earliest paper.<P>Of cultivated plants, palms, as we know from history, grow here well, though their cultivation has been neglected; sterile wild palms still occur in some of the warmer valleys, especially to the east of the Dead Sea. Many dead palm-tree trunks lie scattered along the shores of the Dead Sea.<P>In situations well supplied with water, bananas flourish<73>they are cultivated both near Jericho and near the Lake of Galilee. Oranges, lemons and citrons also grow well. All kinds of ordinary vegetables are grown in various parts of this region. Wheat and barley yield an early and an abundant crop in irrigated regions on both sides of the Jordan; rice and Indian maize are cultivated in irrigated fields north of Lake Huleh, and cotton at several spots. With scientific irrigation this region might be one of the most productive upon earth.<P>(3) The Steppe or "Desert" Zones:<P>The Steppe or "Desert" Zones are chiefly noticeable for the absence of trees and the stunted condition of the small shrubs and herbs which grow there. Thorny plants like Poterium, Astragalus (the most characteristic order) and Cousinea thistles flourish. With the early rains a rapid growth of dwarf flowers appears which dries up soon after the rainy season ends. Botanically the region stands somewhat distinct by the occurrence of Persian and Indian plant-forms. This region includes the great corn land of the Hauran and Nukra<72>some of the richest of their kind.<P>(4) The Flora of the Lebanon and Anti-Lebanon:<P>The flora of the Lebanon and Anti-Lebanon consists, in the lower slopes, of similar plants to those mentioned under (1). The Conifera are specially characteristic of this northern region, the destruction of these trees in Palestine proper being in many parts complete. Of the indigenous cypress (Arabic Saru) we have one species, the Cypressus sempervirens, a handsomer tree than the cylindrical kind<6E>a cultivated variety<74>planted so frequently in Turkish cemeteries (see <a href="./study/isbe/search.html?string=CYPRESS">CYPRESS</a>). There are 6 varieties of juniper known, and one species of yew. Of pines the two important kinds are<72>the Aleppo pine (Pinus Halepensis), which grows with considerable rapidity and is widely planted, and the handsomer stone pine (Pinus pinia the true snobar of the Arabs), probably more truly the native tree (see <a href="./study/isbe/search.html?string=PINE+TREE">PINE TREE</a>). The most important and characteristic member of this order of trees is the cedar which still flourishes in a very few spots (see <a href="./study/isbe/search.html?string=CEDAR">CEDAR</a>). On the Lebanon occurs a single species of rhododendron (R. Ponticum) and one of heather (Erica verticillata). Above the height of 7,000 ft. trees and shrubs disappear and vegetation is chiefly represented by low, rounded, thorny bushes, chiefly varieties of Astragalus; by clumps of Acantholimon Lebanoticum; by small procumbent bushes of Cerasus prostata<74>a member of the cherry family<6C>and the Coloneaster nummularia with scarlet berries. Even on the summit of Hermon it is astonishing how many tiny flowers are in bloom in the late summer after the snow has melted. The most curious feature of this region is the almost complete absence of Arctic forms such as are found in the Alps and even in the Himalayas.<P>LITERATURE.<P>Prof. Ellsworth Huntington, Palestine and Its Transformation; J. Glaisher (PEF); Meteorological Observations at Jerusalem; G. E. Post, M. D., Flora of Syria, Palestine and Sinai; Mrs. Hannah Zeller, Wild Flowers of the Holy Land; Augusta A. Temple, Flowers and Trees of Palestine; Tristram, The Fauna and Flora of Palestine (PEF Memoirs); also articles in recent Bible Dictionaries, particularly those by Dr. Post in HDB, and by Sir W. T. Thiselton Dyer, director of Kew Gardens, in EB.``117';
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isbe[1636]='Botch``<a href="./study/isbe/search.html?string=BOIL">BOIL</a>`1';
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isbe[1637]='Botrys`bot\'-ris (Botrus; modern Batrun): A town of Phoenicia on the coast some miles north of Gebal (Byblus) on the southern side of the bold promontory called in classic times Theoprosopon. It is said to have been founded by Ithobal (Ethbaal), king of Tyre, whose daughter married Ahab (Josephus, Ant, VIII, xiii, 2). The town is not mentioned in Scripture.``1';
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isbe[1638]='Bottle`bot\'-\'-l (chemeth, no\'-dh, nebhel, baqbuq, \'obh; askos): The most literal rendering of all the words for bottle in English Versions of the Bible is "skin," or "wine-skin," the Revised Version (British and American). The primitive bottle among eastern peoples was really a bag made from skins, tanned or untanned, of kid, goat, cow, camel or buffalo<6C>in most cases drawn off of the animal entire, after the legs and head were cut off, and, when filled, grotesquely retaining the shape of the animal. The skins in common use today, as in ancient times no doubt, for holding water milk, butter and cheese, have the hair left on and are far from cleanly-looking. Those used for wine and oil are tanned by means of oak bark and seasoning in smoke, a process that gives a peculiar astringency of flavor to the wine kept in them, and gave rise to the parable of Jesus about putting new wine into old wine-skins (<a onClick="return mV(\'Mat\',9,17);">Mt 9:17</a>; <a onClick="return mV(\'Mar\',2,22);">Mr 2:22</a>; <a onClick="return mV(\'Luk\',5,37);">Lu 5:37</a>). The fact that the leather underwent distension once and only once under fermentation, and the further fact that the wine-skins became dried and liable to crack from the smoke and dry heat of the tents and houses, gave point to the parable: "No man putteth new wine into old wine-skins; else the wine will burst the skins, and the wine perisheth, and the skins: but they put new wine into fresh wine-skins." All such "bottles" today are liable to crack and become worthless.<P>Pliny Fisk used fresh goat-skins to carry water, but he says this gave the water a reddish color and an exceedingly loathsome taste. Harmer tells of carrying liquids in smoked skin-bottles, which when rent "were mended by putting in a new piece, or by gathering up the piece, or by inserting a flat bit of wood." Burckhardt says he saw Arabs keeping water for their horses on journeys in "large bags made of tanned camel-skin." They would sew the skins up well on four sides, but would leave two openings, one to admit the air, one to let out the water. Two such bags made a good load for a camel. Edwin Wilbur Rice says the leather or skin-bottles are of different sizes and kinds, usually made from the skin of the goat, rarely ever from that of the sheep, as it is not considered strong enough. But sometimes they are made from the skin of the camel, or the ox, which is then prepared by tanning. When leather bags are sewed up the joinings are smeared with grease, as the skin-bottles of all sorts are, as they grow older, lest the water, or other liquid, ooze through.<P>Such bottles, being more portable and less breakable than earthenware, were peculiarly well suited to the use of primitive and nomad peoples, as they are to the roving Bedouin of today. The mention of them, however, in such various accounts and connections as those for instance of the story of Hagar (<a onClick="return mV(\'Gen\',21,19);">Ge 21:19</a>), of the Gibeonites (<a onClick="return mV(\'Jos\',9,4);">Jos 9:4</a>), and of David (<a onClick="return mV(\'1Sa\',25,18);">1Sa 25:18</a>) shows that they were in common use among ancient Orientals, pastoral and peasant alike. Tourists still find that they are admirably suited to travelers in waterless districts, or districts where the water is brackish and bad. One of the characteristic figures even in oriental centers like Damascus today is the waterman who sells from his dripping goat- skin water cooled with the snow of Hermon, flavored with lemon, rose, or licorice, temptingly offered up and down the streets by his clapping his brass cups and crying in the most pleading but pleasing tones, "Drink, drink, thirsty. one" (compare <a onClick="return mV(\'Isa\',55,1);">Isa 55:1</a>). But, as Dr. Mackie, of Beirut, says, "While the bottle is thus highly prized, and the water thus kept in it is a grateful necessity, the luxury of the East belongs to the spring itself, to the draught from the fountain of living waters." Hence, the comparison Jesus made at Jacob\'s well (<a onClick="return mV(\'Jhn\',4,14);">Joh 4:14</a>), and the one blessed terminus of all, the Shepherd\'s leading (<a onClick="return mV(\'Rev\',7,17);">Re 7:17</a>). See HDB, under the word.<P>Of course in the settled life of the Orient water, milk, wine and other liquids are often kept in earthen jars or other receptacles. For such "bottles" see <a href="./study/isbe/search.html?string=PITCHER">PITCHER</a>; <a href="./study/isbe/search.html?string=VESSEL">VESSEL</a>. Glass bottles are not mentioned in the Bible; but those now found in tombs, for keeping perfume in, may have been known in Old Testament times.<P>Figurative:<P>(1) For the clouds (<a onClick="return mV(\'Job\',38,37);">Job 38:37</a>).<P>(2) For intoxication, through which, because of their headstrong continuance in sin, Israel shall be helpless to resist the enemy\'s attack (<a onClick="return mV(\'Jer\',13,12);">Jer 13:12</a>).<P>(3) For sorrow: "Put thou my tears into thy bottle" (<a onClick="return mV(\'Psa\',56,8);">Ps 56:8</a>). "The Psalmist\'s sorrows were so many that they would need a great wine-skin to hold them all. There is no allusion to the little lachrymatories of fashionable and fanciful Romans: it is a robuster metaphor by far; such floods of tears had the Psalmist wept that a leathern bottle would scarce hold them" (Treasury of David, III, 39). "God treasures His servants\' tears as if they were water or wine." Bernard says, "The tears of penitents are the wine of angels" (Dummelow\'s Comm., 351).``47';
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isbe[1639]='Bottom`bot\'-um: Rendered by several Hebrew words:<P>(1) sheresh, "root"; Chaldaic, shoresh (<a onClick="return mV(\'Job\',36,30);">Job 36:30</a>, "the bottom of the sea").<P>(2) qarqa\', "soil," "pavement of tesserae" (<a onClick="return mV(\'Amo\',9,3);">Am 9:3</a>).<P>(3) qetsebh, "cutting," "chop," "extremity" (<a onClick="return mV(\'Jon\',2,6);">Jon 2:6</a>, "the bottoms of the mountains").<P>(4) rephidhah, "railing," "couch" (<a onClick="return mV(\'Sgs\',3,10);">So 3:10</a>, "the bottom thereof of gold").<P>(5) cheq, "bosom," "lap" (<a onClick="return mV(\'Eze\',43,13,14,17);">Eze 43:13-14, 17</a>, the Revised Version, margin "hollow").<P>(6) metsullah, "to be dark," "shadowy place," from primitive root tsalal, "to tumble down," i.e. "settle"; hence, the idea of a valley ("the myrtle-trees that were in the bottom," <a onClick="return mV(\'Zec\',1,8);">Zec 1:8</a> the Revised Version, margin "shady place"). The prophet may have been wont to frequent the myrtle grove in the glen or bottoms, in the neighborhood of Jerusalem, for meditation and prayer (BTP, II, 283).``91';
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isbe[1640]='Bottomless, Pit`bot\'-um-les, (to phrear tes abussou, "the pit of the abyss," <a onClick="return mV(\'Rev\',9,1,2);">Re 9:1-2</a> the King James Version): In the Revised Version (British and American), he abussos (always an adjective in classical authors = "bottomless") is uniformly rendered "the <a href="./study/isbe/search.html?string=ABYSS">ABYSS</a>" (which see) (<a onClick="return mV(\'Luk\',8,31);">Lu 8:31</a>; <a onClick="return mV(\'Rom\',10,7);">Ro 10:7</a>; <a onClick="return mV(\'Rev\',9,11);">Re 9:11</a>; <a onClick="return mV(\'Rev\',11,7);">11:7</a>; <a onClick="return mV(\'Rev\',17,8);">17:8</a>; <a onClick="return mV(\'Rev\',20,1,3);">20:1, 3</a>).``1';
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isbe[1641]='Bough`bou.`<a href="./study/isbe/search.html?string=BRANCH">BRANCH</a>`1';
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isbe[1642]='Bought (1)`bout (tawekh, "bisection," "middle"): The best part of a sling that contains the stone, "in the midst of the bought of a sling" (<a onClick="return mV(\'1Sa\',25,29);">1Sa 25:29</a> King James Version, margin, the King James Version "out of the middle," the Revised Version (British and American) "from the hollow").``1';
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isbe[1643]='Bought (2)`bot (adj. and vb.).`<a href="./study/isbe/search.html?string=BUYING">BUYING</a>`1';
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isbe[1644]='Bound``<a href="./study/isbe/search.html?string=BIND">BIND</a>`1';
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isbe[1645]='Bounds`boundz: gabhal = "to twist" (as a rope), "to make an enclosure" (as by a line) occurs in <a onClick="return mV(\'Exd\',19,12,23);">Ex 19:12, 23</a>; <a onClick="return mV(\'Psa\',104,9);">Ps 104:9</a>; gebhul = "a cord," hence, "a boundary," "territory" (<a onClick="return mV(\'Exd\',23,31);">Ex 23:31</a> the King James Version), with its feminine form gebhulah (<a onClick="return mV(\'Deu\',32,8);">De 32:8</a>; <a onClick="return mV(\'Isa\',10,13);">Isa 10:13</a>); choq = "enactment," "appointment" (of time, space, quantity, labor, or usage), hence, "commandment," "decree," "ordinance" (<a onClick="return mV(\'Job\',14,5);">Job 14:5</a>; <a onClick="return mV(\'Job\',26,10);">26:10</a> the King James Version); in the Greek, horothesia, in the sense of "a limit," "boundary line," occurs in <a onClick="return mV(\'Act\',17,26);">Ac 17:26</a>.``1';
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isbe[1646]='Bountifulness; Bounty`boun\'-ti-fool-nes, boun\'-ti (haplotes, "singleness," "benevolence," <a onClick="return mV(\'2Cr\',9,11);">2Co 9:11</a> the King James Version; Tobh, "to be good" (<a onClick="return mV(\'Pro\',22,9);">Pr 22:9</a>); eulogia, "good speech," "blessing" (<a onClick="return mV(\'2Cr\',9,6);">2Co 9:6</a>); gamal, "to treat well" (<a onClick="return mV(\'Psa\',119,17);">Ps 119:17</a>); shoa\', "to be liberal" (<a onClick="return mV(\'Isa\',32,5);">Isa 32:5</a>); yadh, "hand," "power"): Paul speaks of the church at Corinth "being enriched in everything unto all liberality" (the King James Version "bountifulness," <a onClick="return mV(\'2Cr\',9,11);">2Co 9:11</a>). The offering of the church at Corinth for the Christians of Judea is termed a "bounty," a blessing, liberally given: "and not of extortion" (the King James Version "of covetousness," <a onClick="return mV(\'2Cr\',9,5,6);">2Co 9:5-6</a>). The word occurs also in <a onClick="return mV(\'1Ki\',10,13);">1Ki 10:13</a>: "Besides that which Solomon gave her of his royal bounty," literally "according to the hand of King Solomon."``86';
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isbe[1647]='Bow`bo.`<a href="./study/isbe/search.html?string=ARCHERY">ARCHERY</a>`1';
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isbe[1648]='Bow, in the Cloud`bo: Reference to the promise made to Noah (<a onClick="return mV(\'Gen\',9,13);">Ge 9:13</a>) preserved in the Constellation figures.`<a href="./study/isbe/search.html?string=ASTRONOMY">ASTRONOMY</a>`1';
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isbe[1649]='Bow; Bowing`bou, bou\'-ing.`<a href="./study/isbe/search.html?string=ADORATION">ADORATION</a>; <a href="./study/isbe/search.html?string=ATTITUDES">ATTITUDES</a>`1';
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isbe[1650]='Bowels`bou\'-elz (me\'ah, plural me\'im, rechem, plural rachamim; splagchnion):<P>(1) Literal: The literal meaning of these words is intestines, then the abdomen, the womb (matrix and uterus). As will be seen there is not much definiteness in the use of these expressions from the standpoint of physiology; but not less so than in modern oriental languages and even in many occidental languages, as popularly used. The remarkable phrases used in <a onClick="return mV(\'2Ch\',21,18,19);">2Ch 21:18-19</a>, "Yahweh smote him in his bowels" and "His bowels fell out by reason of his sickness," refer to a severe and fatal case of hemorrhoids.<P>(2) Figurative: In figurative language these words denote deep emotions of various kinds. As in physiology we speak of the "nervus sympathicus," the ancients expressed by these terms "affection," "sympathy" and "mercy," feelings of distress and sorrow, as in <a onClick="return mV(\'Job\',30,27);">Job 30:27</a> the King James Version; <a onClick="return mV(\'Lam\',1,20);">La 1:20</a> the King James Version; <a onClick="return mV(\'Lam\',2,11);">La 2:11</a> the King James Version. In one passage we have to translate me\'im by "heart," being the seat of affection and devotion (<a onClick="return mV(\'Psa\',71,6);">Ps 71:6</a>): "Thy law is within my heart" (<a onClick="return mV(\'Psa\',40,8);">Ps 40:8</a>). In the New Testament (Revised Version) the word is only given in <a onClick="return mV(\'Act\',1,18);">Ac 1:18</a>.``106';
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isbe[1651]='Bowing`bou\'-ing (natah, "to incline," "bulge"): The Psalmist\'s assailants expected that he would be "like a leaning (the King James Version "bowing") wall" (<a onClick="return mV(\'Psa\',62,3);">Ps 62:3</a>) before their united attack, as when an ill-built, bulging wall gives way under a sudden and heavy fall of rain (compare <a onClick="return mV(\'Eze\',13,11);">Eze 13:11</a>; <a onClick="return mV(\'Eze\',38,22);">38:22</a>).``1';
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isbe[1652]='Bowl`bol:<P>(1) The primitive Hebrews, like the wandering Bedouin of today, probably used bowls of wood, as less breakable than earthenware. Some hollow dish of the sort would be indispensable, even in the lowest stage of nomad life, to receive the milk of the flock, and as the common dish in which to serve the family meal. We have abundant proof, however, that vessels of earthenware of various sorts were in use by the settled peoples of Canaan in the earliest times. Many interesting specimens, characteristic of different peoples and ages, have been found by excavators of the PEF, especially recently by Flinders Petrie and Fred. Bliss at Tell el-Hesy (see Tell el-Hesy (Lachish), by Petrie, and A Mound of Many Cities, by Bliss) and by Macalister and others at Gezer, Taanach, Megiddo, etc. (see PEFS).<P>It was probably in some such dish<73>"a bowl fit for lords" (English Versions, "a lordly dish")<29>that Jael offered. Sisera a draught of sour milk (<a onClick="return mV(\'Jdg\',5,25);">Jud 5:25</a>; compare Arabic leben), and the bowl into which Gideon wrung the water from his fleece (<a onClick="return mV(\'Jdg\',6,38);">Jud 6:38</a>) is denoted by the same word (cephel; Septuagint lekane), though this may have been of earthenware instead of wood. Certainly the cephel was a dish of goodly size.<P>(2) Another word rendered sometimes "bowl" and sometimes "basin" is mizraq. It is used of the large silver bowls presented by "the princes of the congregation" (<a onClick="return mV(\'Num\',7,13);">Nu 7:13</a>f). See <a href="./study/isbe/search.html?string=BASIN">BASIN</a>. It is also applied by <a onClick="return mV(\'Amo\',6,6);">Amos 6:6</a> to the costly bowls used by the nobles of Samaria in their debaucheries.<P>(3) A still larger bowl is mentioned by <a onClick="return mV(\'Jer\',35,5);">Jer 35:5</a>, the King James Version "pot" (gabhia\'). This same word is used of Joseph\'s cup (<a onClick="return mV(\'Gen\',44,2);">Ge 44:2</a>f): "Put my cup, the silver cup, in the sack\'s mouth." As used at banquets it corresponds to the crater, from which the drinking cups (kocoth) were replenished. The material seems to have been uniformly silver. But see (4).<P>(4) Bowl is used in the King James Version to translation gabhia\', "the bowls made like almonds" (<a onClick="return mV(\'Exd\',25,33);">Ex 25:33</a> the King James Version), as applied to the "cups" (Revised Version), or calyxes, used to ornament the golden candlestick (see <a href="./study/isbe/search.html?string=TABERNACLE">TABERNACLE</a>). It seems to have been an elastic term.<P>(5) The bowl of <a onClick="return mV(\'Zec\',4,3);">Zec 4:3</a> (gullah, found also in <a onClick="return mV(\'Zec\',5,5);">5:2</a> correct text), is represented as the receptacle for oil in the candlestick of the prophet\'s vision. It is likewise used of "the lamp of life" (<a onClick="return mV(\'Ecc\',12,6);">Ec 12:6</a>) and to designate the bowl- shaped capitals of Jachin and Boaz (<a onClick="return mV(\'1Ki\',7,41,42);">1Ki 7:41-42</a>; <a onClick="return mV(\'2Ch\',4,12,13);">2Ch 4:12-13</a>).<P>(6) Bowl is found in <a onClick="return mV(\'Isa\',51,17,22);">Isa 51:17, 22</a> the Revised Version (British and American), "bowl of the cup" (the King James Version "dregs of the cup"). Some think the second word here (qubba\'ath koc) is a gloss to explain the unusual preceding word.<P>(7) In Revelation where the King James Version has "vial" (phiale) the Revised Version (British and American) has "bowl."`<a href="./study/isbe/search.html?string=BASIN">BASIN</a>`47';
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isbe[1653]='Bowman`bo\'-man: Israel seems not to have been equal to the surrounding peoples in the use of the bow. The battle of Gilboa was clearly lost through the superior skill of the Philistine bowmen. This seems to have moved David to encourage archery practice in Judah (<a onClick="return mV(\'2Sa\',1,18);">2Sa 1:18</a>; compare Driver in the place cited.). It is thought probable that the revival of Israel\'s military power under Jeroboam, son of Joash, was due to improvement in archery. Hosea, a contemporary, speaks of the bow as the national weapon of Israel (<a onClick="return mV(\'2Sa\',1,5,7);">2Sa 1:5, 7</a>). The most skilled bowmen of antiquity were the Assyrians (compare <a onClick="return mV(\'Isa\',5,28);">Isa 5:28</a>; <a onClick="return mV(\'Isa\',37,33);">37:33</a>). From Assyrian reliefs it seems that it was their practice to overwhelm their enemies with the bow, and to use sword and spear only when the foe had been demoralized and put to flight.`<a href="./study/isbe/search.html?string=ARCHERY">ARCHERY</a>`47';
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isbe[1654]='Bowshot`bo\'-shot: Found only in <a onClick="return mV(\'Gen\',21,16);">Ge 21:16</a> in the account of Hagar and her child: "And she went, and sat her down over against him a good way off, as it were a bowshot," literally "stretchings of a bow," a typical oriental way of indicating distance.``1';
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isbe[1655]='Box`The passages in which this word occurs are <a onClick="return mV(\'2Ki\',9,1,3);">2Ki 9:1,3</a> (Hebrew pakh, "cruet," "flask," the Revised Version (British and American) vial) and the synoptic passages <a onClick="return mV(\'Mat\',26,7);">Mt 26:7</a> the King James Version; <a onClick="return mV(\'Mar\',14,3);">Mr 14:3</a> the King James Version; <a onClick="return mV(\'Luk\',7,37);">Lu 7:37</a> the King James Version (Greek alabastron). "Perfume-boxes" are mentioned in <a onClick="return mV(\'Isa\',3,20);">Isa 3:20</a>; in the New Testament passages the Revised Version (British and American) renders "alabaster cruse." "Alabaster" was a white stone much used in ornamentation; and out of it small vessels we re made for holding precious ointment. "She brake the cruse" (<a onClick="return mV(\'Mar\',14,3);">Mr 14:3</a>), i.e. the seal, not the vessel.<P>In <a onClick="return mV(\'Isa\',41,19);">Isa 41:19</a> and <a onClick="return mV(\'Isa\',60,13);">Isa 60:13</a>, "box" is found in connection with "tree," as "<a href="./study/isbe/search.html?string=BOX-TREE">box-tree</a>" (which see).``1';
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isbe[1656]='Box-Tree`box\'-tre (te\'ashshur; <a onClick="return mV(\'Isa\',41,19);">Isa 41:19</a>; <a onClick="return mV(\'Isa\',60,13);">60:13</a>, "boxwood" <a onClick="return mV(\'Eze\',27,6);">Eze 27:6</a>): A tree of uncertain identity, which must once have been common in the forests of Lebanon. According to Post (HDB, I, 313), "The only species of box found in Bible lands is Buxus longifolia, which is a shrub from 2 to 3 ft. high. It does not grow south of Mt. Cassius and it is unlikely that it did in historical times."<P>As an alternative to the box the cypress, Cupressus sempervirens<6E>known in Arabic as Sherbin<69>has been suggested. It is a fine tree and was probably once plentiful, but as it seems to answer to the berosh (see <a href="./study/isbe/search.html?string=FIR">FIR</a>), it cannot well be the te\'ashshur. There is nothing certain to go upon.``117';
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isbe[1657]='Boxing``<a href="./study/isbe/search.html?string=GAMES">GAMES</a>`1';
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isbe[1658]='Boy`(yeledh, "child," na\'ar, "lad," "youth"; ho pais and he pais): Refers to a child of any age, and is sometimes used of either sex: <a onClick="return mV(\'Joe\',3,3);">Joe 3:3</a>; <a onClick="return mV(\'Zec\',8,5);">Zec 8:5</a>; <a onClick="return mV(\'Mat\',17,18);">Mt 17:18</a>; <a onClick="return mV(\'Luk\',2,43);">Lu 2:43</a>; <a onClick="return mV(\'Luk\',8,51,54);">8:51, 54</a> fem.; <a onClick="return mV(\'Luk\',9,42);">Lu 9:42</a>. In the East the word applies also to an adult who is a servant (<a onClick="return mV(\'Mat\',8,6);">Mt 8:6</a> the Revised Version, margin). The boy occupied a place of special importance in the family life of all ancient people. In Syria the father even was called by the name of his son. He was known as the father of Joseph, or whatever the n ame might be. As is true among all oriental people, while the father had absolute control in his case as well as in the case of the rest of the household, yet the boy received a consideration and advantages not accorded to the daughter. In the Jewish family his religious life began at the fourth year. He was expected to learn the Scriptures at five, the Mishna at ten, and to fulfill the whole law at thirteen. At twelve years he was expected to learn a trade, and attained to something of independence at that age, though he did not come into full rights as a citizen until he was twenty. Among many nations there was special rejoicing at the birth of the boy, and sometimes a feast. One of the most ancient customs was the planting of a cedar tree on this occasion.`<a href="./study/isbe/search.html?string=CHILD">CHILD</a>; <a href="./study/isbe/search.html?string=FAMILY">FAMILY</a>; <a href="./study/isbe/search.html?string=SON">SON</a>`87';
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isbe[1659]='Bozcath`boz\'-kath (botsqath).`<a href="./study/isbe/search.html?string=BOZKATH">BOZKATH</a>`1';
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isbe[1660]='Bozez`bo\'-zez (botsets; Bazes, probably from an obsolete root batsats, corresponding to the Arabic batstsa, "to shine" or "to ooze"): The name of the northern of the two cliffs that stand one on each side of the gorge of Michmash (<a onClick="return mV(\'1Sa\',14,4);">1Sa 14:4</a>). It catches the sun during most of the day, while the southern cliff is in the shade. To this circumstance it may owe its name, "shining." "The contrast is surprising and picturesque between the dark coal color of the south side, and the ruddy or tawny tints of the northern cliff, crowned with the gleaming white of the upper chalky strata. The picture is unchanged since the day when Jonathan looked over to the white camping ground of the Philistines, and Bozez must have then shone as brightly as it does now, in the full light of an eastern sun" (Conder, Tent Work, 256).``54';
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isbe[1661]='Bozkath`boz\'-kath (botsqath, "stony"; Septuagint Basedoth): A town in the Shephelah of Judah named between Lachish and Eglon (<a onClick="return mV(\'Jos\',15,39);">Jos 15:39</a>). It was the birthplace of Adaiah the mother of King Josiah (<a onClick="return mV(\'2Ki\',22,1);">2Ki 22:1</a>; the King James Version "Boscath"). The site is not identified.``1';
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isbe[1662]='Bozrah`boz\'-ra (botsrah, "sheepfold"; Bosorrha, Bosor):<P>(1) The capital of Edom, a city of great antiquity (<a onClick="return mV(\'Gen\',36,33);">Ge 36:33</a>; <a onClick="return mV(\'1Ch\',1,44);">1Ch 1:44</a>; <a onClick="return mV(\'Isa\',34,6);">Isa 34:6</a>; <a onClick="return mV(\'Isa\',63,1);">63:1</a>; <a onClick="return mV(\'Jer\',49,13);">Jer 49:13</a>; <a onClick="return mV(\'Amo\',1,12);">Am 1:12</a>). It may be identical with Buceirah, which lies about 7 miles southwest of Tufileh, on the main road to Petra.<P>(2) A city in Moab mentioned in <a onClick="return mV(\'Jer\',48,24);">Jer 48:24</a>. It is probably identical with Bezer, the city of refuge. It may be represented today by Qusur Bashair, which towers lie some 15 miles southeast of Dibon. In this case Beth-gamul would be identical with Jemail, 8 miles east of Dibon, and Beth-meon with Ma\'in, southwest of Medebah.``54';
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isbe[1663]='Bracelet`bras\'-let (\'ets\'adhah, chach, tsamidh, pathil, sheroth): Used to translate a number of Hebrew words, only one of which means a band for the arm (\'ets\'adhah), as in <a onClick="return mV(\'2Sa\',1,10);">2Sa 1:10</a>, "the bracelet that was on his arm." In <a onClick="return mV(\'Exd\',35,22);">Ex 35:22</a>, where both men and women are said to have brought as offerings among other "jewels of gold" "bracelets" (the Revised Version (British and American) "brooches"), another word (chach) is used, meaning most likely nose-rings (see <a href="./study/isbe/search.html?string=RING">RING</a>). The bracelet asked of Judah by Tamar as a pledge ("Thy signet, and thy b., and thy staff that is in thy hand," <a onClick="return mV(\'Gen\',38,18,25);">Ge 38:18, 25</a> the King James Version) was probably the cord of softly-twisted wool for the shepherd\'s headdress (pathil; the Revised Version (British and American) "cord"). The bracelets ("two bracelets for her hands of ten shekels weight of gold") which Abraham\'s servant gave to Rebekah stand for still another word (tsamidh). These "bracelets" are always spoken of as "bracelets for the hands," or as "put upon the hands" (<a onClick="return mV(\'Gen\',24,47);">Ge 24:47</a>, compare <a onClick="return mV(\'Eze\',16,11);">Eze 16:11</a>; <a onClick="return mV(\'Eze\',23,42);">23:42</a>). Isaiah, predicting the day when Yahweh will smite the haughty daughters of Zion, who "walk with outstretched necks and wanton eyes, walking and mincing as they go, and making a tinkling with their feet," says, "In that day the Lord will take away the beauty of their anklets...the bracelets" (<a onClick="return mV(\'Eze\',3,19);">Eze 3:19</a>, sheroth) etc., where some translate "twisted ornaments," leaving it uncertain as to just what is specifically meant<6E> In <a onClick="return mV(\'2Sa\',1,10);">2Sa 1:10</a> the bracelet appears with the crown as one of the royal insignia. In <a onClick="return mV(\'2Ki\',11,12);">2Ki 11:12</a>, according to Wellhausen, W. R. Smith (OTJC2, 311n.) and oth ers, we should read, "Then he brought out the king\'s son, and put the crown upon him and gave him bracelets" ... for "testimony" ... See DB.<P>Today, as of old, the bracelet is multiform and a favorite ornament in the East. It is made of gold, silver, copper, brass, glass and even enameled earthenware, and in many designs: flat band, plain ring, interlinked rings, as well as of twisted wires, connected squares, solid or perforated, with or without pendants (Mackie).<P>When owned by women, bracelets had the special the commendation, along with other jewelry, of being inalienable<6C>not to be taken by the husband in case of divorce, nor seized and sold for his debts. "Even now," says Rice (Orientalisms, etc., 41), "in Moslem lands a woman may be divorced without legal process, at the freak of her husband, but she can carry away undisputed any amount of gold, silver, jewels, precious stones, or apparel that she has loaded on her person; so she usually wears all her treasures on her person, not knowing when the fateful word may be spoken."``47';
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isbe[1664]='Brag`(megalaucheo, "proud brags"): Occurs only in the Apocrypha (2Macc 15:32), not being sufficiently dignified to be given a place in the canonical Scriptures by the King James translators (compare Judith 16:5).``1';
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isbe[1665]='Braided; Braiding`brad\'-ed, brad\'-ing (to plegama, "that which is plaited," <a onClick="return mV(\'1Ti\',2,9);">1Ti 2:9</a>; he emploke, "a plaiting," <a onClick="return mV(\'1Pe\',3,3);">1Pe 3:3</a>): Used with reference to Christian women in two passages where the apostles emphasized the superiority of good works and spiritual grace over outward adornment.`<a href="./study/isbe/search.html?string=EMBROIDERY">EMBROIDERY</a>`1';
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isbe[1666]='Bramble`bram\'-b\'-l.`<a href="./study/isbe/search.html?string=THORNS">THORNS</a>`1';
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isbe[1667]='Bran`(ta pitura): The women of Babylon are described as burning "bran for incense" in their unchaste idolatrous worship (Baruch 6:43).``1';
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isbe[1668]='Branch; Bough`bransh: Represented by very many words in the Hebrew.<P>(1) zemorah used especially of a vine branch. The spies "cut down from thence a branch with one cluster of grapes" (<a onClick="return mV(\'Num\',13,23);">Nu 13:23</a>). See also <a onClick="return mV(\'Eze\',15,2);">Eze 15:2</a>; <a onClick="return mV(\'Nah\',2,2);">Na 2:2</a>. "They put the branch to their nose" (<a onClick="return mV(\'Eze\',8,17);">Eze 8:17</a>), refers to some unknown idolatrous practice, as does also <a onClick="return mV(\'Isa\',17,10);">Isa 17:10</a>, "thou plantest pleasant plants, and settest it with strange slips," or "vine slips of a strange (god)" the Revised Version, margin.<P>(2) yoneqeth, literally "a sucker." "The tender branch thereof will not cease" (<a onClick="return mV(\'Job\',14,7);">Job 14:7</a>). Used figuratively of Israel, <a onClick="return mV(\'Psa\',80,11);">Ps 80:11</a> (the Revised Version (British and American) "shoots"); <a onClick="return mV(\'Eze\',17,22);">Eze 17:22</a> the King James Version; <a onClick="return mV(\'Hsa\',14,6);">Ho 14:6</a>, and of the wicked, <a onClick="return mV(\'Job\',8,16);">Job 8:16</a> (the Revised Version (British and American) "shoots"), <a onClick="return mV(\'Job\',15,30);">15:30</a>.<P>(3) kippah, <a onClick="return mV(\'Job\',15,32);">Job 15:32</a>. <a onClick="return mV(\'Isa\',9,14);">Isa 9:14</a>; <a onClick="return mV(\'Isa\',19,15);">19:15</a>, the Revised Version (British and American) has "palm-branch," "Therefore Yahweh will cut off from Israel head and tail, palm-branch and rush, in one day" (<a onClick="return mV(\'Isa\',9,14);">9:14</a>).<P>(4) netser (of the same Hebrew root, according to many commentators, as Nazareth), literally "a little shoot springing from the root" ("out of a shoot from her roots," <a onClick="return mV(\'Dan\',11,7);">Da 11:7</a>), which may be planted out to grow (<a onClick="return mV(\'Isa\',11,1);">Isa 11:1</a>; <a onClick="return mV(\'Isa\',60,21);">60:21</a>), or may be rooted out and thrown away (<a onClick="return mV(\'Isa\',14,19);">Isa 14:19</a>).<P>(5) tsemach. The "branch" of Messianic prophecy. See <a href="./study/isbe/search.html?string=PROPHECY">PROPHECY</a>. "In that day shall the branch (m "shoot" or "sprout") of Yahweh be beautiful and glorious" (<a onClick="return mV(\'Isa\',4,2);">Isa 4:2</a>); "a shoot out of the stock of Jesse" (<a onClick="return mV(\'Isa\',11,1);">Isa 11:1</a>); "a righteous branch" (<a onClick="return mV(\'Jer\',23,5);">Jer 23:5</a>; <a onClick="return mV(\'Jer\',33,15);">33:15</a>): "my servant the Branch" (<a onClick="return mV(\'Zec\',3,8);">Zec 3:8</a>); "the man whose name is the Branch" (<a onClick="return mV(\'Zec\',6,12);">Zec 6:12</a>).<P>(6) qanah, is used for the "branches" of the golden candlesticks (<a onClick="return mV(\'Exd\',25,32);">Ex 25:32</a>; <a onClick="return mV(\'Exd\',37,18);">37:18</a>ff). Literally, qanah means a "reed." There are a number of words, less frequently used, meaning "branch":<P>(7) baddim (plural only used; <a onClick="return mV(\'Eze\',17,6);">Eze 17:6</a>; <a onClick="return mV(\'Eze\',19,14);">19:14</a>).<P>(8) dalith (plural only used; <a onClick="return mV(\'Jer\',11,16);">Jer 11:16</a>).<P>(9) matteh (<a onClick="return mV(\'Eze\',19,11);">Eze 19:11</a>).<P>(10) ca\'iph (<a onClick="return mV(\'Isa\',18,5);">Isa 18:5</a>; ce\'appah (plural) (<a onClick="return mV(\'Eze\',31,6);">Eze 31:6</a>); car\'appah (<a onClick="return mV(\'Eze\',31,5);">Eze 31:5</a>)).<P>(11) \'anaph (<a onClick="return mV(\'Mal\',4,1);">Mal 4:1</a>; <a onClick="return mV(\'Psa\',80,11);">Ps 80:11</a>); \'anaph (<a onClick="return mV(\'Dan\',4,14,21);">Da 4:14, 21</a>); \'eneph (<a onClick="return mV(\'Eze\',36,8);">Eze 36:8</a>).<P>(12) pu\'rah, "a bough" (<a onClick="return mV(\'Isa\',10,33);">Isa 10:33</a>); po\'roth (pl. only) (<a onClick="return mV(\'Eze\',31,5,8);">Eze 31:5, 8</a>).<P>(13) tsammereth, "foliage" or "boughs of trees," literally "locks" or "fleece" of trees (<a onClick="return mV(\'Eze\',17,3);">Eze 17:3</a>; <a onClick="return mV(\'Eze\',31,3);">31:3</a>).<P>(14) qatsir (collective) (<a onClick="return mV(\'Job\',14,9);">Job 14:9</a>), "boughs" (<a onClick="return mV(\'Psa\',80,11);">Ps 80:11</a>), "branches."<P>(15) shibbeleth, the two olive branches of <a onClick="return mV(\'Zec\',4,12);">Zec 4:12</a>.<P>(16) soqch, root meaning "to interweave" (<a onClick="return mV(\'Jdg\',9,49);">Jud 9:49</a>); sokhah (<a onClick="return mV(\'Jdg\',9,48);">Jud 9:48</a>), "boughs."<P>(17) sarigh (pl. only, sarighim), "branches" (of the vine) (<a onClick="return mV(\'Gen\',40,10);">Ge 40:10</a>; <a onClick="return mV(\'Joe\',1,7);">Joe 1:7</a>). Represented in Greek in the New Testament:<P>(1) baion (<a onClick="return mV(\'Jhn\',12,13);">Joh 12:13</a>), "a palm branch."<P>(2) klados (<a onClick="return mV(\'Mat\',13,32);">Mt 13:32</a>; <a onClick="return mV(\'Mat\',21,8);">21:8</a>; <a onClick="return mV(\'Mat\',24,32);">24:32</a>; <a onClick="return mV(\'Mar\',4,32);">Mr 4:32</a>; <a onClick="return mV(\'Mar\',13,28);">13:28</a>; <a onClick="return mV(\'Luk\',13,19);">Lu 13:19</a>; <a onClick="return mV(\'Rom\',11,\'16-19\',21);">Ro 11:16-19, 21</a>).<P>(3) klema, a slip or cutting of the vine, especially one cut off to be grafted into another plant (<a onClick="return mV(\'Jhn\',15,2,4,5,6);">Joh 15:2, 4-6</a>).<P>(4) stibos (= stoibas), a "twig" or "bough" (<a onClick="return mV(\'Mar\',11,8);">Mr 11:8</a>).``117';
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isbe[1669]='Brand`In the double signification of an object on fire and of objects used to feed a fire. The first meaning is expressed by \'udh, "a bent stick" for stirring fire (<a onClick="return mV(\'Amo\',4,11);">Am 4:11</a>; <a onClick="return mV(\'Zec\',3,2);">Zec 3:2</a>; compare <a onClick="return mV(\'Isa\',7,4);">Isa 7:4</a>); the second by lappidh, in <a onClick="return mV(\'Jdg\',15,4,5);">Jud 15:4-5</a>. A third meaning is found in ziqah, indicating the brand as a spreader of fire (<a onClick="return mV(\'Pro\',26,18);">Pr 26:18</a>).``1';
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isbe[1670]='Branding``<a href="./study/isbe/search.html?string=PUNISHMENTS">PUNISHMENTS</a>`1';
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isbe[1671]='Brasen`bra\'-z\'-n.`<a href="./study/isbe/search.html?string=BRASS">BRASS</a>`1';
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isbe[1672]='Brass; Brazen`bras (nechosheth): The use of the word brass has always been more or less indefinite in its application. At the present time the term brass is applied to an alloy of copper and zinc or of copper, zinc and tin. The word translated "brass" in the King James Version would be more correctly rendered bronze, since the alloy used was copper and tin (<a onClick="return mV(\'Exd\',27,4);">Ex 27:4</a>). In some passages however copper is meant (<a onClick="return mV(\'Deu\',8,9);">De 8:9</a>), as bronze is an artificial product. This alloy was known in Egypt in at least 1600 BC. It was probably known in Europe still earlier (2000 BC), which helps to answer the question as to the source of the tin. Bronze was probably of European origin and was carried to Egypt. At a later period the Egyptians made the alloy themselves, bringing their copper from Sinai, Cyprus or NorthernSyria (see <a href="./study/isbe/search.html?string=COPPER">COPPER</a>), and their tin from the Balkan regions or from Spain or the British Isles (see <a href="./study/isbe/search.html?string=TIN">TIN</a>). When the Children of Israel came into the promised land, they found the Canaanites already skilled in the making and use of bronze instruments. This period marked the transition from the bronze age to the iron age in Palestine Museums possessing antiquities from Bible lands have among their collections many and varied bronze objects. Among the most common are nails, lamps, hand mirrors, locks, cutting instruments, etc. Within comparatively recent times brass, meaning an alloy of copper and zinc, has been introduced into Syria. The alloy is made by the native workmen (see <a href="./study/isbe/search.html?string=CRAFTS">CRAFTS</a>). Sheet brass is now being extensively imported for the making of bowls, vases, etc. Bronze is practically unknown in the modern native articles<P>Figurative: "Brass," naturally, is used in Scripture as the symbol of what is firm, strong, lasting; hence, "gates of brass" (<a onClick="return mV(\'Psa\',107,16);">Ps 107:16</a>), "hoofs of brass" (<a onClick="return mV(\'Mic\',4,13);">Mic 4:13</a>), "walls of brass" (Jeremiah is made as a "brazen wall," <a onClick="return mV(\'Jer\',1,18);">Jer 1:18</a>; <a onClick="return mV(\'Jer\',15,20);">15:20</a>), "mountains of brass" (<a onClick="return mV(\'Dan\',2,35);">Da 2:35</a>, the Macedonian empire; the arms of ancient times were mostly of bronze). It becomes a symbol, therefore, of hardness, obstinacy, insensibility, in sin, as "brow of brass" (<a onClick="return mV(\'Isa\',48,4);">Isa 48:4</a>); "they are brass and iron" (<a onClick="return mV(\'Jer\',6,28);">Jer 6:28</a>, of the wicked); "all of them are brass" (<a onClick="return mV(\'Eze\',22,18);">Eze 22:18</a>, of Israel).``133';
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isbe[1673]='Bravery`brav\'-er-i: tiph\'arah or \'tiph\'ereth = "beauty," "glory," "honor" and "majesty," hence, "splendor of bravery." "The bravery of their tinkling ornaments" (<a onClick="return mV(\'Isa\',3,18);">Isa 3:18</a> the King James Version), "the beauty of their anklets" (American Standard Revised Version). Compare bravado, bravura.``1';
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isbe[1674]='Brawler`brol\'-er (Qere midhyanim; Kethibh midhwanim, "quarrelsomeness"; amachos, "not fighting"): Spoken of the quarrelsome woman; "a contentious (the King James Version "brawling") woman" (<a onClick="return mV(\'Pro\',21,9);">Pr 21:9</a>). He who seeks the office of a bishop should be "no brawler" (paroinos the King James Version "given to wine," <a onClick="return mV(\'Tts\',1,7);">Tit 1:7</a>); "not contentious" (the King James Version "not a brawler," <a onClick="return mV(\'1Ti\',3,3);">1Ti 3:3</a>; <a onClick="return mV(\'Tts\',3,2);">Tit 3:2</a>).``1';
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isbe[1675]='Bray`bra (nahaq, "to bray," of the ass; kathash, "to pound in a mortar"): This word occurs with two distinct meanings:<P>(a) The harsh cry of the ass (<a onClick="return mV(\'Job\',6,5);">Job 6:5</a>). Job argued that as the sounds instinctively uttered by animals denote their wants, even so his Words were but the natural expression of his longing for some adequate explanation of his sufferings, or, failing this, for death itself. Used figuratively of Job\'s mockers (<a onClick="return mV(\'Job\',30,7);">Job 30:7</a>).<P>(b) "To beat small in a mortar," "to chastise." <a onClick="return mV(\'Pro\',27,22);">Pr 27:22</a> refers to a more elaborate process than threshing for separating grain (the English Revised Version "corn") from its husk and impurities; used figuratively of a thorough but useless course of discipline; or still more probably with reference to the Syrian custom of braying meat and bruised corn together in a mortar with a pestle, "till the meat and grain become a uniform indistinguishable pulp" (see The Expositor Times, VIII, 521).``91';
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isbe[1676]='Brazen`bra\'-z\'-n.`<a href="./study/isbe/search.html?string=BRASS">BRASS</a>`1';
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isbe[1677]='Brazen Sea``<a href="./study/isbe/search.html?string=SEA,+THE+MOLTEN">SEA, THE MOLTEN</a>`1';
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isbe[1678]='Brazen Serpent``<a href="./study/isbe/search.html?string=NEHUSHTAN">NEHUSHTAN</a>`1';
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isbe[1679]='Breach`brech: Represented by<P>(1) perets = "a tear," "a rending asunder," "a break," hence, figuratively "enmity," "disruption," "strife" (<a onClick="return mV(\'Gen\',38,29);">Ge 38:29</a>; <a onClick="return mV(\'Jdg\',21,15);">Jud 21:15</a>; <a onClick="return mV(\'2Sa\',5,20);">2Sa 5:20</a>; <a onClick="return mV(\'1Ch\',15,13);">1Ch 15:13</a>; <a onClick="return mV(\'Neh\',6,1);">Ne 6:1</a>; <a onClick="return mV(\'Job\',16,14);">Job 16:14</a>; <a onClick="return mV(\'Psa\',106,23);">Ps 106:23</a>; <a onClick="return mV(\'Isa\',30,13);">Isa 30:13</a>; <a onClick="return mV(\'Isa\',58,12);">58:12</a>);<P>(2) shebher = "fracture," "affliction," "bruise," "destruction" (<a onClick="return mV(\'Lev\',24,20);">Le 24:20</a>; <a onClick="return mV(\'Jer\',14,17);">Jer 14:17</a>; <a onClick="return mV(\'Lam\',2,13);">La 2:13</a>; <a onClick="return mV(\'Psa\',60,2);">Ps 60:2</a>);<P>(3) bedheq = "a gap" or "leak" (in a building or ship) occurring in <a onClick="return mV(\'2Ki\',12,\'5-8\',12);">2Ki 12:5-8, 12</a>; <a onClick="return mV(\'2Ki\',22,5);">22:5</a>;<P>(4) tenu\'ah = "alienation," "breach of promise" (<a onClick="return mV(\'Num\',14,34);">Nu 14:34</a> the King James Version);<P>(5) miphrats = "a break" (in the shore), and hence, "a haven" (<a onClick="return mV(\'Jdg\',5,17);">Jud 5:17</a>, the Revised Version (British and American) "creeks").``77';
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isbe[1680]='Breach of Covenant`brech, kuv\'-e-nant, kuv\'-e-nant.`<a href="./study/isbe/search.html?string=CRIMES">CRIMES</a>`1';
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isbe[1681]='Breach of Ritual`rit\'-u-al.`<a href="./study/isbe/search.html?string=CRIMES">CRIMES</a>`1';
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isbe[1682]='Breach of Trust``<a href="./study/isbe/search.html?string=CRIMES">CRIMES</a>`1';
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isbe[1683]='Bread`bred (lechem; artos):<P><b>I. DIETARY PREEMINENCE</b><P><b>II. MATERIALS</b><P class="in15">1. Barley<P class="in15">2. Wheat<P class="in15">3. Three Kinds of Flour<P><b>III. BREAD-MAKING</b><P class="in15">1. Grinding<P class="in15">2. Kneading<P class="in15">3. Baking<P class="in30">(1) Hot Stones<P class="in30">(2) Baking Pans<P class="in15">4. Ovens<P class="in30">(1) The Bowl-Oven<P class="in30">(2) The Jar-Oven<P class="in30">(3) The Pit-Oven<P class="in15">5. Forms of Baked Bread<P class="in15">6. Work for Women<P><b>IV. SANCTITY AND SYMBOLISM OF BREAD</b><P class="in15">1. Sanctity<P class="in15">2. Symbolism<P><b>LITERATURE</b><hr /><P>The art of bread-making is very ancient. It was even known to the Egyptians at a very early day (Wilkinson, Ancient Egyptians), to the Hebrews of the Exodus (Nowack, Lehrbuch der hebr. Archaologie) and, of course, to the Greeks and Romans of a later day. Bread played a large part in the vocabulary and in the life of the ancient Hebrews.<P>I. Dietary Preeminence.<P>(1) In the East bread is primary, other articles of food merely accessory; while in the West meat and other things chiefly constitute the meal, and bread is merely secondary. Accordingly "bread" in the Old Testament, from <a onClick="return mV(\'Gen\',3,19);">Ge 3:19</a> onward, stands for food in general.<P>(2) Moreover in ancient times, as now, most probably, when the peasant, carpenter, blacksmith or mason left home for the day\'s work, or when the muleteer or messenger set out on a journey, he wrapped other articles of food, if there were any, in the thin loaves of bread, and thus kept them ready for his use as needed.<P>(3) Often the thin, glutinous loaf, puffed out with air, is seen today, opened on one side and used so as to form a natural pouch, in which meat, cheese, raisins and olives are enclosed to be eaten with the bread (see Mackie in DCG, article "Bread"). The loaf of bread is thus made to include everything and, for this reason also, it may fitly be spoken of as synonymous with food in general. To the disciples of Jesus, no doubt, "Give us this day our daily bread" would naturally be a petition for all needed food, and in the case of the miraculous feeding of the multitude it was enough to provide them with "bread" (<a onClick="return mV(\'Mat\',14,15);">Mt 14:15</a>ff).<P>II. Materials.<P>1. Barley:<P>Barley was in early times, as it is today, the main bread-stuff of the Palestine peasantry (see <a onClick="return mV(\'Jdg\',7,13);">Jud 7:13</a>; where "the cake of barley bread" is said to be "the sword of Gideon"), and of the poorer classes of the East in general (see <a onClick="return mV(\'Jhn\',6,13);">Joh 6:13</a>, where the multitude were fed on the miraculous increase of the "five barley loaves," and compare Josephus, BJ, V, x, 2).<P>2. Wheat:<P>But wheat, also, was widely used as a breadstuff then, as it is now, the wheat of the Syrian plains and uplands being remarkable for its nutritious and keeping qualities.<P>3. Three Kinds of Flour:<P>Three kinds, or qualities, of flour, are distinguished, according to the way of making:<P>(1) a coarser sort, rudely made by the use of pestle and mortar, the "beaten corn" of <a onClick="return mV(\'Lev\',2,14,16);">Le 2:14, 16</a> (the Revised Version (British and American) "bruised");<P>(2) the "flour" or "meal" of ordinary use (<a onClick="return mV(\'Exd\',29,2);">Ex 29:2</a>; <a onClick="return mV(\'Lev\',2,2);">Le 2:2</a>; <a onClick="return mV(\'Lev\',6,15);">6:15</a>), and<P>(3) the "fine meal" for honored guests (see <a onClick="return mV(\'Gen\',18,6);">Ge 18:6</a>, where Abraham commands Sarah to "make ready...three measures of fine meal") with which we may compare the "fine flour" for the king\'s kitchen (<a onClick="return mV(\'1Ki\',4,22);">1Ki 4:22</a>) and the "fine flour" required for the ritual meal offering, as in <a onClick="return mV(\'Lev\',2,1);">Le 2:1</a>; <a onClick="return mV(\'Lev\',5,11);">5:11</a>; <a onClick="return mV(\'Lev\',7,12);">7:12</a>; <a onClick="return mV(\'Lev\',14,10);">14:10</a>; <a onClick="return mV(\'Lev\',23,13);">23:13</a>; <a onClick="return mV(\'Lev\',24,5);">24:5</a>; etc.<P>III. Bread-Making.<P>1. Grinding:<P>After thoroughly sifting and cleaning the grain, the first step in the process was to reduce it to "meal" or "flour" by rubbing, pounding, or grinding. (In <a onClick="return mV(\'Num\',11,8);">Nu 11:8</a> it is said of the manna "The people went about, and gathered it, and ground it in mills, or beat it in mortars.") It has been shown that by a process, which is not yet extinct in Egypt, it was customary to rub the grain between two the "corn-rubbers" or "corn grinders," of which many specimens have been found by Petrie, Bliss, Macalister and others, at Lachish, Gezer and elsewhere (PEFS,1902,326; 1903, 118; compare Erman, Egypt,180,for illustrations of actual use). For detailed descriptions of the other processes, see <a href="./study/isbe/search.html?string=MORTAR">MORTAR</a>; <a href="./study/isbe/search.html?string=MILL">MILL</a>.<P>2. Kneading:<P>The "flour" was then ordinarily mixed simply with water, kneaded in a wooden basin or kneading-trough (<a onClick="return mV(\'Exd\',8,3);">Ex 8:3</a>) and, in case of urgency, at once made into "cakes" and baked. (See <a onClick="return mV(\'Exd\',12,34);">Ex 12:34</a>, "And the people took their dough before it was leavened.") The Hebrews called such cakes matstsoth, and they were the only kind allowed for use on the altar during Passover, and immediately following the Feast of Unleavened Bread (also called Matstsoth). Commonly however the process was as follows: a lump of leavened dough of yesterday\'s baking, preserved for the purpose, was broken up and mixed with the day\'s "batch," and the whole was then set aside and left standing until it was thoroughly leavened (see <a href="./study/isbe/search.html?string=LEAVEN">LEAVEN</a>).<P>3. Baking:<P>We find in the Old Testament, as in the practice of the East today, three modes of firing or baking bread:<P>(1) Hot Stones:<P>That represented by Elijah\'s cake baked on the hot stones (<a onClick="return mV(\'1Ki\',19,6);">1Ki 19:6</a> the Revised Version, margin; compare "the cakes upon the hearth," <a onClick="return mV(\'Gen\',18,6);">Ge 18:6</a> the King James Version, and see Robinson, Researches, II, 406). The stones were laid together and a fire was lighted upon them. When the stones were well heated the cinders were raked off, and the cakes laid on the stones and covered with ashes. After a while the ashes were again removed and the cake was turned (see <a onClick="return mV(\'Hsa\',7,8);">Ho 7:8</a>) and once more covered with the glowing ashes. It was thus cooked on both sides evenly and made ready for eating (compare the Vulgate, Panis subcineraris, and DeLagarde, Symmicta, II,188,where egkouthia, is referred to as "the hiding" of the cakes under the ashes). Out of these primitive usages of the pastoral tribes and peasants grew other improved forms of baking.<P>(2) Baking Pans:<P>An ancient method of baking, prevalent still among the Bedouin of Syria and Arabia, is to employ a heated convex iron plate, or griddle, what we would call a frying pan, in lieu of the heated sand or stones. The Hebrew "baking-pan" (machabhath, <a onClick="return mV(\'Lev\',2,5);">Le 2:5</a>; <a onClick="return mV(\'Lev\',7,9);">7:9</a>; compare <a onClick="return mV(\'Eze\',4,3);">Eze 4:3</a>) must have been of this species of "griddle." The reference in <a onClick="return mV(\'1Ch\',9,31);">1Ch 9:31</a> is probably to bread baked in this way. There it is said that one of the sons of the priests "had the office of trust over the things that were baked in pans."<P>4. Ovens:<P>tannur (compare Arabic), no doubt were used by the Hebrews, when they settled in Palestine, as they were used by the settled populations of the Orient in general, more and more as they approached civilized conditions. These "ovens" were of various kinds:<P>(1) The Bowl-Oven:<P>The simplest used by the ancients were hardly more primitive than the kind quite commonly used in Palestine today. It may be called the "bowl-oven." It consists of a large clay-bowl, which is provided with a movable lid. This bowl is placed inverted upon small stones and then heated with a fuel distinctly oriental, consisting of dried dung heaped over and around it. The bread is baked on the stones, then covered by the inverted oven, which is heated by the firing of the fuel of dung on the outside of the cover.<P>(2) The Jar-Oven:<P>The jar-oven is another form of oven found in use there today. This is a large earthen-ware jar that is heated by fuel of grass (<a onClick="return mV(\'Mat\',6,30);">Mt 6:30</a>), stubble (<a onClick="return mV(\'Mal\',4,1);">Mal 4:1</a>), dry twigs or thorns (<a onClick="return mV(\'1Ki\',17,12);">1Ki 17:12</a>) and the like, which are placed within the jar for firing. When the jar is thus heated the cakes are stuck upon the hot inside walls.<P>(3) The Pit-Oven:<P>The pit-oven was doubtless a development from this type. It was formed partly in the ground and partly built up of clay and plastered throughout, narrowing toward the top. The ancient Egyptians, as the monuments and mural paintings show, laid the cakes upon the outside of the oven (Wilkinson, Ancient Egyptians); but in Palestine, in general, if the customs of today are conclusive, the fire was kindled in the inside of the pit-oven. Great numbers of such ovens have been unearthed in recent excavations, and we may well believe them to be exact counterparts of the oven of the professional bakers in the street named after them in Jerusalem "the bakers\' street" (<a onClick="return mV(\'Jer\',37,21);">Jer 37:21</a>). The largest and most developed form of oven is still the public oven of the town or city of this sort; but the primitive rural types still survive, and the fuel of thorns, and of the grass, "which today is, and tomorrow is cast into the oven," are still in evidence.<P>5. Forms of Baked Bread:<P>(1) The large pone or thick, light loaf of the West is unknown in the East. The common oriental cake or loaf is proverbially thin. The thin home-made bread is really named both in Hebrew and Arabic from its thinness as is reflected in the translation "wafer" in <a onClick="return mV(\'Exd\',16,31);">Ex 16:31</a>; <a onClick="return mV(\'Exd\',29,23);">29:23</a>; <a onClick="return mV(\'Lev\',8,26);">Le 8:26</a>; <a onClick="return mV(\'Num\',6,19);">Nu 6:19</a>; <a onClick="return mV(\'1Ch\',23,29);">1Ch 23:29</a>. Such bread was called in Hebrew raqiq (raqiq; compare modern Arabic warkuk, from warak = "foliage," "paper").<P>(2) It is still significantly customary at a Syrian meal to take a piece of such bread and, with the ease and skill of long habit, to fold it over at the end held in the hand so as to make a sort of spoon of it, which then is eaten along with whatever is lifted by it out of the common dish (compare <a onClick="return mV(\'Mat\',26,23);">Mt 26:23</a>). But this "dipping in the common dish" is so accomplished as not to allow the contents of the dish to be touched by the fingers, or by anything that has been in contact with the lips of those who sit at meat (compare Mackie, DCG, article "Bread").<P>(3) Such "loaves" are generally today about 7 inches in diameter and from half an inch to an inch thick. Such, probably, were the lad\'s "barley loaves" brought to Christ at the time of the feeding of the 5,000 (<a onClick="return mV(\'Jhn\',6,9,13);">Joh 6:9, 13</a>). Even thinner cakes, of both leavened and unleavened bread, are sometimes made now, as of old, especially at times of religious festivals. Often they are coated on the upper surface with olive oil and take on a glossy brown color in cooking; and sometimes they are sprinkled over with aromatic seeds, which adhere and impart a spicy flavor. They may well recall to us the "oiled bread" of <a onClick="return mV(\'Lev\',8,26);">Le 8:26</a> and "the wafers anointed with oil" of <a onClick="return mV(\'Exd\',29,2);">Ex 29:2</a> and <a onClick="return mV(\'Lev\',2,4);">Le 2:4</a>.<P>(4) Sometimes large discs of dough about 1 inch thick and 8 inches in diameter are prepared and laid in rows on long, thin boards like canoe paddles, and thus inserted into the oven; then, by a quick, deft jerk of the hand, they are slipped off upon the hot pavement and baked. These are so made and baked that when done they are soft and flexible, and for this reason are preferred by many to the thinner cakes which are cooked stiff and brown.<P>(5) The precise nature of the cracknels of <a onClick="return mV(\'1Ki\',14,3);">1Ki 14:3</a> (the American Standard Revised Version "cakes") is not known. A variety of bakemeats (<a onClick="return mV(\'Gen\',40,17);">Ge 40:17</a>, literally "food, the work of the baker") are met with in the Old Testament, but only in a few cases is it possible or important to identify their nature or forms (see Encyclopedia Bibl, coll. 460f). A cake used for ritual purposes (<a onClick="return mV(\'Exd\',29,2);">Ex 29:2</a> and often) seems, from its name, to have been pierced with holes, like the modern Passover cakes (compare Kennedy, 1-vol HDB, article "Bread").<P>6. Work for Women:<P>(a) Every oriental household of importance seems to have had its own oven, and bread-making for the most part was in the hands of the women. Even when and where baking, as under advancing civilization, became a recognized public industry, and men were the professional bakers, a large part of the baker\'s work, as is true today, was to fire the bread prepared and in a sense pre-baked by the women at home.<P>(b) The women of the East are often now seen taking a hand in sowing, harvesting and winnowing the grain, as well as in the processes of "grinding" (<a onClick="return mV(\'Ecc\',12,3);">Ec 12:3</a>; <a onClick="return mV(\'Mat\',24,41);">Mt 24:41</a>; <a onClick="return mV(\'Luk\',17,35);">Lu 17:35</a>), "kneading" (<a onClick="return mV(\'Gen\',18,6);">Ge 18:6</a>; <a onClick="return mV(\'1Sa\',28,24);">1Sa 28:24</a>; <a onClick="return mV(\'2Sa\',13,8);">2Sa 13:8</a>; <a onClick="return mV(\'Jer\',7,18);">Jer 7:18</a>) and "baking" (<a onClick="return mV(\'1Sa\',8,13);">1Sa 8:13</a>), and doubtless it was so in ancient times to an equal extent.<P>IV. Sanctity and Symbolism of Bread.<P>1. Sanctity:<P>It would seem that the sanctity of bread remains as unchanged in the Orient as the sanctity of shrines and graves (compare Mackie, DCG, article "Bread," and Robinson\'s Researches). As in Egypt everything depended for life on the Nile, and as the Nile was considered "sacred," so in Palestine, as everything depended upon the wheat and barley harvest, "bread" was in a peculiar sense "sacred." The psychology of the matter seems to be about this: all life was seen to be dependent upon the grain harvest, this in turn depended upon rain in its season, and so bread, the product at bottom of these Divine processes, was regarded as peculiarly "a gift of God," a daily reminder of his continual and often undeserved care (<a onClick="return mV(\'Mat\',5,45);">Mt 5:45</a>ff; consider in this connection the Lord\'s Prayer, "Give us this day our daily bread," <a onClick="return mV(\'Mat\',6,11);">Mt 6:11</a>; compare <a onClick="return mV(\'Luk\',11,11);">Lu 11:11</a>). Travelers generally note as a special characteristic of the Oriental of today that, seeing a scrap of bread on the roadside, he will pick it up and throw it to a street dog, or place it in a crevice of the wall, or on a tree-branch where the birds may get it. One thing is settled with him, it must not be trodden under foot in the common dust, for, in the estimat ion of all, it has in it an element of mystery and sacredness as coming from the Giver of all good.<P>2. Symbolism:<P>(a) In partaking of the hospitality of the primitive peasants of Palestine today, east and west of the Jordan, one sees what a sign and symbol of hospitality and friendship the giving and receiving of bread is. Among the Arabs, indeed, it has become a proverb, which may be put into English thus: "Eat salt together, be friends forever." Once let the Arab break bread with you and you are safe. You may find the bread the poorest barley loaf, still marked by the indentations of the pebbles, with small patches of the gray ash of the hearth, and here and there an inlaid bit of singed grass or charred thorn, the result of their primitive process of baking; but it is bread, the best that the poor man can give you, "a gift of God," indeed, and it is offered by the wildest Arab, with some sense of its sacredness and with somewhat of the gladness and dignity of the high duty of hospitality. No wonder, therefore, that it is considered the height of discourtesy, yea, a violation of the sacred law of hospitality, to decline it or to set it aside as unfit for use.<P>(b) Christ must have been influenced by His knowledge of some such feeling and law as this when, on sending forth His disciples, He charged them to "take no bread with them" (<a onClick="return mV(\'Mar\',6,8);">Mr 6:8</a>). Not to have expected such hospitality, and not to have used what would thus be freely offered to them by the people, would have been a rudeness, not to say an offense, on the part of the disciples, which would have hindered the reception of the good tidings of the Kingdom.<P>(c) It has well been pointed out that God\'s gift of natural food to His people enters in for the praises of the Magnificat (<a onClick="return mV(\'Luk\',1,53);">Lu 1:53</a>), and that when Christ called Himself "the bread of life" (<a onClick="return mV(\'Jhn\',6,35);">Joh 6:35</a>) He really appealed to all these endeared and indissoluble associations connected in the eastern mind with the meaning and use of bread. Most naturally and appropriately in the inauguration of the New Covenant Christ adopted as His memorial, not a monument of stone or brass, but this humble yet sacred article of food, familiar and accessible to all, to become, with the "wine" of common use, in the Lord\'s Supper, the perpetual symbol among His disciples of the communion of saints.<P>LITERATURE.<P>Wilkinson. Ancient Egypt, 1878, II, 34; Erman, Aegypten und aegyptisches Leben, 1885, 191ff; Nowack, Lehrbuch der hebr. Archaologie, 1894; Maimonides, Yadh, Temidhin U-Mucaphin, v, 6-8; Bacher, Monats-schrift,1901,299; Mishna B. M., II,1,2; Robinson, Biblical Researches in Palestine, II, 416; Doughty, Travels in Arabia Deserta, I, 131; Josephus, BJ; and Bible Dicts. on "Bread," "Dietary Laws": "Matstsoth," "Challah," etc.``47';
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isbe[1684]='Breadth`bredth (rochabh, the root idea being to make wide, spacious): A term of expanse or measurement used of the ark (<a onClick="return mV(\'Gen\',6,15);">Ge 6:15</a>); of the tabernacle (<a onClick="return mV(\'Exd\',27,13);">Ex 27:13</a>); of Solomon\'s temple (<a onClick="return mV(\'1Ki\',6,2);">1Ki 6:2</a>). platos, "breadth," as of the celestial city (<a onClick="return mV(\'Rev\',21,16);">Re 21:16</a>). Figuratively, of the comprehensiveness of God\'s law (<a onClick="return mV(\'Psa\',119,96);">Ps 119:96</a>); of the heart (<a onClick="return mV(\'1Ki\',4,29);">1Ki 4:29</a>, rendered "largeness of heart" English Versions); of God\'s immeasurable love (<a onClick="return mV(\'Eph\',3,18);">Eph 3:18</a>).``1';
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isbe[1685]='Break`brak: shabhar = "break" (down, off, in pieces, up), "destroy," "quench" (<a onClick="return mV(\'Isa\',14,25);">Isa 14:25</a>; <a onClick="return mV(\'Jer\',19,10,11);">Jer 19:10-11</a>; <a onClick="return mV(\'Eze\',4,16);">Eze 4:16</a>; <a onClick="return mV(\'Amo\',1,5);">Am 1:5</a>); paraq = "to break off" or "craunch"; figuratively "to deliver" (<a onClick="return mV(\'Gen\',27,40);">Ge 27:40</a> the King James Version); \'araph = "to break the neck," hence, "to destroy" (<a onClick="return mV(\'Exd\',13,13);">Ex 13:13</a>); harac = "to break through" (<a onClick="return mV(\'Exd\',19,21,24);">Ex 19:21, 24</a>); parats = "to break" (forth, away), occurs in <a onClick="return mV(\'Exd\',19,22,24);">Ex 19:22, 24</a>; <a onClick="return mV(\'1Sa\',25,10);">1Sa 25:10</a>; "breaking faith," <a onClick="return mV(\'Hsa\',4,2);">Ho 4:2</a>; parach = "to break forth as a bud" (<a onClick="return mV(\'Lev\',13,12);">Le 13:12</a>); nathats or nathaq = "destroy" (<a onClick="return mV(\'Eze\',23,34);">Eze 23:34</a> the King James Version, the Revised Version (British and American) "gnaw"; see <a href="./study/isbe/search.html?string=BREAST">BREAST</a>); chalal = "profane," "defile," "stain" (<a onClick="return mV(\'Num\',30,2);">Nu 30:2</a>; <a onClick="return mV(\'Psa\',89,31,34);">Ps 89:31, 34</a>); baqa = "rip open" (<a onClick="return mV(\'2Ki\',3,26);">2Ki 3:26</a>; <a onClick="return mV(\'Isa\',58,8);">Isa 58:8</a>); ra\'a\' = "to spoil by breaking to pieces," "to make good for nothing" (<a onClick="return mV(\'Job\',34,24);">Job 34:24</a>; <a onClick="return mV(\'Psa\',2,9);">Ps 2:9</a>; <a onClick="return mV(\'Jer\',15,12);">Jer 15:12</a>, the King James Version "Shall iron break northern iron?"); patsach = "to break out" (in joyful sound), "break forth," "make a noise" (<a onClick="return mV(\'Isa\',14,7);">Isa 14:7</a>, the nations rejoice in the peace which follows the fall of the oppressor); nir = "to glisten," "gleam" (as of a fresh furrow) (<a onClick="return mV(\'Jer\',4,3);">Jer 4:3</a>; <a onClick="return mV(\'Hsa\',10,12);">Ho 10:12</a>); pathach = "to open wide," "loosen," "have vent" (<a onClick="return mV(\'Jer\',1,14);">Jer 1:14</a>); naphats = "to dash to pieces or scatter," "overspread," "scatter" (<a onClick="return mV(\'Jer\',48,12);">Jer 48:12</a>, the work usually done carefully shall be done roughly; <a onClick="return mV(\'Jer\',51,\'20-23\');">Jer 51:20-23</a>, descriptive of the terrible fate appointed for Babylon); na\'aph = "to break wedlock" (<a onClick="return mV(\'Eze\',16,38);">Eze 16:38</a>); tsalach or tsaleach = "break out," "come mightily" (<a onClick="return mV(\'Amo\',5,6);">Am 5:6</a>). The New Testament employs luo = "to loosen," "dissolve" (<a onClick="return mV(\'Mat\',5,19);">Mt 5:19</a>); diorusso = "to penetrate burglariously," "break through" (<a onClick="return mV(\'Mat\',6,19,20);">Mt 6:19-20</a>, Greek "dig through"); rhegnumi or rhesso = "to disrupt," "burst," "to utter with a loud voice" (<a onClick="return mV(\'Gal\',4,27);">Ga 4:27</a>); klao = "to break" (<a onClick="return mV(\'Act\',20,7);">Ac 20:7</a>, "to break bread," i.e. to celebrate the Lord\'s Supper; <a onClick="return mV(\'1Cr\',10,16);">1Co 10:16</a>).`<a href="./study/isbe/search.html?string=BREACH">BREACH</a>`77';
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isbe[1686]='Break of Day`\'or, "to be light," "the light breaks" (<a onClick="return mV(\'2Sa\',2,32);">2Sa 2:32</a>); auge, "bright light," "radiance" (<a onClick="return mV(\'Act\',20,11);">Ac 20:11</a>).`<a href="./study/isbe/search.html?string=DAWN">DAWN</a>`1';
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isbe[1687]='Breast`brest: Signifying the front view of the bust in humans and the corresponding portion of the body in animals. chazeh, occurs in <a onClick="return mV(\'Exd\',29,26,27);">Ex 29:26-27</a>; <a onClick="return mV(\'Lev\',7,30,31,34);">Le 7:30-31, 34</a>; <a onClick="return mV(\'Lev\',8,29);">8:29</a>; <a onClick="return mV(\'Lev\',10,14,15);">10:14-15</a>; <a onClick="return mV(\'Num\',6,20);">Nu 6:20</a>; <a onClick="return mV(\'Num\',18,18);">18:18</a>; and chadhi, in <a onClick="return mV(\'Dan\',2,32);">Da 2:32</a>. shadh or shodh = "breast" in the sense of pap of a woman or animal (<a onClick="return mV(\'Job\',24,9);">Job 24:9</a>; <a onClick="return mV(\'Sgs\',8,1,8,10);">So 8:1, 8, 10</a>; <a onClick="return mV(\'Isa\',60,16);">Isa 60:16</a>; <a onClick="return mV(\'Lam\',4,3);">La 4:3</a>). Only one word occurs with this signification in the New Testament: stethos = "bosom," "chest" (<a onClick="return mV(\'Luk\',18,13);">Lu 18:13</a>; <a onClick="return mV(\'Luk\',23,48);">23:48</a>; <a onClick="return mV(\'Jhn\',13,25);">Joh 13:25</a>; <a onClick="return mV(\'Jhn\',21,20);">21:20</a>).<P>Figurative: "The breasts of virginity," pressed and bruised (<a onClick="return mV(\'Eze\',23,3,8);">Eze 23:3, 8</a> the King James Version), indicative of Ezekiel\'s belief that Israel practiced idolatry in Egypt (compare <a onClick="return mV(\'Eze\',20,8);">Eze 20:8</a>). "To tear (pluck off) thy breasts" (<a onClick="return mV(\'Eze\',23,34);">Eze 23:34</a>) denotes the anguish of the people in parting with their beloved sin (compare <a onClick="return mV(\'Hsa\',2,2);">Ho 2:2</a>). "Its breast of silver" (<a onClick="return mV(\'Dan\',2,32);">Da 2:32</a>) is possibly expressive of the humanity and wealth of the Medo-Persian empire.`<a href="./study/isbe/search.html?string=WAVE+OFFERING">WAVE OFFERING</a>`77';
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isbe[1688]='Breastplate`brest\'-plat.`<a href="./study/isbe/search.html?string=ARMOR">ARMOR</a>`1';
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isbe[1689]='Breastplate of the High Priest`prest: The Hebrew word choshen, rendered in the King James Version "breastplate," means really a "pouch" or "bag." The references to it are found exclusively in the Priestly Code (<a onClick="return mV(\'Exd\',25,7);">Ex 25:7</a>; <a onClick="return mV(\'Exd\',28,\'1-\');">28</a>; <a onClick="return mV(\'Exd\',29,5);">29:5</a>; <a onClick="return mV(\'Exd\',35,9,27);">35:9, 27</a>; <a onClick="return mV(\'Lev\',8,8);">Le 8:8</a>). The descriptions of its composition and particularly the directions with regard to wearing it are exceedingly obscure. According to <a onClick="return mV(\'Ezr\',2,63);">Ezr 2:63</a> and <a onClick="return mV(\'Neh\',7,65);">Ne 7:65</a> the Urim and Thummim, which were called in the priestly pouch, were lost during the Babylonian exile. The actual pouch was a "span in length and a span in breadth," i.e. about 9 inch square. It was made, like the ephod, of "gold, of blue, and purple, and scarlet, and fine twined linen" (<a onClick="return mV(\'Exd\',28,15);">Ex 28:15</a>f). In it were twelve precious stones, in rows of four, representing the twelve tribes of Israel. Apparently the pouch had two rings (perhaps four) through which passed two gold chains by which it was fastened to the ephod supplied for the purpose with ouches or clasps. The pouch was worn by the high priest over his heart when he entered the "holy place" "for a memorial before Yahweh." The presence of the high priest, the representative of the people, with the names of the separate tribes on his person, brought each tribe before the notice of Yahweh and thereby directed His attention to them. The full designation was choshen mishpaT, "pouch of judgment" or "decision." It was the distinctive symbol of the priest in his capacity as the giver of oracles. As already suggested the priestly pouch contained the Urim and Thummim which were probably precious stones used as lots in giving decisions. In all probability the restored text of <a onClick="return mV(\'1Sa\',14,41);">1Sa 14:41</a> preserves the true custom. On one side stood Saul and Jonathan, and the people on the other side. If the result was Urim, Saul and Jonathan would be the guilty parties. If the result was Thummim, the guilt would fasten on the people.``103';
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isbe[1690]='Breath; Breathe; Breathing`breth, breth, breath\'-ing: In the English Versions of the Bible of the Old Testament "breath" is the rendering of neshamah, and of ruach. These words differ but slightly in meaning, both signifying primarily "wind," then "breath," though the former suggests a gentler blowing, the latter often a blast. As applied to persons there is no very clear distinction between the words. Yet in general one may say that of the two neshamah is employed preferably of breath regarded physiologically: "vital breath," hence, the vital principle, "Soul (animal) life" (compare <a onClick="return mV(\'Gen\',2,7);">Ge 2:7</a>; <a onClick="return mV(\'Gen\',7,22);">7:22</a>; <a onClick="return mV(\'Job\',27,3);">Job 27:3</a>, where both words occur; <a onClick="return mV(\'Dan\',5,23);">Da 5:23</a>); while ruach (though it, too, sometimes signifies "vital breath") is the word generally employed where the breath is regarded physically<6C>breath or blast as an act or force<63>and so is related to the will or the emotions, whence the meaning "spirit," also sometimes "thought," "purpose" (compare <a onClick="return mV(\'Job\',4,9);">Job 4:9</a>; <a onClick="return mV(\'Job\',9,18);">9:18</a>; <a onClick="return mV(\'Psa\',18,15);">Ps 18:15</a>; <a onClick="return mV(\'Psa\',146,4);">146:4</a>; <a onClick="return mV(\'Eze\',37,5,6,8,9,10);">Eze 37:5-6, 8-10</a>). The examples cited, however, and other passages reveal a lack of uniformity of usage. Yet generally ruach is the expression, neshamah, the principle, of life. Yet when employed of God they of course signify the principle, not of His own life, but of that imparted to His creatures. "Breathe" in English Versions of the Bible of the Old Testament requires no remark except at <a onClick="return mV(\'Psa\',27,12);">Ps 27:12</a> ("such as breathe out cruelty"), from yaphach, "to breathe hard," "to snort" (compare <a onClick="return mV(\'Act\',9,1);">Ac 9:1</a>). In the New Testament "breath" (pnoe) occurs once <a onClick="return mV(\'Act\',17,25);">Ac 17:25</a> in the plain sense of vital principle, the gift of God. "Breathed" is employed in <a onClick="return mV(\'Jhn\',20,22);">Joh 20:22</a> of our Lord\'s concrete symbolism of the giving of the Spirit. In <a onClick="return mV(\'Act\',9,1);">Ac 9:1</a> Saul\'s "breathing threatening and slaughter" is literally "snorting," etc., and the nouns are partitive genitives, being the element of which he breathed.`<a href="./study/isbe/search.html?string=SPIRIT">SPIRIT</a>`134';
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isbe[1691]='Breeches`brich\'-iz, brech\'-iz: A garment, extending from the waist to or just below the knee or to the ankle, and covering each leg separately. Breeches are not listed among the garments of an ordinary wardrobe, but the priests in later times (<a onClick="return mV(\'Exd\',20,26);">Ex 20:26</a>) wore a garment resembling modern trousers. These priestly linen breeches, mikhnece bhadh, were worn along with the linen coat, the linen girdle and the linen turban by Aaron on the Day of Atonement, when he entered the "holy place." (The word mikhnece is derived from a root, kanac = ganaz, "to cover up," "hide.") Ordinary priests also wore them on sacrificial occasions (<a onClick="return mV(\'Exd\',28,42);">Ex 28:42</a>; <a onClick="return mV(\'Exd\',39,28);">39:28</a>; <a onClick="return mV(\'Lev\',6,10);">Le 6:10</a>; <a onClick="return mV(\'Eze\',44,18);">Eze 44:18</a>). Apart from the breeches just referred to, the only reference to a similar garment among the Israelites is found in <a onClick="return mV(\'Dan\',3,21);">Da 3:21</a>, where the carbal, the Revised Version (British and American) "hosen," is mentioned. (The King James Version translates "coats.") The rendering of the King James Version is the more likely, though the meaning of the Aramaic sarbal is obscure (compare the thorough discussion in Ges., Thesaurus). In Targum and Talmud (compare Levy, NHWB, under the word), and is so taken by the rabbinical commentators. Still, Aquila and Theodotion (sarabara), Septuagint in <a onClick="return mV(\'Dan\',3,27);">Da 3:27</a>, Symmachus (anaxurides), Peshitta, express the meaning "trousers" (of a looser kind than those worn by us), a garment known (from Herodotus and other sources) to have been worn by the ancient Scythians and Persians, and to have been called by them sarabara. The word, with the same connotation, was brought into the Arabic in the form sirwal. In both these senses the word may be originally Persian: in that of mantle, meaning properly (according to Andreas) a "head-covering" (sarabara), for which in Persia the peasants often use their mantle; in that of "trousers," corresponding to the modern Persian shalwar, "under-breeches." Cook has pointed out that "mantles, long-flowing robes, and therefore extremely liable to catch the flames," are more likely to be especially mentioned in this chapter than trousers, or (Revised Version) "hosen."<P>The word patish (<a onClick="return mV(\'Dan\',3,21);">Da 3:21</a>), is also uncertain. The Septuagint and Theodotion render tiarai, "turbans"; Peshitta has the same word, which is variously taken by Syrian lexicographers as "tunic," "trousers," or a kind of "gaiter" (Payne Smith, Thes. Syriac., col. 3098). (For further discussion of these words, compare commentaries on Daniel of Jour. Phil., XXVI, 307 if.)<P>In general, we must remember that a thorough discussion of Israelite "dress" is impossible, because of the limitations of our sources.``197';
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isbe[1692]='Breed`bred: Found in the past tense in <a onClick="return mV(\'Exd\',16,20);">Ex 16:20</a> as a translation of rum = "to bring up," "to rise." In this verse, the manna is said to have arisen, i.e. "become alive" (with worms), to indicate that God\'s gifts are spoiled by selfish and miserly hoarding. The pres. act. occurs in <a onClick="return mV(\'Gen\',8,17);">Ge 8:17</a> for sharats = "to wriggle," "swarm," "abound," hence, "breed abundantly"; and in <a onClick="return mV(\'Deu\',32,14);">De 32:14</a> for ben = "son," "descendant," "child," "colt," "calf," "breed." The present participle is found in <a onClick="return mV(\'Zep\',2,9);">Ze 2:9</a> the King James Version for mimshaq, a derivative of mesheq = "possession," "territory," "field." The passage in question should therefore be translated "field of nettles" (the Revised Version (British and American) "possession of nettles").``77';
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isbe[1693]='Brethren`breth\'-ren.`<a href="./study/isbe/search.html?string=BROTHER">BROTHER</a>`1';
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isbe[1694]='Brethren of the Lord`In <a onClick="return mV(\'Mat\',12,46);">Mt 12:46</a>ff; <a onClick="return mV(\'Mar\',3,31);">Mr 3:31</a>ff; <a onClick="return mV(\'Luk\',8,19);">Lu 8:19</a>ff, while Jesus was in the midst of an earnest argument with scribes and Pharisees, His mother and brothers sent a message evidently intended to end the discussion. In order to indicate that no ties of the flesh should interfere with the discharge of the duties of His Messianic office, He stretched His hands toward His disciples, and said: "Whosoever shall do the will of my Father who is in heaven, he is my brother, and sister, and mother." In <a onClick="return mV(\'Mat\',13,54);">Mt 13:54</a>ff; <a onClick="return mV(\'Mar\',6,2);">Mr 6:2</a>ff, while He was teaching in His own town, Nazareth, His neighbors, who, since they had watched His natural growth among them, could not comprehend the extraordinary claims that He was making, declare in an interrogative form, that they know all about the entire family, mother, brothers and sisters. They name the brothers. Bengel suggests that there is a tone of contempt in the omission of the names of the sisters, as though not worth mentioning. In <a onClick="return mV(\'Jhn\',2,12);">Joh 2:12</a>, they are said to have accompanied Jesus and His mother and disciples from the wedding at Cana. In <a onClick="return mV(\'Jhn\',7,3);">Joh 7:3</a>ff, they are described as unbelieving, and ridiculing His claims with bitter sarcasm. This attitude of hostility has disappeared, when, at Jerusalem, after the resurrection and ascension (<a onClick="return mV(\'Act\',1,14);">Ac 1:14</a>), in the company of Mary and the Eleven, and the faithful group of women, they "continued steadfastly in prayer," awaiting the promise of the gift of the Holy Spirit. Their subsequent participation in the missionary activity of the apostolic church appeasrs in <a onClick="return mV(\'1Cr\',9,5);">1Co 9:5</a>: "Have we no right to lead about a wife that is a believer, even as the rest of the apostles, and the brethren of the Lord, and Cephas?" In <a onClick="return mV(\'Gal\',1,19);">Ga 1:19</a>, James, bishop of the church at Jerusalem, is designated "the Lord\'s brother," thus harmonizing with <a onClick="return mV(\'Mat\',13,55);">Mt 13:55</a>, where their names are recorded as James, Joseph, Simon and Judas. When, then, "Jude,...brother of James" is mentioned (<a onClick="return mV(\'Jud\',1,1);">Jude 1:1</a>), the immediate inference is that Jude is another brother of the Lord. In reading these passages, the natural inference is that these "brethren" were the sons of Joseph and Mary, born after Jesus, living with Mary and her daughters, in the home at Nazareth, accompanying the mother on her journeys, and called the "brethren" of the Lord in a sense similar to that in which Joseph was called His father. They were brethren because of their common relationship to Mary. This impression is strengthened by the fact that Jesus is called her prototokos, "first-born son" (<a onClick="return mV(\'Luk\',2,7);">Lu 2:7</a>), as well as by the very decided implication of <a onClick="return mV(\'Mat\',1,25);">Mt 1:25</a>. Even though each particular, taken separately, might, with some difficulty, be explained otherwise, the force of the argument is cumulative. There are too many items to be explained away, in order to establish any other inference. This view is not the most ancient. It has been traced to Tertullian, and has been more fully developed by Belvidius, an obscure writer of the 4th century<P>Two other views have been advocated with much learning and earnestness. The earlier, which seems to have been prevalent in the first three centuries and is supported by Origen, Eusebius, Gregory of Nyssa and Ambrose, Epiphanius being its chief advocate, regards these "brethren" as the children of Joseph by a former marriage, and Mary as his second wife. Joseph disappears from sight when Jesus is twelve years old. We know nothing of him after the narrative of the child Jesus in the temple. That there is no allusion to him in the account of the family in <a onClick="return mV(\'Mar\',6,3);">Mr 6:3</a> indicates that Mary had been a widow long before she stood by the Cross without the support of any member of her immediate family. In the Apocryphal Gospels, the attempt is made to supply what the canonical Gospels omit. They report that Joseph was over eighty years of age at his second marriage, and the names of both sons and daughters by his first marriage are given. As Lightfoot (commentary on Galatians) has remarked, "they are pure fabrications." Theophylact even advanced theory that they were the children of Joseph by a levirate marriage, with the widow of his brother, Clopas. Others regard them as the nephews of Joseph whom, after the death of his brother Clopas, he had taken into his own home, and who thus became members of his family, and were accounted as though they were the children of Joseph and Mary. According to this view, Mary excepted, the whole family at Nazareth were no blood relatives of Jesus. It is a Docetic conception in the interest of the dogma of the perpetual virginity of Mary. All its details, even that of the advanced age and decrepitude of Joseph, start from that premise. Another view, first propounded by Jerome when a very young man, in antagonizing Belvidius, but afterward qualified by its author, was followed by Augustine, the Roman Catholic writers generally, and carried over into Protestantism at the Reformation, and accepted, even though not urged, by Luther, Chemnitz, Bengel, etc., understands the word "brother" in the general sense of "kinsman," and interprets it here as equivalent to "cousin." According to this, these brethren were actually blood-relatives of Jesus, and not of Joseph. They were the children of Alpheus, otherwise known as Clopas (<a onClick="return mV(\'Jhn\',19,25);">Joh 19:25</a>), and the sister of Mary. This Mary, in <a onClick="return mV(\'Mat\',27,56);">Mt 27:56</a>, is described as "the mother of James and Joses," and in <a onClick="return mV(\'Mar\',15,40);">Mr 15:40</a>, "the mother of James the less and of Joses, and Salome." This theory as completely developed points to the three names, James, Judas and Simon found both in the list of the apostles and of the "brethren," and argues that it would be a remarkable coincidence if they referred to different persons, and the two sisters, both named Mary, had found the very same names for their sons. The advocates of this theory argue also that the expression "James the less" shows that there were only two persons of the name James in the circle of those who were most closely connected with Jesus. They say, further, that, after the death of Joseph, Mary became an inmate of the home of her sister, and the families being combined, the presence and attendance of her nephews and nieces upon her can be explained without much difficulty, and the words of the people at Nazareth be understood. But this complicated theory labors under many difficulties. The identity of Clopas and Alpheus cannot be established, resting, as it does, upon obscure philological resemblances of the Aramaic form of the two names (see <a href="./study/isbe/search.html?string=ALPHAEUS">ALPHAEUS</a>). The most that such argument affords is a mere possibility. Nor is the identity of "Mary the wife of Clopas" with the sister of Mary, the mother of Jesus, established beyond a doubt. <a onClick="return mV(\'Jhn\',19,25);">Joh 19:25</a>, upon which it rests, can with equal correctness be interpreted as teaching that four women stood by the cross, of whom "Mary of Clopas" was one, and His mother\'s sister was another. The decision depends upon the question as to whether "Mary" be in apposition to "sister." If the verse be read so as to present two pairs, it would not be a construction without precedent in the New Testament, and would avoid the difficulty of finding two sisters with the same name<6D>a difficulty greater yet than that of thre e cousins with the same name. Nor is the identity of "James the less" with the son of Alpheus beyond a doubt. Any argument concerning the comparative "less," as above explained, fails when it is found that in the Greek there is no comparative, but only "James the little," the implication being probably that of his stature as considerably below the average, so as to occasion remark. Nor is the difficulty less when it is proposed to identify three of these brethren of Jesus with apostles of the same name. For the "brethren" and the apostles are repeatedly distinguished. In <a onClick="return mV(\'Mat\',12,49);">Mt 12:49</a>, while the former stood without, the latter are gathered around Jesus. In <a onClick="return mV(\'Jhn\',2,12);">Joh 2:12</a>, we read: "his mother, and his brethren, and his disciples." In <a onClick="return mV(\'Act\',1,13);">Ac 1:13</a> the Eleven, including James the son of Alpheus, and Simon, and Judas of James, and then it is said that they were accompanied by "his brethren." But the crowning difficulty of this hypothesis of Jerome is the record of the unbelief of the brethren and of their derision of His claims in <a onClick="return mV(\'Jhn\',7,\'3-5\');">Joh 7:3-5</a>.<P>On the other hand, the arguments against regarding them as sons of Mary and Joseph are not formidable. When it is urged that their attempts to interfere with Jesus indicate a superiority which, according to Jewish custom, is inconsistent with the position of younger brothers, it may be answered that those who pursue an unjustifiable course are not models of consistency. When an argument is sought from the fact that Jesus on the cross commended His mother to John, the implication is immediate that she had no sons of her own to whom to turn in her grief and desolation; the answer need not be restricted to the consideration that unknown domestic circumstances may explain the omission of her sons. A more patent explanation is that as they did not understand their brother, they could not understand their mother, whose whole life and interests were bound up in her firstborn. But, on the other hand, no one of the disciples understood Jesus and appreciated His work and treasured up His words as did John. A bond of fellowship had thus been established between John and Mary that was closer than her nearer blood relationship with her own sons, who, up to this time, had regarded the course of Jesus with disapproval, and had no sympathy with His mission. In the home of John she would find consolation for her loss, as the memories of the wonderful life of her son would be recalled, and she would converse with him who had rested on the bosom of Jesus and whom Jesus loved. Even with the conversion of these brethren within a few days into faithful confessors, before the view of Jesus, provision was made for her deeper spiritual communion with her risen and ascended Son through the testimony of Jesus which John treasured in his deeply contemplative spirit. There was much that was alike in the characters of Mary and John. This may have had its ground in relationship, as many regard Salome his mother, the sister of the mother of Jesus mentioned in <a onClick="return mV(\'Jhn\',19,25);">Joh 19:25</a>.<P>Underneath both the stepbrother (Epiphanian) and the cousin (Hieronymian) theories, which coincide in denying that Mary was the actual mother of these brethren, lies the idea of the perpetual virginity of Mary. This theory which has as its watchword the stereotyped expression in liturgy and hymn, "Maria semper Virgo," although without any support from Holy Scripture, pervades theology and the worship of the ancient and the medieval churches. From the Greek and Roman churches it has passed into Protestantism in a modified form. Its plea is that it is repugnant to Christian feeling to think of the womb of Mary, in which the Word, made flesh, had dwelt in a peculiar way, as the habitation of other babes. In this idea there lies the further thought, most prominent in medieval theology, of a sinfulness of the act in itself whereby new human lives come into existence, and of the inclination implanted from the creation, upon which all family ties depend. <a onClick="return mV(\'1Ti\',4,3,4);">1Ti 4:3-4</a>; <a onClick="return mV(\'Hbr\',13,4);">Heb 13:4</a> are sufficient answer. The taint of sin lies not in marriage, and the use of that which is included in its institution, and which God has blessed (compare <a onClick="return mV(\'Act\',10,15);">Ac 10:15</a>), but in its perversion and abuse. It is by an inconsistency that Protestants have conceded this much to theory of Rome, that celibacy is a holier estate than matrimony, and that virginity in marriage is better than marriage itself. The theory also is connected with the removal of Mary from the sphere of ordinary life and duties as too commonplace for one who i s to be surrounded with the halo of a demi-god, and to be idealized in order to be worshipped. The interpretation that they are the Lord\'s real brethren ennobles and glorifies family life in all its relations and duties, and sanctifies motherhood with all its cares and trials as holier than a selfish isolation from the world, in order to evade the annoyances and humiliations inseparable from fidelity to our callings. Not only Mary, but Jesus with her, knew what it was to grieve over a house divided concerning religion (<a onClick="return mV(\'Mat\',10,35);">Mt 10:35</a>ff). But that this unbelief and indifference gave way before the clearer light of the resurrection of Jesus is shown by the presence of these brethren in the company of the disciples in Jerusalem (<a onClick="return mV(\'Act\',1,14);">Ac 1:14</a>). The reference to His post-resurrection appearance to James (<a onClick="return mV(\'1Cr\',15,7);">1Co 15:7</a>) is probably connected with this change in their attitude. <a onClick="return mV(\'1Cr\',9,5);">1Co 9:5</a> shows that at least two of these brothers were active as missionaries, undoubtedly within the Holy Land, and to Jews, according to the agreeme nt into which James entered in <a onClick="return mV(\'Gal\',2,\'1-\');">Ga 2</a>, and his well-known attitude on questions pertaining to the Gentiles. Zahn regards James as an ascetic and celibate not included in <a onClick="return mV(\'1Cr\',9,5);">1Co 9:5</a>, which is limited then to Jude and Simon. Their marriage indicates "the absence in the Holy Family of that pseudo-asceticism which has so much confused the tradition concerning them" (Alford).<P>For fuller discussions, see the extensive arguments of Eadie and Lightfoot, in their commentaries on Galatians, the former in favor of the Helvidian, and the latter, with his exhaustive scholarship, of the Epiphanian views; also, on the side of the former, Mayor, The Epistle of James; Alford, Greek Test.; Farrar, Early Days of Christianity; Zahn, Introduction to the New Testament.`<a href="./study/isbe/search.html?string=JAMES">JAMES</a>; <a href="./study/isbe/search.html?string=JUDE">JUDE</a>`84';
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isbe[1695]='Bribery`brib\'-er-i (shochadh, "a gift," in a corrupt sense, "a bribe"): The Hebrew law condemns everything that would tend to impair the impartial administration of justice, particularly the giving and receiving of gifts or bribes, in order to pervert judgment (<a onClick="return mV(\'Exd\',23,8);">Ex 23:8</a>). Allusions are frequent to the prevailing corruption of oriental judges and rulers. "And fire shall consume the tents of bribery" (<a onClick="return mV(\'Job\',15,34);">Job 15:34</a>; <a onClick="return mV(\'1Sa\',8,3);">1Sa 8:3</a>; <a onClick="return mV(\'Psa\',26,10);">Ps 26:10</a>; <a onClick="return mV(\'Isa\',1,23);">Isa 1:23</a>; <a onClick="return mV(\'Isa\',33,15);">33:15</a>; <a onClick="return mV(\'Eze\',22,12);">Eze 22:12</a>). Samuel speaks of a "ransom" in the sense of a bribe: "Of whose hand have I taken a ransom (kopher, "covering," the King James Version "bribe") to blind mine eyes therewith?" (<a onClick="return mV(\'1Sa\',12,3);">1Sa 12:3</a>; <a onClick="return mV(\'Amo\',5,12);">Am 5:12</a>; compare <a onClick="return mV(\'Amo\',2,6);">Am 2:6</a>).`<a href="./study/isbe/search.html?string=CRIMES">CRIMES</a>; <a href="./study/isbe/search.html?string=JUSTICE">JUSTICE</a>; <a href="./study/isbe/search.html?string=PUNISHMENTS">PUNISHMENTS</a>`86';
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isbe[1696]='Brick`(lebhenah): The ancient Egyptian word appears in the modern Egyptian Arabic toob. In Syria the sun-baked bricks are commonly called libn or lebin, from the same Semitic root as the Hebrew word.<P>Bricks are mentioned only a few times in the Bible. The story of how the Children of Israel, while in bondage in Egypt, had their task of brick-making made more irksome by being required to collect their own straw is one of the most familiar of Bible narratives (<a onClick="return mV(\'Exd\',1,14);">Ex 1:14</a>; <a onClick="return mV(\'Exd\',5,7,\'10-19\');">5:7, 10-19</a>).<P>Modern excavations at Pithom in Egypt (<a onClick="return mV(\'Exd\',1,11);">Ex 1:11</a>) show that most of the bricks of which that store-city was built were made of mud and straw baked in the sun. These ruins are chosen as an example from among the many ancient brick structures because they probably represent the work of the very Hebrew slaves who complained so bitterly of their royal taskmaster. In some of the upper courses rushes had been substituted for straw, and still other bricks had no fibrous material. These variations could be explained by a scarcity of straw at that time, since, when there was a shortage in the crops, all the straw (Arabic, tibn) was needed for feeding the animals. It may be that when the order came for the workmen to provide their own straw they found it impossible to gather sufficient and still furnish the required number of bricks (<a onClick="return mV(\'Exd\',5,8);">Ex 5:8</a>). However, the quality of clay of which some of the bricks were made was such that no straw was needed.<P>Brickmaking in early Egyptian history was a government monopoly. The fact that the government pressed into service her Asiatic captives, among whom were the Children of Israel, made it impossible for independent makers to compete. The early bricks usually bore the government, stamp or the stamp of some temple authorized to use the captives for brick manufacture. The methods employed by the ancient Egyptians differ in no respect from the modern procedure in that country. The Nile mud is thoroughly slipped or mixed and then rendered more cohesive by the addition of chopped straw or stubble. The pasty mass is next worked into a mould made in the shape of a box without a bottom. If the sides of the mould have been dusted with dry earth it will easily slip off and the brick is allowed to dry in the sun until it becomes so hard that the blow of a hammer is often necessary to break it.<P>When the children of Israel emigrated to their new country they found the same methods of brickmaking employed by the inhabitants, methods which are still in vogue throughout the greater part of Palestine and Syria. In the interior of the country, especially where the building stone is scarce or of poor quality, the houses are made of sun-baked brick (libn). Frequently the west and south walls, which are exposed most to the winter storms, are made of hewn stone and the rest of the structure of bricks. When the brick-laying is finished the house is plastered inside and outside with the same material of which the bricks are made and finally whitewashed or painted with grey- or yellow-colored earth. The outer coating of plaster must be renewed from year to year. In some of the villages of NorthernSyria the brick houses are dome-shaped, looking much like beehives. In the defiant assertion of <a onClick="return mV(\'Isa\',9,10);">Isa 9:10</a> the superiority of hewn stone over bricks implied a greater difference in cost and stability than exists between a frame house and a stone house in western lands today.<P>In the buildings of ancient Babylonia burnt bricks were used. These have been found by modern excavators, which confirms the description of <a onClick="return mV(\'Gen\',11,3);">Ge 11:3</a>. Burnt bricks were rarely used in Egypt before the Roman period and in Palestine their use for building purposes was unknown. Specimens of partially burnt, glazed bricks have been found in Babylonia and recently in one of the Hittite mounds of NorthernSyria. These were probably used for decorative purposes only. If burnt bricks had been generally used in Palestine, races of them would have been found with the pottery which is so abundant in the ruins (see <a href="./study/isbe/search.html?string=POTTERY">POTTERY</a>).<P>The fact that unburnt bricks were so commonly used explains how the sites of such cities as ancient Jericho could have become lost for so many centuries. When the houses and walls fell they formed a heap of earth not distinguishable from the surrounding soil. The wood rotted and the iron rusted away, leaving for the excavator a few bronze and stone implements and the fragments of pottery which are so precious as a means of identification. The "tels" or mounds of Palestine and Syria often represent the ruins of several such cities one above the other.<P>LITERATURE.<P>H. A. Harper, The Bible and Modern Discoveries; Wilkinson, Manners and Customs of the Ancient Egyptians; Erman, Life in Ancient Egypt; Hilprecht, Recent Research in Bible Lands.``133';
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isbe[1697]='Brick-Kiln`brik\'-kil, -kiln (malben): The Hebrew word is better translated by "brickmould." In Syria the brickmould is still called milben. In <a onClick="return mV(\'Jer\',43,9);">Jer 43:9</a> the American Standard Revised Version rendering is "brickwork" and the American Revised Version, margin "pavement." <a onClick="return mV(\'2Sa\',12,31);">2Sa 12:31</a> becomes much clearer if the American Revised Version, margin is incorporated. Being put to work at the brickmould was considered the task of those taken as slaves. The ancestors of the new taskmasters had themselves been put to similar toil.``1';
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isbe[1698]='Bride`brid.`<a href="./study/isbe/search.html?string=MARRIAGE">MARRIAGE</a>`1';
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isbe[1699]='Bride-Chamber`brid\'-cham-ber (numphon): The room in which the marriage ceremonies were held (<a onClick="return mV(\'Mat\',9,15);">Mt 9:15</a>; <a onClick="return mV(\'Mar\',2,19);">Mr 2:19</a>; <a onClick="return mV(\'Luk\',5,34);">Lu 5:34</a>; compare <a onClick="return mV(\'Mat\',22,10);">Mt 22:10</a>).`<a href="./study/isbe/search.html?string=CHAMBER">CHAMBER</a>; <a href="./study/isbe/search.html?string=MARRIAGE">MARRIAGE</a>`1';
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isbe[1700]='Bride-Chamber, Sons (Children) of the`(hoi huioi tou numphonos): These were friends or companions of the bridegroom and were usually very numerous (<a onClick="return mV(\'Mat\',9,15);">Mt 9:15</a>; <a onClick="return mV(\'Mar\',2,19);">Mr 2:19</a>; <a onClick="return mV(\'Luk\',5,34);">Lu 5:34</a>). Any wedding guest might be included in the expression, or anyone who took part in the bridal procession and remained for the wedding-feast (see <a href="./study/isbe/search.html?string=MARRIAGE">MARRIAGE</A>). In the above passages "the sons of the bride-chamber" are the disciples of Christ.``1';
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