Oriental customs: or an illustration of the sacred Scriptures, by an explanatory application of the customs and manners of the Eastern nations, and especially the Jews. Therein alluded to, together with observations on many difficult and obscure texts, collected from the most celebrated travellers, and the most eminent critics / by Samuel Burder.

  • Samuel Burder
Date:
1802
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Oriental customs: or an illustration of the sacred Scriptures, by an explanatory application of the customs and manners of the Eastern nations, and especially the Jews. Therein alluded to, together with observations on many difficult and obscure texts, collected from the most celebrated travellers, and the most eminent critics / by Samuel Burder. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    because descended from Ceryx, the son of Mercury, who was honoured with the same employment in heaven which these obtained on earth. The Lacedajmonian ambassadors carried in their hand a staff of laurel or olive, called hv^uk/ov, round which two serpents, without their crests erected, were folded, as an emblem of peace and concord. The Athenian heralds frequently made use of the E/pecvwvvj, which was a token of peace and plenty, being an olive branch covered with wool, and adorned with all sorts of fruits of the earth. Potter’s Archceologia Greeca, vol. ii. p. 66. No. 529.—x. 14. We stretch not ourselves.] It may help very much to understand this and the following verses, if with Hammond we consider the terms used, in them as agonistical. In this view of them, the measure of the rule, to (Jisrpov th navovog, alludes to the path marked out, and bounded by a white line, for racers in the Isthmian games, observed among the Corinthians; and so the apostle represents his work in preaching the gospel as his spiritual race, and the province to which he was appointed as the compass or stage of ground which God had distributed or measured out, e^epicey avreo, for him to run in. Accordingly, to boast without his measure, (ver. 15.) eig ret ugerpa, and to stretch himself beyond his measure, uxep £%t£ive<tQcu, refer to one that ran beyond or out of his line. We are come as far as to you, (ver. 14.) u%pi vfiuv e^uaugev, alludes to him that came foremost to the goal; and, in another man's line (ver. 16.) a/ ahhorpico nuvovi, signifies in the province that was marked out for somebody else, in allusion to the line by which the race was' bounded, each of the racers having the path which he ought to run chalked out to him, and if one stepped over into the other’s path he extended himself over his line.