C

India, amongst the Hindoos, the strength of a house is not indicated by saying, "it will last so many years," but "it will outstand the rains: it will not be injured by the floods."*

3. Of the ordinary eastern buildings Dr. Shaw has given a very minute and interesting description; and as it illustrates several passages in Scripture, in a most satisfactory manner, we shall present it to the reader. He observes,

of them being alike exposed to the weather, and giving light to the house. When many people are to be admitted, as upon the celebration of a marriage, the circumcising of a child, or occasions of the like nature, the company is rarely or never received into one of the chambers. The court is the usual place of their reception, which is strewed accordingly with mats and carpets for their more commodious entertainment; and as this is called the middle of the house, literally answering to the midst of St. Luke (v. 19), it is probable that the place where our Saviour and the apostles were frequently accustomed to give their instructions, might have been in the like situation; i. e., in the area or quadrangle of one of these houses. In the summer season, and upon all occasions when a large company is to be received, this court is commonly sheltered from the heat or incle

veil, which, being expanded upon ropes from one side of the parapet wall to the other, may be folded or unfolded at pleasure. The Psalmist seems to allude either to the tents of the Bedouins, or some covering of this kind, in that beautiful expression of "spreading out the heavens like a veil or curtain.” †

(1) "The general method of building, both in Barbary and the Levant, seems to have continued the same from the earliest ages down to this time, without the least alteration or improvement. Large doors, spacious chambers, marble pavements, cloistered courts, with fountains sometimes playing in the midst, are certainly conveniences very well adapted to the circumstances of these hotter climates. The jealousy likewise of these people is less apt to be alarmed, whilst, if we ex-mency of the weather, by a velum, umbrella, or cept a small latticed window or balcony, which sometimes looks into the street, all the other windows open into their respective courts or quadrangles. It is during the celebration only of some zeenah (as they call a public festival), that these houses and their latticed windows or balconies are left open. For this being a time of great liberty, revelling, and extravagance, each family is ambitious of adorning both the inside and the outside of their houses with the richest furniture; whilst crowds of both sexes, dressed out in their best apparel, and laying aside all modesty and restraint, go in and out where they please. The account we have 2 Kings ix. 30, of Jezebel's painting her face, and tiring her head, and looking out at a window, upon Jehu's public entrance into Jezreel, gives us a lively idea of an eastern lady at one of these zeenahs or solemnities.

(2) "The streets of these cities, the better to shade them from the sun, are usually narrow, with sometimes a range of shops on each side. If from these we enter into one of the principal houses, we shall first pass through a porch or gate-way, with benches on each side, where the master of the family receives visits and dispatches business; few persons, not even the nearest relations, having further admission, except upon extraordinary occasions. From hence we are received into the court, or quadrangle, which lying open to the weather, is, according to the ability of the owner, paved with marble or such materials as will immediately carry off the water into the common

sewers.

There is something very analogous betwixt this open space in these buildings, and the impluvium, or cava ædium of the Romans; both

* Oriental Illustrations, p. 538.

(3) "The court is for the most part surrounded with a cloister, as the cava ædium of the Romans was with a peristylium or colonnade; over which, when the house has one or more stories (and I have seen them with two or three), there is a gallery erected, of the same dimensions as the cloister, having a balustrade, or else a piece of carved or latticed work going round about it, to prevent people from falling from it into the court. From the cloisters and galleries, we are conducted into large spacious chambers, of the same length with the court, but seldom or never communicating with one another. One of them frequently serves a whole family, particularly when a father indulges his married children to live with him, or when several persons join in the rent of the same house. From whence it is, that the cities of these countries, which are generally much inferior in size to those of Europe, yet are so exceedingly populous, that great numbers of the inhabitants are swept away by the plague, or any other contagious distemper. A mixture of families of this kind seems to be spoken of by Maimonides, as he is quoted by Dr. Lightfoot upon 1 Cor. x. 16.

Ps. civ. 2. We have the same expression in the prophet Isaiah, chap. xl. 22.

"Solomon appointed that each place be appropriated to one man there, where there is a division into divers habitations, and each of the inhabitants receive there a proper place to himself, and some place is also left there common to all, so that all have an equal right to it, as a court belonging to many houses," &c.

or lattice, as we render it, that Ahaziah (2 Kings | either not rightly comprehending the meaning of i. 2), might be carelessly leaning over, when he it, or finding the context clear without it. In St. fell down from thence into the court. For upon Jerome's translation, the correspondent word is these terraces, several offices of the family are patefacientes, as if breaking up was further explaperformed; such as the dying of linen and flax natory of uncovered; the same in the Persian (Josh. ii. 6), the preparing of figs and raisins; Version is expressed by quatuor angulis lectuli where, likewise, they enjoy the cool refreshing totidem funibus annexis; as if breaking up related breezes of the evening (2 Sam. xi. 2, xvi. 22; either to the letting down of the bed, or, prepara1 Sam. ix. 25, 26), converse with one another, and tory thereto, to the making holes in it for the offer up their devotions, Zeph. i. 5; Isai. xv. 3; cords to pass through. According to this expliActs x. 9. In the feast of tabernacles, booths cation, therefore, the context may run thus: When were erected upon them, Neh. viii. 16. As these they could not come at Jesus for the press, they terraces are thus frequently used and trampled got upon the roof of the house, and drew back open and unupon, not to mention the solidity of the materials the veil where he was; or they laid wherewith they are made, they will not easily covered that part of it especially which was spread over the place where he was sitting; and having permit any vegetable substances to take root or thrive upon them; which perhaps may illustrate removed and plucked away (according to St. Jethe comparison (Isai. xxxvii. 27) of the Assyrians, rome) whatever might incommode them in their and (Ps. exxix. 6) of the wicked, to the grass intended good office, or having tied (according to upon the house-tops, which withereth before it is the Persian Version) the four corners of the bed or bedstead with cords, where the sick of the grown up.' palsy lay, they let it down before Jesus.

(4)" When any of these cities is built upon level (5) "For that there was not the least force or ground, one may pass along the tops of the houses from one end of it to the other, without coming violence offered to the roof, and consequently that down into the street. Such in general is the the two verbs will admit of some other interpremanner and contrivance of these houses. If, then, tations than what have been given to them in our it may be presumed that our Saviour, at the heal-Version, appears from the parallel place in St. ing of the paralytic, was preaching in a house of Luke, where what we translate, they let him down this fashion, we may, by attending only to the through the tiling, as if that had actually been structure of it, give no small light to one circum-broken up already, should be rendered, they let him stance of that history, which has lately given great

"6

among

other

offence to some unbelievers. For
pretended difficulties and absurdities relating to
this fact, it has been urged,* that as the unco-
vering or breaking up of the roof (Mark ii. 4), or
the letting a person down through it (Luke v. 19),
supposes the breaking up of tiles, spars, rafters,
&c., so it was well," as the author goes on in his
ludicrous manner, "if Jesus and his disciples
escaped with only a broken pate, by the falling of
the tiles; and if the rest were not smothered with
dust." But that nothing of this nature happened
will appear probable from a different construction
that may be put upon the words in the original;
for it may be observed, with relation to the word
we render roof, that it will denote, with propriety
enough, any kind of covering, the veil which I
have mentioned, as well as a roof or ceiling, pro-
perly so called; so, for the same reason, the verb
we render uncovered may signify the undoing, or
the removal only, of such covering. The word
which we render breaking up is omitted in the
Cambridge MS., and not regarded in the Syriac
and some other Versions; the translators, perhaps,

* See Wolston's Four Discourses, p. 57.

down over, along the side, or by the way of the roof.
For as keramoi, or tegulae, which originally, perhaps,
denoted a roof of tiles, like those of the northern
nations, were afterwards applied to the tectum or
doma in general, of what nature or structure soever
they were; so the meaning of letting down a per-
son into the house, per tegulas, or dia ton keramon,
can depend only upon the use of the preposition.
Now, both in Acts ix. 26 and 2 Cor. xi. 33, where
the like phraseology is observed as in St. Luke,
dia is rendered in both places by, i. e., along the
By interpreting,
side, or by the way of the wall.
therefore, dia in this sense, the passage will be
rendered, as above, they let him down over, or by
the way of, the wall. What Dr. Lightfoot observes
out of the Talmud, upon Mark ii. 4, will, by an
alteration only of the preposition which answers
to dia, further vouch for this interpretation. For
as it is there cited, "when Rabh Honna was dead,
and his bier could not be carried out through the
door, which was too strait and narrow, therefore
(in order, we may supply, to bury it) they thought
good to let it down" (i. e., not through the roof, or
through the way of the roof, as the Doctor renders
it, but) by the way, or over the roof, viz., by taking
it upon the terrace, and letting it down by the
wall, that way, into the street. We have a passage

which, in the same manner with these, seems to have had privy stairs belonging to it, through which Ehud escaped after he had revenged Israel upon that king of Moab; the chamber over the gate (2 Sam. xxxviii. 33), whither, for the greater privacy, David withdrew himself to weep for Absalom; the upper chamber, upon whose terrace Ahaz, for the same reason, erected his altars (2 Kings xxiii. 12); the inner chamber, likewise, or, as it is better expressed in the original, a chamber within a chamber, where the young man, the prophet, anointed Jehu (2 Kings ix. 2);—seem to have been all of them structures of the like nature and contrivance with these oliahs.

(8) "Besides, as oliah in the Hebrew text, and aulich in the Arabic Version, is expressed by uperōon in the LXX., it may be presumed that the same word, where it occurs in the New Testament, implies the same thing. The upper chamber, therefore, where Tabitha was laid after her death (Acts ix. 36), and where Eutychus (Acts xx. 8, 9) also fell down from the third loft, were so many back houses or oliahs, as they are indeed so called in the Arabic Version.

(6) "When the use, then, of these phrases, and fashion of the houses, are rightly considered, there will be no reason to suppose that any breach was actually made in the roof or covering; since all that was to be done, in the case of the paralytic, | was to carry him up to the top of the house, either by forcing their way through the crowd up the staircase, or else by conveying him over some of the neighbouring terraces; and there, after they had drawn away the veil, to let him down, along the side of the roof (through the opening, or impluvium) into the midst (of the court) before Jesus. (7) "To most of these houses there is a smaller one annexed, which sometimes rises one story higher than the house; at other times it consists of one or two rooms only and a terrace; whilst others that are built, as they frequently are, over the (9) "That the Greek denotes such a private porch or gateway, have, if we except the ground-apartment as one of these oliahs (for garrets, from floor, which they have not, all the conveniences that belong to the house, properly so called. There is a door of communication from them into the gallery of the house, kept open or shut at the discretion of the master of the family; besides another door, which opens immediately from a privy stairs, down into the porch or street, without giving the least disturbance to the house. These back houses, as we may call them, are known by the name of alee or oleah; for the house, properly so called, is dar or beet; and in them strangers are usually lodged and entertained; in them the sons of the family are permitted to keep their concubines; thither, likewise, the men are wont to retire from the hurry and noise of their families, to be more at leisure for meditation or diversions; besides the use they are at other times put to, in serving for wardrobes and magazines.

"The oliah of the Scriptures being literally the same appellation with aulich (Arab.), is accordingly so rendered in the Arabic Version. We may suppose it, then, to have been a structure of the like contrivance. The little chamber (2 Kings iv. 10), consequently, that was built by the Shunamite for Elisha, whither, as the text instructs us, he retired at his pleasure, without breaking in upon the private affairs of the family, or being in his turn interrupted by them in his devotions; the summer chamber of Eglon (Judg. iii. 20-23),

* Vide Aul. Gell. Noct. Attic. x. 15.

the flatness of the roofs, are not known in these climates), seems likewise probable from the use of the word among the classic authors. For the chamber where Mercury and Mars carried on their amours,+ and where Penelope kept herself with the young virgins,|| at a distance from the solicitations of their wooers, appear to carry along with them circumstances of greater privacy and retirement than are consistent with chambers in any other situation.

(10) "Nay, further, that oliah or uperōon could not barely signify a single chamber, cœnaculum, or dining-room, but one of those contiguous or back houses, divided into several apartments, seems to appear from the circumstance of the altars which Ahaz erected upon the top of his oliah. For besides the supposed privacy of his idolatry, which, upon account of the perpetual view and observation of the family, could not have been carried on undiscovered in any apartment of the house; I say, if this his oliah had been only one single chamber of the house, the roof of it would have been ascribed to the house, and not to the oliah; which, upon this supposition, could only make one chamber of it. A circumstance of the like nature may probably be collected from the Arabic Version of uperoon (Acts ix. 39), where it is not rendered

+ Hom. II. ii., ver. 184. B. ver. 514.
Hom. Odyss. O., ver. 515-16.

|| Athen. Deip. lib. ii., cap. 16. Eustath, in ver. 184. II. ii, p. 1054, et in Il. ii., ver. 514, p. 272.