John Kitto - Scholarship

Scholarship

Kitto had been a careful observer of physical detail – the topography, the animals, architecture, agricultural methods, the manner of interaction between people. His retelling of Bible stories in the light of what he had seen brought the narratives to life and confirmed the accuracy of the ancient texts. He showed how the activities described by the prophets and apostles accorded with the realities of Eastern culture. He supplemented his own observations with details from the journals of other travellers, and helped the Bible reader to understand many things previously obscure or contradictory to the Western mind. His careful research into the geography, biology and archaeology of Bible lands served to support and encourage confidence in the accuracy of the Bible.

In his generation Dr Kitto was a most significant contributor to Christian scholarship, and he provided much help for Evangelicals defending the Bible against the attack of liberal critics. He eventually wrote a total of twenty-three books, of which Charles Spurgeon considered the Daily Bible Illustrations to be "more interesting than any novel that was ever written, and as instructive as the heaviest theology."

Inevitably, Kitto's encyclopedic works have been superseded by the researches of later generations of scholars. Yet his Pictorial Bible and Cyclopaedia of Biblical Literature held, for almost a century, a unique and valued place on the academic library shelf, and his Daily Bible Illustrations encouraged the faith of readers of all ages and backgrounds, and stimulated the imagination of many a Sunday school teacher.

The sensible style that made Kitto so popular can be seen in this brief passage, written at a time when attempts to reconstruct the design of the Temple of Solomon on paper, in scale models, and in the architecture of churches, synagogues and Masonic Halls was a serious scholarly pursuit:

"These descriptions (found in Kings and Chronicles) enable us to realize a tolerably clear idea of many important details of this glorious structure; but they do not suffice to afford us a distinct notion of the architectural elevation of the principal buildings. If any proof of this fact were wanting, it would be found in the circumstance that almost every scholar or architect who has attempted to make a design of the fabric, from the description which exist in the Scripture and in Josephus, has furnished something very different from what has been produced by others making the same attempt."

John Kitto summed up his life with the following words:

"I perhaps have as much right as any man that lives, to bear witness that there is no one so low but that he may rise, no condition so cast down as to be really hopeless, and no privation which need, of itself, shut out any man from the paths of honourable exertion or from the hope of usefulness in life. I have sometimes thought that it was possibly my mission to affirm and establish these great truths."