Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, "Kelly, Edward" to "Kite" by Various
1550. It is situated on the Firth of Forth, 2¼ m. E. by N. of
3041 words | Chapter 34
Burntisland, on the North British railway. The public buildings include
a library and town-hall. It enjoys some repute as a summer resort. The
leading industries are ship-building, bleaching and the making of flax
and glue. At the time of his visit Daniel Defoe found thread-making in
vogue, which employed the women while the men were at sea. Alexander
III. created Kinghorn a burgh, but his connexion with the town proved
fatal to him. As he was riding from Inverkeithing on the 12th of March
1286 he was thrown by his horse and fell over the cliffs, since called
King's Wud End, a little to the west of the burgh, and killed. A
monument was erected in 1887 to mark the supposed scene of the accident.
The Witch Hill used to be the place of execution of those poor wretches.
Kinghorn belongs to the Kirkcaldy district group of parliamentary
burghs. At PETTYCUR, 1 m. to the south, is a good harbour for its size,
and at Kinghorn Ness a battery has been established in connexion with
the fortifications on Inchkeith. The hill above the battery was
purchased by government in 1903 and is used as a point of observation.
About 1 m. to the north of Kinghorn is the estate of Grange, which
belonged to Sir William Kirkcaldy. INCHKEITH, an island in the fairway
of the Firth of Forth, 2½ m. S. by E. of Kinghorn and 3½ m. N. by E. of
Leith, belongs to the parish of Kinghorn. It has a north-westerly and
south-easterly trend, and is nearly 1 m. long and ¼ m. wide. It is a
barren rock, on the summit of which stands a lighthouse visible at night
for 21 m. In 1881 forts connected by a military road were erected on the
northern, western and southern headlands.
KINGLAKE, ALEXANDER WILLIAM (1800-1891), English historian and
traveller, was born at Taunton on the 5th of August 1809. His father, a
successful solicitor, intended his son for a legal career. Kinglake went
to Eton and Trinity College, Cambridge, where he matriculated in 1828,
being a contemporary and friend of Tennyson and Thackeray. After leaving
Cambridge he joined Lincoln's Inn, and was called to the bar in 1837.
While still a student he travelled, in 1835, throughout the East, and
the impression made upon him by his experiences was so powerful that he
was seized with a desire to record them in literature. _Eothen_, a
sensitive and witty record of impressions keenly felt and remembered,
was published in 1844, and enjoyed considerable reputation. In 1854 he
went to the Crimea, and was present at the battle of the Alma. During
the campaign he made the acquaintance of Lord Raglan, who was so much
attracted by his talents that he suggested to Kinglake the plan for an
elaborate _History of the Crimean War_, and placed his private papers at
the writer's disposal. For the rest of his life Kinglake was engaged
upon the task of completing this monumental history. Thirty-two years
elapsed between its commencement and the publication of the last volume,
and eight volumes in all appeared at intervals between 1863 and 1887.
Kinglake lived principally in London, and sat in parliament for
Bridgwater from 1857 until the disfranchisement of the borough in 1868.
He died on the 2nd of January 1891. Kinglake's life-work, _The History
of the Crimean War_, is in scheme and execution too minute and
conscientious to be altogether in proportion, but it is a wonderful
example of painstaking and talented industry. It is not without errors
of partisanship, but it shows remarkable skill in the moulding of vast
masses of despatches and technical details into an absorbingly
interesting narrative; it is illumined by natural descriptions and
character-sketches of great fidelity and acumen; and, despite its
length, it remains one of the most picturesque, most vivid and most
actual pieces of historical narrative in the English language.
KINGLET, a name applied in many books to the bird called by Linnaeus
_Motacilla regulus_, and by most modern ornithologists _Regulus
cristatus_, the golden-crested or golden-crowned wren of ordinary
persons. This species is the type of a small group which has been
generally placed among the _Sylviidae_ or true warblers, but by certain
systematists it is referred to the titmouse family, _Paridae_. That the
kinglets possess many of the habits and actions of the latter is
undeniable, but on the other hand they are not known to differ in any
important points of organization or appearance from the former--the
chief distinction being that the nostril is covered by a single bristly
feather directed forwards. The golden-crested wren is the smallest of
British birds, its whole length being about 3½ in., and its wing
measuring only 2 in. from the carpal joint. Generally of an olive-green
colour, the top of its head is bright yellow, deepening into orange, and
bounded on either side by a black line, while the wing coverts are dull
black, and some of them tipped with white, forming a somewhat
conspicuous bar. The cock has a pleasant but weak song. The nest is a
beautiful object, thickly felted of the softest moss, wool, and spiders'
webs, lined with feathers, and usually built under and near the end of
the branch of a yew, fir or cedar, supported by the interweaving of two
or three laterally diverging and pendent twigs, and sheltered by the
rest. The eggs are from six to ten in number, of a dull white sometimes
finely freckled with reddish-brown. The species is particularly social,
living for the most part of the year in family parties, and often
joining bands of any species of titmouse in a common search for food.
Though to be met with in Britain at all seasons, the bird in autumn
visits the east coast in enormous flocks, apparently emigrants from
Scandinavia, while hundreds perish in crossing the North Sea, where they
are well known to the fishermen as "woodcock's pilots." A second and
more local European species is the fire-crested wren, _R. ignicapillus_,
easily recognizable by the black streak on each side of the head, before
and behind the eye, as well as by the deeper colour of its crown. A
third species, _R. maderensis_, inhabits the Madeiras, to which it is
peculiar; and examples from the Himalayas and Japan have been
differentiated as _R. himalayensis_ and _R. japonicus_. North America
has two well-known species, _R. satrapa_, very like the European _R.
ignicapillus_, and the ruby-crowned wren, _R. calendula_, which is
remarkable for a loud song that has been compared to that of a
canary-bird or a skylark, and for having the characteristic nasal
feather in a rudimentary or aborted condition. (A. N.)
KINGS, FIRST AND SECOND BOOKS OF, two books of the Bible, the last of
the series of Old Testament histories known as the Earlier or Former
Prophets. They were originally reckoned as a single book (Josephus;
Origen _ap._ Eus., _H.E._ vi. 25; Peshitta; Talmud), though modern
Bibles follow the bipartition which is derived from the Septuagint. In
that version they are called the third and fourth books of "kingdoms"
([Greek: Basileiôn]), the first and second being our books of Samuel.
The division into two books is not felicitous, and even the old Hebrew
separation between Kings and Samuel must not be taken to mean that the
history from the birth of Samuel to the exile was treated by two
distinct authors in independent volumes. We cannot speak of the author
of Kings or Samuel, but only of an editor or of successive editors whose
main work was to arrange in a continuous form extracts or abstracts from
earlier sources. The introduction of a chronological scheme and of a
series of editorial comments and additions, chiefly designed to enforce
the religious meaning of the history, gives a kind of unity to the book
of Kings as we now read it; but beneath this we can still distinguish a
variety of documents, which, though sometimes mutilated in the process
of piecing together, retain sufficient individuality of style and colour
to prove their original independence.
Of these documents one of the best defined is the vivid picture of
David's court at Jerusalem (2 Sam. ix.-xx.) from which the first two
chapters of 1 Kings manifestly cannot be separated. As it would be
unreasonable to suppose that the editor of the history of David closed
his work abruptly before the death of the king, breaking off in the
middle of a valuable memoir which lay before him, this observation leads
us to conclude that the books of Samuel and Kings are not independent
histories. They have at least one source in common, and a single
editorial hand was at work on both. From an historical point of view,
however, the division which makes the beginning of Solomon's reign the
beginning of a new book is very convenient. The conquest of Palestine by
the Israelite tribes, recounted in the book of Joshua, leads up to the
era of the "judges" (Judg. ii. 6-23; iii. sqq.), and the books of Samuel
follow with the institution of the monarchy and the first kings. The
books of Kings bring to a close the life of David (c. 975 B.C.), which
forms the introduction to the reign of Solomon (1 Kings ii. 12-xi.), the
troubles in whose time prepared the way for the separation into the two
distinct kingdoms, viz. Judah and the northern tribes of Israel (xii.
sqq.). After the fall of Samaria, the history of these Israelites is
rounded off with a review (2 Kings xvii.-xviii. 12). The history of the
surviving kingdom of Judah is then carried down to the destruction of
Jerusalem and the exile (5 and 6), and, after an account of the Chaldean
governorship, concludes with the release of the captive king Jehoiachin
(561 B.C.) and with an allusion to his kind treatment during the rest of
his lifetime.
The most noticeable feature in the book is the recurring interest in the
centralization of worship in the Temple at Jerusalem as prescribed in
Deuteronomy and enforced by Josiah. Amidst the great variety in style
and manner which marks the several parts of the history, features which
are imbued with the teaching of Deuteronomy recur regularly in similar
stereotyped forms. They point in fact to a specific redaction, and thus
it would seem that the editor who treated the foundation of the Temple,
the central event of Solomon's life, as a religious epoch of the first
importance, regarded this as the beginning of a new era--the history of
Israel under the one sanctuary.
Successive Redactions.
When we assume that the book of Kings was thrown into its present form
by a Deuteronomistic redactor we do not affirm that he was the first who
digested the sources of the history into a continuous work, nor must we
ascribe absolute finality to his work. He gave the book a definite shape
and character, but the recognized methods of Hebrew literature left it
open to additions and modifications by later hands. Even the redaction
in the spirit of Deuteronomy seems itself to have had more than one
stage, as Ewald long ago recognized.
The evidence to be detailed presently shows that there was a certain
want of definiteness about the redaction. The mass of disjointed
materials, not always free from inconsistencies, which lay before the
editor in separate documents or in excerpts already partially arranged
by an earlier hand, could not have been reduced to real unity without
critical sifting, and an entire recasting of the narrative in a way
foreign to the ideas and literary habits of the Hebrews. The unity
which the editor aimed at was limited to (a) chronological continuity
in the events recorded and (b) a certain uniformity in the treatment
of the religious meaning of the narrative. Even this could not be
perfectly attained in the circumstances, and the links of the history
were not firmly enough riveted to prevent disarrangement or
rearrangement of details by later scribes.
(a) The continued efforts of successive redactors can be traced in the
chronology of the book. The chronological method of the narrative
appears most clearly in the history after Solomon, where the events of
each king's reign are thrown into a kind of stereotyped framework on
this type: "In the twentieth year of Jeroboam, king of Israel, Asa
began to reign over Judah, and reigned in Jerusalem forty-one years."
... "In the third year of Asa, king of Judah, Baasha began to reign
over Israel in Tirzah twenty-four years." The history moves between
Judah and Israel according to the date of each accession; as soon as a
new king has been introduced, everything that happened in his reign is
discussed, and wound up by another stereotyped formula as to the death
and burial of the sovereign; and to this mechanical arrangement the
natural connexion of events is often sacrificed. In this scheme the
elaborate synchronisms between contemporary monarchs of the north and
south give an aspect of great precision to the chronology. But in
reality the data for Judah and Israel do not agree, and remarkable
deviations are sometimes found. The key to the chronology is 1 Kings
vi. 1, which, as Wellhausen has shown, was not found in the original
Septuagint, and contains internal evidence of post-Chaldean date. In
fact the system as a whole is necessarily later than 535 B.C., the
fixed point from which it counts back, and although the numbers for
the duration of the reigns may be based upon early sources, the
synchronisms appear to have been inserted at a much later stage in the
history of the text.
(b) Another aspect in the redaction may be called theological. Its
characteristic is the retrospective application to the history of a
standard belonging to the later developments of Old Testament
religion. Thus the redactor regards the sins of Jeroboam as the real
cause of the downfall of Israel (2 Kings xvii. 21 seq.), and passes an
unfavourable judgment upon all its rulers, not merely to the effect
that they did evil in the sight of Yahweh but that they followed in
the way of Jeroboam. But his opinion was manifestly not shared by
Elijah or Elisha, nor by the original narrator of the lives of these
prophets. Moreover, the redactor in 1 Kings iii. 2 seq. regards
worship at the high places as sinful after the building of the Temple,
although even the best kings before Hezekiah made no attempt to
suppress these shrines. This feature in the redaction displays itself
not only in occasional comments or homiletical excursuses, but in that
part of the narrative in which all ancient historians allowed
themselves free scope for the development of their reflections--the
speeches placed in the mouths of actors in the history. Here also
there is often textual evidence that the theological element is
somewhat loosely attached to the earlier narrative and underwent
successive additions.
General Structure.
Consequently it is necessary to distinguish between the older sources
and the peculiar setting in which the history has been placed; between
earlier records and that specific colouring which, from its affinity to
Deuteronomy and to other portions of the Old Testament which appear to
have been similarly treated under the influence of its teaching, may be
conveniently termed "Deuteronomistic." For his sources the compiler
refers chiefly to two distinct works, the "words" or "chronicles" of the
kings of Israel and those of the kings of Judah. Precisely how much is
copied from these works and how much has been expressed in the
compiler's own language is of course uncertain. It is found on
inspection that the present history consists usually of an epitome of
each reign. It states the king's age at succession (so Judah only),
length of reign, death and burial, with allusions to his buildings,
wars, and other political events.[1] In the case of Judah, also, the
name of the royal or queen-mother is specifically mentioned. The
references to the respective "chronicles," made as though they were
still accessible, are wanting in the case of Jehoram and Hoshea of
Israel, and of Solomon, Ahaziah, Athaliah, Jehoahaz, Jehoiachin and
Zedekiah of Judah. But for Solomon the authority cited, "book of the
acts of Solomon" (1 Kings xi. 41), presumably presupposes Judaean
chronicles, and the remaining cases preserve details of an annalistic
character. Moreover, distinctive annalistic material is found for the
Israelite kings Saul and Ishbosheth in 1 Sam. xiii. 1; xiv. 47-51; 2
Sam. ii. 8-10a (including even their age at accession), and for David in
2 Sam. ii. 11 and parts of v. and viii.
The use which the compiler makes of his sources shows that his aim was
not the _history_ of the past but its _religious significance_. It is
rare that even qualified praise is bestowed upon the kings of Israel
(Jehoram, 2 Kings iii. 2; Jehu x. 30; Hoshea xvii. 2). Kings of great
historical importance are treated with extreme brevity (Omri, Jeroboam
(2), Uzziah), and similar meagreness of historical information is
apparent when the editorial details and the religious judgments are
eliminated from the accounts of Nadab, Baasha, and the successors of
Jeroboam (2) in Israel or of Abijam and Manasseh in Judah.
Solomon.
To gain a more exact idea of the character of the book we may divide the
history into three sections: (1) the life of Solomon, (2) the kingdoms
of Ephraim (or Samaria)[2] and Judah, and (3) the separate history of
Judah after the fall of Samaria. I. _Solomon_.--The events which lead up
to the death of David and the accession of Solomon (1 Kings i., ii.) are
closely connected with 2 Sam. ix.-xx. The unity is broken by the
appendix 2 Sam. xxi. xxi.-xxiv. which is closely connected, as regards
general subject-matter, with _ibid._ v.-viii.; the literary questions
depend largely upon the structure of the books of Samuel (q.v.). It is
evident, at least, that either the compiler drew upon other sources for
the occasion and has been remarkably brief elsewhere, or that his
epitomes have been supplemented by the later insertion of material not
necessarily itself of late origin. At present 1 Kings i., ii. are both
the close of David's life (no source is cited) and the necessary
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