took any such liberty with the person of the Lord Christ. His approach was, to all appearance, a very humble one. He addressed the Saviour as Rabbi,' or rather, as we read in the account in Mark's more graphic Gospel, 'Rabbi, Rabbi,' which is literally, 'My great one, my great one,'-a term of considerable respect had it been used only once, but here much intensified, according to the Hebrew and Arabic idiom, by the figure of Repetition.1

It is also important to notice that two Evangelists tell us that Judas 'kissed Him much, or eagerly' (katephilēsen 2), a strong expression, which has been a great difficulty to the commentators, for they could not suppose that the traitor went out of his way to kiss our Lord very eagerly, by way of affectionate greeting, at a moment so awful. The very thought of such a thing is monstrous. But to kiss the hand in this eager, ostentatious way, as a sign of lowly submission, for instance, to give several kisses instead. of one, and on the front of the hand as well as the back (which I have shown is sometimes the case), is much more natural, and quite in keeping with the trembling and awe that may well have seized his soul.

Just as in the words, 'kiss the Son,' we have an allusion to kissing His hand, and not His face, so, when we read that Judas eagerly kissed' Christ, it is in all probability meant that he paid Him publicly the homage of a disciple, by seizing and

WOMEN AT A MEAL ROUND A VILLAGE TABLE-DIPPING THE HAND IN THE DISH.

ostentatiously, or repeatedly, kissing His hand. While this explanation in no way lessens the traitor's guilt, it makes the scene, from an Eastern standpoint, far more life-like."1

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Here we carve and eat with knives and forks, but in Bible lands they both carve and eat with their fingers. This is rendered the easier by their peculiar methods of cookery. They have no boiled or roast joints, as we have. Their flesh-meat, which is never hung for days, like ours, is put in the great iron cooking-pot whilst the carcase is still warm, as indicated in the command, Arise, Peter, kill and eat." 2 Under these circumstances, all their joints are, comparatively speaking, tough. If they are roasted, it is generally on an iron skewer, a foot long, over a charcoal fire, in tiny morsels about the size of a walnut, called kababs, into which they are cut up for the purpose. But the more usual plan is to stew them, and to stew them to excess. In this case the best part is the broth, the meat being done till it is easily separated and divided out by the hand. But it should be borne in mind that the mass of the people seldom eat meat, and live chiefly on bread, made freshly in every home each day from corn ground at the time. All their simple food can be as readily carved and eaten with the fingers, for it consists almost entirely of eggs,

1 Salute one Another; or, The "Kiss" of the Bible, pp. 11-14.

2 Acts x. 13.

cheese, rice, beans, lentils, olives, fruit, fresh and dried, butter, honey, and leban; this last their famous drink, food and medicine all in one, being goats' buttermilk, made artificially sour, with the butter left in it. Their bread, made in thin, unleavened, pancake-like loaves, serves, when torn into small pieces, to make effective, impromptu, three-cornered spoons, which are then eaten, so as not to be dipped again after they have raised them to their mouth. But they often dip their hands into the dish, and hence the necessity for that regular washing of hands which takes place after each meal. The rule, for this dipping the hand in the dish, is to take only a small morsel each time, and therefore etiquette requires that the fingers when thrust into the food should be kept as near together as possible. In allusion to this the Eastern proverb says of a cunning but greedy man, "He [that is, 'his hand'] descends like the foot of the crow, and ascends like the hoof of a camel!" They never put a knife to bread, holding it to be absolutely wicked to cut it, but always break it into pieces with their fingers. When, at a meal, your host desires to show you special kindness or attention, he will put his right hand into the stew and take some dainty piece of meat and put it into your mouth, or else roll up a ball of greasy rice and present it to you in the same way. This polite attention, when received for the first time from fingers very far from clean, makes the act of swallowing, not to say relishing, the morsel so given one of uncommon difficulty! But all the carving and