Diary, 1823.

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Diary, 1823.

http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/207148111

This travel diary, 1823, records King's travels from Cairo to Jerusalem and surrounding religious sites as the first missionary of the Paris Missionary Society, which was founded in 1822 with the aid of S. V. S. Wilder. In the first portion of the diary King describes his journey through the oppressively hot desert with a caravan of 100 Arabs, Armenians, and Turks and a contaminated water supply. The latter portion of the diary comprises a colorful account of King's visits to biblical sites such as the Garden of Gethsemane, the Mount of Olives, the Holy Sepulchre, Bethany, and Christ's birthplace in Bethlehem. King frequently met with prominent Jewish, Moslem, and Catholic religious leaders to whom he distributed Arabic, Persian, or Greek translations of the New Testament as part of his unsuccessful attempts to Christianize them. It can be discerned from King's account of these meetings that he was quite critical of the customs and beliefs of the various religious sects with which he came into contact. He referred to the Greek celebration of Passover as a "Bacchanalian feast" and recommended "fire and brimstone" for a pasha whose lifestyle he found offensive. He believed that "Jerusalem is now possessed by a nation that withers it."

1 v. (88 leaves) ; octavo.

American Antiquarian Society

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SNAC Resource ID: 7000492

American Antiquarian Society

Related Entities

There are 3 Entities related to this resource.

King, Jonas, 1792-1869

http://n2t.net/ark:/99166/w63r17sx (person)

Jonas King (1792-1869) was born near Hawley, Mass., the son of strict Puritan parents. He graduated from Williams College in 1816 and Andover Theological Seminary in 1819, and then spent six months at a mission in Charleston, S.C., where he was ordained as an evangelist. In the early 1820s, King studied Arabic under De Sacy in Paris where he apparently became involved with Sampson Vryling Stoddard Wilder (1780-1865) and the Paris Missionary Society. Following three years of missionary work in Pa...

Paris Missionary Society.

http://n2t.net/ark:/99166/w6vt7818 (corporateBody)

Wilder, Sampson Vryling Stoddard, 1780-1865

http://n2t.net/ark:/99166/w6kd38gz (person)

Sampson Vryling Stoddard Wilder (1780-1865) was born in Lancaster, Mass., and became a successful merchant during the early part of the nineteenth century. He operated his own trade company in Boston and between 1803 and 1823 traveled to France twenty times to oversee trade with that nation as a representative of Richards, Taylor and Wilder of New York. Wilder commissioned the building of a summer mansion in Bolton, Mass., where he entertained the Marquis de Lafayette in 1824. He founded the Eva...