* For a conjectural site, of. Schick’s art. on ancient Jerus., ZDPYV, 1894, p. 13, with the accompanying Plan.
VOL. ΠῚ —-43
consist eer of the o
PARCHMENT
(2 K 23", and marg. of 1 Ch 26'*); but the sense thus obtained is not suitable in either passage. By what means, however, a Persian word can have reached Judah before the Exile (2 K 23), is difficult to understand: if this explanation of the word in 2 K 23" is correct, the text would seem to have been adjusted to post-exilic 6. 5. i DRIVER.
PARCEL.—Derived from Lat. particula (dim. of pars a ‘part’) through Fr. parcelle, a parcel is ‘a small part’ of anything; and that is the primitive sense in which it is used in AV. The words so tr. are (1) a257 helkah (Gn 33%, Jos 945, Ru 43, 1 Ch 11° ¥), and χωρίον (Jn 4°); and as both words mean specifically a portion (or ‘plot,’ as 1 Ch 11-8 RV) of land, it is always to land (and not, as now, to something that can be carried) that the word is applied. It was, however, used of ‘a part’ or ‘a small part’ of almost anything, as Erasmus, Commune Crede, fol. 18, ‘Sanctorum communionem. The communion of saynctes. This parcel certayne men do so understonde, that it do by apposytion expounde the nexte parcel
‘oyng before, whiche is sanctam ecclesiam catho- icam, The holy catholike churche.’ So T. Adams, Works, i. p. xix—‘ These Meditations, which before were scattered abroad in parcels, are now presented to thee in one entire volume.’ Shaks. has it exactly as we now use ‘particle,’ J Henry JV. τι. ii. 159—
‘I will die a hundred thousand deaths
Ere break the smallest parcel of this vow.’
J. HASTINGS.
PARCHED CORN.—To parch is to scorch, as in Mt 13° Rhem., ‘After the sun was up, they parched,’ where it is used intransitively. The trans. use is more common, as Sir 43° ‘ At noon it (the sun) parcheth the country’ (ἀναξηραίνει, RV ‘drieth’); but it is rarely used except in the ptep, ‘parched.’ Parched is used of the ground (Is 357," Jer 178, Sir 43°) as we still use it. But it is also used of corn (Lv 2315, Jos 54, Ru 24, 1S 177 9518. 2S 17%) in the obsolete sense of ‘roasted.’ Cf. Haliburton, Sam Slick, Clockmaker, xxv— *Marm Porter moved about as brisk as a hed
ea.’ The process of parching corn is described by Mionesr Toad and Book, ui. 40f., ‘ A quantity of the best ears, not too ripe, are plucked with the stalks attached. These are tied in small cels, a blazing fire is kindled with dry grass and thorn bushes, and the corn-heads are held in it until the chaff is mostly burned off. When the grain is sufficiently roasted, it is rubbed out in the hand and eaten as there is occasion.’ See also Robinson, BRP ii. 50f., ‘In the season of harvest, the grains of wheat, not yet fully dry and hard, are roasted in a pan or on an iron plate, and constitute a very palatable article of food. Indeed, the use of itis so common at this season among the labouring classes, that this parched wheat is sold in the markets.’ J. HASTINGS.
PARCHMENT.—Parchment is a writing material prepared from the skin of the sheep or goat. ‘The skins are first soaked in lime to remove the hair,
* Is 857 ‘The parched ground shall become a pool.’ The word rendered ‘parched ground’ here is 37¥ #drdbA, which ocours also in Is 4910 and nowhere else. As the Arab. word for the mirage is serab, and as the idea of the mirage suits the sense here, it has generally been understood that the prophet’s mean- ing is that where there is only the mocking semblance of water there will be found real ls, Of. Koran (Sura xxiv 8ῦ.- quoted in Ges. and Skinner,
‘The works of the unbelievers are like the mirage in the
desert, The thirsty takes it for water, till he comes up to !t and finds that it is nothing.” But this sense is less suitable to the other passage; ac RV has here ‘glowing sand’ and at 4010 ‘heat,’ with ‘mirage’ in the marg. at both places (see, further, Cheyne, Intr, to 14. ὃ
674 PARDON and are then shaved, washed, dried, stretched, and ground or smoothed with fine chalk or lime and pumice-stone.’ The finest kind is made from the skins of calves or kids, and called vellum. The Eng. word ‘ parchment’ is a form of pergamina or ergamena (Gr. περγαμηνή), an adj. signifying ‘ of Pawan the city of Pergamum (now Bergamo) in Asia Minor being the place where parchment was invented, or at least brought into use. The ὁ is no proper part of the Eng. word which was adopted from the Fr. parchemin. Chaucer says (Bathius, v. iv. 14, Skeat’s ed. p. 200), ‘Thilke Stoiciens wenden that the sowle hadde ben naked of it-self, as a mirour or a clene parchemin, so that alle figures mosten first comen fro thinges fro withoute-forth in-to sowles, and ben empreinted in-to sowles.’ The word occurs only in 2 Ti 4", where St. Paul asks Timothy to bring to him the cloke which he left at Troas, ‘and the books, especially the parchments’ (καὶ τὰ βιβλία, μάλιστα τὰς μεμβράνατ). The Greek word is simply the Lat. membrana (properly an adj. membrana cutis, from membrum, a limb, member of the body), the skin, rchment. This is its only occurrence in bibl. reek. It is impossible to say what the parch- ments were, or why they chiefly were wanted. Perhaps they were more precious than the books be- cause parchment and not paper (papyrus) ; they may even have been vellum.* Perhaps their value was in their contents—the Old Test. in Greek (Kenyon), his diploma of Roman citizenship (Farrar), his ‘commonplace books’ (Bull), or even a copy of the Grundschrift of the Gospels (Latham). J. HASTINGS. PARDON.—See FORGIVENESS in vol. ii. p. 56.