Dithmar, Justus Chbistoph, a German divine and jurist, was bom March 13, 1677, at Rottenburg, in Hesse. After studying at the University of Marburg, where he applied himself to theology and the Oriental languages, he removed to Leyden, where he was of- fered a professorship, which he reftised in order to ac- company a family, in which he was tutor, to Frank- fort on the Oder, where he first became professor of history, then of the law of nature, and finally of sta- tistics and finance. He was made a member of the Royal Society of Berlin, and a councillor of the order of St. John. He died at Frankfort in 1737. Among his works are, GregorU VII Pont, Romani Vita (Frankf. 1710, 8vo) : — Higtoria Belli inter In^rium et Sacerdod- um (ibid. 8vo) i—JSumma Capita Antiq. Judaicarum et Homanarum in unim Pralectionum privatanm (ibid. 4to).— Hoefer, Now, Biog, GMrak, xiv, 327.
Ditmar. See Thibtmar.
Divan, the cushioned sofa running around three sides of the lewan, or raised portion of the sitting-room of an Oriental residence (Lane's Mod, Egypt, i, 17),
A Syrian Turk's Dlrao.
DIVERSE
826
DIVINATIOI^r
and serving the purpose of a seat by day and a coach by night for the male members of the £unily and guests. See House. It is from six inches to a foot high, a little elevated in front, and about four feet wide. The angles are the posts of honor. The com- mon people of Palestine and Egypt have no proper bed, and domestics sleep on the floor or in the passages, wherever they can find room (Kelly's Syriay p. 23). See Bed.
DivezBe (d;;'H^3, hla'yim^ of two torU, heteroge- neous^ Lev. xix, 19 ; Deut. xxii, 9) kinds of materials, animals, or products, the Jews were forbidden to bring tojo^ther (comp. Joseph. Ant. ix, 8, 20), as being ** con- fusion," i. e. unnatural hybridization. Among such comn)ingling of incompatible or incongruent things are specified: 1. Not to wear garments which were woven of two kinds of stuff, particularly of wool and linen (linsey-woolsey) ; 2. Not to sow a field partly with one kind of seed and partly with another (see Agriculture) ; 8. Not to yoke an ox and an ass to- gether to the plough (q. v.) ; 4. Nor to pair different species of animals in breeding (e. g. to procure no mules). A legal impediment is attached, it is true, to only the second of these ordinances, namely, the ren- dering the produce of the field unmerchantable (Deut. xix, 9); but a similar result is doubtless to be under- stood as applying to each prohibition, and to all other amalgamations. There is also some ambiguity in the statute itself, e. g. whether the *' field" (H'll^) of the passage in Lev. be tantamount to the "vineyard" (D'ns) of the parallel in Deut., and also in the sense of the commingling of the *' seed" (J^t) ; but the lax- ity of Hebrew idiom authorizes a liberal and compre- hensive construction of the enactment, as designed to interdict any combination of crops (whether in sepa- rate rows or commingled broadcast) upon the same piece of tilled ground, orchard, etc. ; and such was the interpretation of the Jews (Mishna, Kikdm, iv-vii). See Seed. The design of these prescriptions was doubtless to effect a still greater distinction between the chosen people of Grod and the heathen, who prac- tised all these and other sorts of promiscuous unions, and also to engender and cultivate a nicer sense of propriety and purity in the Jewish mind, as in the case of many other apparently nice discriminations re- lating to daily life. See Clean and Ukclean, etc. Another reason lias been thought to be the idea that Jehovah, as the author of nature, had a jealous regard to the preservation of its varied features intact and distinct (see Philippson, Pentat. p. 631). The Talmud contents itself (Mishna, KUcdm^ i, 4) with giving de- tailed regulations upon each of the ordinances in ques- tion ; of these, in connection with Josephus, it will be sufficient to notice only the most important, (a.) With regard to the prohibition of hybridizing animals (as the ass and the horse, the sheep and the goat ; such only as belong to the same genus are capable of this), Jose- phus {Ant. iv, 8, 20) and Philo {Opp. ii, 807) imply that it had its ground in the moral effect of such irregular license upon the human beings, who were in danger thereby not only of trampling upon the Creator's or- dinances (which fix a natural barrier between differ- ent species), but also of being incited to bestial com- merce and unnatural appetites (comp. also the Rab- binical citations in Hettinger, June Hehxeorum leges^ p. 374 sq,). Mules (q. v.) may have been imported from other countries (Ewald even imagines that these were not included in the prohibition, Israel. Alterth. p. 222), since the Jews were only forbidden the rearing, not the use of them. (6.) Respecting the coupling of the ox and the ass as beasts of draught (Frisch, De vero sensu legis Deut. xx, 10, Lips. 1744, absurdly in- cludes this under the foregoing rule), Josephus (ti^ sup.) bases the prohibition on the ground of humanity, as also Philo (Oj^. ii, 870 ; so Schwabe, in the Kir-
chenzeitung, 1834, No. 20, on aocotznt of thar inei^ ity in strength). Michaelis (Mom, Rtcht^ vr, %€\. ^ the other hand, thinks it refers to some amtiqae MCa relating to beasts of burden; but later (Bcrtfaco!: Jawm. iv, 853) he inclines to the opinioti wlikk na- it to the aiialogy of the copulatioii of the bone asd ai According to the Mishna {KUaam^ vxii, 3), the «ifx.? of jroking togetiier different animals (so it exte^aEtkr law, Hb. 2 sq.) was punished wHli forty blann! ,c As to the interdict of clothing composed partij c wool, Josephus {Ant. iv, 8, 11) gives as its gros&dt^ such garments constituted the priestly oostsBe; \9, this is open to doubt, although the 'AitibnM. (XSok ix, 1) assigns the same reason. The Tafanod has wex] regulations and restrictions cotuxming this pm^ "Wool," according to this authority, i* cmly ate'- wool ; to weave camel^s hair and linen together vx permitted (A. ix, 1). Towels, grave-dothes, bbofec for asses, and the like — in short, whateTer was sMn-'r lead on, but not woven — are interpreted as not ccca: within the province of the law. On the otfafl- kind weavers and fullers must piit their manu&ctsicr't mark in cloths only by means of colors of the ssk kind {p>. ix, 10). The whole enactment would pr^ ably receive a clearer light were the meaning of tie word ^335:5 {shaakniiz' [q. v.], rendered "laea 1::^ woolen" in Lev. xix, 19 ; " f^arment of drrers mtif in Dent, xxii, 11 ; Sept. KtfiiriXoVj L e. adBltxnt^d. not genuine) well understood ; but its etymtdagy e ^ scure ; that proposed by Bochart {Hierox. l, 4^ ^ that of Buxtorf {Lex. Tahn, col. 2483), both of vka seek the origin in the Shemitic lan^^uagea, han Isu probability ; nor is that entirely satisfactorr (see 6«^ seAius, Thes. Beb. p. 1456) which is sngge^ed hj i*- blonsky {Opmc. i, 294, ed. Te Water) and by Fonter {De bysso ^gypi. c. 95), who refer it back to U>eC«ptk word shoutnesj L e. fibrous bg^snu (see Boseoo^L^ Scholia in loc. Levit). See Linen. The Jevf £ Muscat, in Arabia, disregard this law (Niebohr, Begk- p. 157).— Winer, ii, 652.