2. The native place of Gideon (Judg. vi, 11); the scene of his exploits against Baal (ver. 24) ; his resi- dence after his accession to power (ix, 5), and the place of his burial in the ftimily sepulchre (viii, 32). In Ophrah also he deposited the ephod which he made or enriched with the ornaments taken from the Ishmaelit- ish followers of Zebah and Zalmunnah (viii, 27), and so strong was the attraction of that object that the town must then have been a place of great pilgrimage and resort. We may infer that it lay within the territory of Manasseh, as it is called " Ophrah of the Abiezrites" (vi, 24), and it is stated that the angel who appeared to Gideon to summon him to deliver Israel "sat under an oak which was in Ophrah, that pertained unto Joash the Abiezrite" (vi, 11). "Ophrah possibly derived its name from Epher, who was one of the heads of the fam- ilies of Manasseh in its Gileaditish jjortion (1 Chron. v, 24), and who appears to have migrated to the west of Jordan with Abiezer and Shechem (Numb, xxvi, 30; Josh, xvii, 2)" (Smith). See Abiezer. "The prophet Micah, when foretelling the destruction of the land and cities of Israel, says, '//* the house of Aphrah roll thy- self in the dust,' or rather, perhaps, we should render, ' In Beth-0;;/»-«/i roll thyself in Ophr' (dust); or, in the house of dust roll thyself in dust CSlic. i, 10, H'^Sn mS"P; the 3 appears to be merely the sign of the genitive ; Sept. t'i oIkov Kara yiXotra ; Vulg. in domo Pulceris pulcere vos conspergite) . The place referred to is possibly identical with Ophrah of Manasseh; and the prophet perhaps intends some allusion to (iideon's deliverance, and to the fact that there would be none like him to deliver them in time of oppression" (Kitto). See, however, BETii-i.EAPHRAir. The Ophrah of (iid- eon was probablj^ not far from Sliechcm (.luilg. ix, 1, 5). Neither Eusebius nor Jerome appears to liave known anything of it (Reland, Palcest. p. 913). Van de Vclde suggests a site called Erfii, a mile south of Akrabeh, about eight miles south-east from Nablus (Memoir, p, 338), and Schwarz (Palest, p. 158) identifies it with " the village Krafa, north of Sanur," by which he prob-
OPINION
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OPPENHEIMER
ablj' means A naheh, west of Tell Dothan. The former 1 is sufficiently in the required position. For other vague conjectures, see Hamaker, Miscell. Phcen. p. 276.
3. An Israelite, son of Mecinothai, of the tribe of Ju- dah (I Chron. iv, 14). E.G. post 1014. But it is more probable that the word father here means founder ; and that Ophrah here also is the name of a village. See above, and Meonothai.
Opinion (from Latin opinor, to thinlc) is a syno- nyme of belief, and measurably, too, of knowledge; but, while the last-named term can be applied to what is objectively and subjectively held as sufficient, and be- lief is applied to what is subjectively sufficient, opinion is properly applied only to a consciously insufficient judgment, or, as Sir Lewis has it: "The essential idea of opinion seems to be that it is a matter about which doubt can reasonably exist, as to which two persons can without absurdity think differently. . . . Any proposition, the contrary of which can be maintained with probability, is matter of opinion" {Essay on Opin- ion), According to the last of these definitions, matter of opinion is opposed not to matter of fact, but to mat- ter of certainty. Thus the death of Charles I is a fad — his authorship of Icon Basilike, an opinion. It is also used, however, to denote knowledge acquired by inference, as opposed to that acquired by perception. Thus that the moon gives light is matter of fact ; that it is inhabited or uninhabited is matter of oj)inion. It has been proposed to discard from philosophical use these ambiguous expressions, and to divide knowledge, according to its sources, into matter of perception and matter of inference ; and, as a cross division as to our conviction, into matter of certainty and matter of doubt. Subjective sufficiency is termed conviction (for myself) ; objective determination is termed certainty (for all). See Knowledge.
Opitz (Opitius), Heinrich, a German Lutheran divine, was born at Altenberg, in Jlisnia, in 1642, and became professor of the Oriental languages and theol- ogy in Kiel, where he died in 1712. We have many Latin works of his on Hebrew antiquities, and he was deservedly reckoned one of the most learned men of his age ; but what peculiarly marks him is an attempt (a very strange one surely) to show the relationship be- tween the Greek and the Oriental languages, and the connection which the dialects of the one have with those of the other. This chimerical scheme of subject- ing the Greek language to the rules of the Hebrew in- duced him to publish a small work entitled Grcecismus facilitati sum restitutus, methodo nova, edque cum prce- ceptis Ilelmiis Wasmuthianis (for it seems that Wachs- muth was the originator of this theorj') et suis Orien- talibns quani proxime harmonica, adeoque regulis 34 succincte ahsolutus.
Opitz, Martin (afterwards ennobled as Opitz von BoBERFELT)), a famous German poet, noted for his lit- erary productions of a moral and religious character, was born Dec. 23, 1597, at Bunzlau, in Silesia. He studied at Frankfort and Heidelberg, and published in 1618 a Latin essay, Aristarchus de contemptu linyme TeutoniccB, in which he vindicates the merit of the Ger- man language. His most important work, Von der dentschen Poeterei, or the "Book of German Poetry" ^1024), passed through nine editions before 1669, and produced a reform in German versification. For nearlj' three centuries the art of writing in verse had degener- ated, until it had been reduced to nothing better than a mere counting of syllables. Opitz insisted on the im- portance of both metre and rhythm, while he contended for purity in the choice of words. His own attain- ments as a scholar — especially as a writer of respectable Latin verses— recommended his book to the notice of educated men, and its success made Opitz the founder of a new school— the First Silesian School. After sev- eral years of service in diplomacy he settled in Dantzig, and gained in 1637 an appointment as historiographer