Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 17.djvu/761

O B A O B E 703 and in a much less lucid connexion. In Jeremiah the picture is vague, and Edom s unwisdom (ver. 7) stands without proof. In Obadiah the conception is quite de finite. Edom is attacked by his own allies, and his folly appears in that he exposes himself to such treachery. Again, the probability that the passage in Jeremiah incor porates disjointed fragments of an older oracle is greatly increased by the fact that the prophecy against Moab in the preceding chapter uses, in the same way, Isa. xv., xvi., and the prophecy of Balaam. In spite of the objections of Blau (Z. D. M. G., xx. 173 sq.) there is no good reason to doubt that the prophecy against Edom ascribed to Jere miah is really from his pen ; it is earlier than the fall of Jerusalem, 1 and is one of a circle of prophecies in which Nebuchadnezzar (the lion ascending from Jordan, ver. 19) appears as the instrument of divine judgment on the nations. This being so, it seems necessary to conclude, with Ewald (Propheten, i. 489 sq.), Graf (Jeremia, p. 558 sq.), and others, that Jeremiah and our book of Obadiah alike quote from an older oracle. Ewald supposes that the treacherous allies of Edom are the Aramaeans and the time that of Ahaz (2 Kings xvi. 6) ; but the tone of the prophecy seems rather to refer it to a later date, when Edom had been for some time independent and powerful ; and it is not improbable that in Obad. 1-8 we have the first mention of that advance of the Arabs upon the lands east of Palestine which is referred to also in Ezek. xxv. (comp. MOAB, vol. xvi. p. 535). That the book of Obadiah, short as it is, is a complex document might have been suspected, apart from Jer. xlix., from an apparent change of view between vers. 1-9 and vers. 1 5 sq. In the former verses Esau is destroyed by his allies, and they occupy his territory, but in the latter he perishes with the other heathen in the day of universal retribution, he disappears before the victorious advance of Israel, and the southern Judaeans occupy his land. The eschatology of Obadiah contains little that is pecu liar. The conceptions of the "rescued ones" (nOvD), of the sanctity of Zion, of the kingship of Jehovah, are the com mon property of the prophets from the time of Isaiah. The restoration of the old borders of Israel and the conquest of Edom and the Philistines are ideas as old as Amos ix., Isa. xi. 14; but the older prophets more often represent this conquest as a suzerainty of Israel over its neighbours, as in the days of David, while in Obadiah, as in other later books, the intensified antithesis religious as well as political between Judah and the surrounding heathen finds its expression in the idea of a consuming judgment on the latter, the great "day of Jehovah." This view is not, however, original in Obadiah ; it is already expressed in Zephaniah. Between Joel and Obadiah there are points of material and verbal agreement, so. close as to imply that Joel used the earlier book (Joel iii. 19, Ob. 10, 14; Joel in. 3, Ob. 11 ; Joel ii. 32, iii. 17, Ob. 17). Another charac teristic common to Obadiah with the latest prophets is that, while he uses the words house of Jacob and house of Joseph, the northern tribes have become to him a mere name ; the restoration he thinks of is a restoration of the kingdom of Jerusalem, and even Gilead is to be occupied not by Joseph but by Benjamin. An indication of the place where Obadiah wrote seems to lie in ver. 20, where he speaks of the exiles in this pn. " The word as pointed has been variously explained to mean "bulwark" or "army"; it may also be read as "sand" or "sea-coast" (Ewald), but, as the text of the verse is not sound and cannot be translated without some correction, it is unsafe to build on this obscure allu sion. The prominence given to Edom, and the fact that Chaldsea is not mentioned at all, make it probable that the book was not written in Babylonia. The same verse speaks of exiles in Sepharad. 1 In ver. 12 "have assuredly drunken " should be "shall assuredly drink." Sepharad is probably Sardis, the Cparda of Darius in the Behistun inscription. Many of the Jews were doubtless sold as slaves by Nebuchadnezzar. Lydia was a great slave-market, and Asia Minor was a chief seat of the Diaspora at an early date (comp. Gutschmidt, Neue Bcitragc, p. 77), so that this identification does not supply ground for Hitzig s argument that Obadiah was written in the Greek period, when we read of many Jews being transplanted to Asia Minor (Jos., Ant., xii. 3). Schrader, however (K. G. F., 116 sq.; K.A. T., 446), thinks of a Shaparda mentioned by Sargon, and lying in south-west Media. Literature. The commentaries on the minor prophets (see HOSEA) ; Jaj, r er, Ueber das Zeitalter Obadia s, Tubingen, 1837 ; Caspari, Der Pr. Obadiu, ISIL ; Delitzsch in Z. f. Luth. Th. t 1851. A fuller list is given by Reuss, Gesch dcs A.T. (1SS1), p. 449. (W. R. S.) OBAN, a seaport town and parliamentary burgh of the Western Highlands of Scotland, is situated in Argyllshire, 70f miles north-west of Callander by rail, and 96 from Glasgow. It lies along a deep and sheltered bay in the Firth of Lorn opposite the island of Kerrera, and its villas are scattered over the hill-slopes behind. The public build ings comprise six churches, a court-house, four banks, a high school, and a large number of hotels. There are no manu factures except the distilling of whisky ; but eleven fairs for cattle, sheep, horses, &c., are annually held in the town. A considerable trade is carried on in connexion with the fisheries, particularly in herrings. Oban is an important centre of the Highland tourist traffic. The rental of the burgh increased from 1719 in 1847 to 7160 in 1864, and upwards of 20,000 in 1882 ; and the population, which was only 1480 in 1831 and 2413 in 1871, reached 3991 in 1881, or, within the extended area, 4330. A Renfrew trading company erected what was practically the first house in Oban in 1713 ; a custom-house was built in 1763 ; in 1786 the hamlet was made a Government fishing - station ; in 1791 a plan was drawn up for laying out a large village ; and in 1796 the Stevensons started a shipbuilding-yard, which remained in opera tion for about thirty years. Made a burgh of barony in 1811, Oban became a parliamentary burgh in 1832, and adopted the Lindsay Act in 1862. OBELISK. See ALEXANDRIA, vol. i. p. 495 ; ARCHI TECTURE, vol. ii. p. 390 ; and EGYPT, vol. vii. pp. 768, 778. The obelisk known as "Cleopatra s Needle," re ferred to in vol. i. p. 495 as having been offered to the English Government by Mehemet Ali, but declined, has since been brought to London, and placed on the Thames Embankment in 1878. The other was conveyed to the United States and erected in Central Park, New York, in 1880. OBERAMMERGAU, a small village in the mountain valley of the Ammer, in Upper Bavaria, lies 2760 feet above the sea, and about 45 miles to the south-west of Munich. In 1880 it contained 1349 inhabitants, who were mainly engaged in making toys and in carving cruci fixes, images of saints, and rosaries. Many of the houses are adorned with quaint frescos of Biblical subjects. The interest of Oberammergau to the outer world is derived from the Passion Plays which are performed here by the villagers at intervals of ten years (the last in 1880), and are now attended by many thousands of European and American visitors. The Oberammergau Passion Play, or dramatic representation of the sufferings of Christ, is not a survival of a medieval mystery or miracle-play, but took its rise from a vow made by the inhabitants in 1633, with the hope of staying a plague then raging, original text and arrangements were probably made by the monks of Ettal, a monastery a little higher up the valley ; but they were carefully remodelled by the parish priest at the beginning of the present century, when the Oberammergau play obtained exemp tion from the general suppression of such performances by the Bavarian Government. The music was composed by Rochus Dedler, schoolmaster of the parish in 1814 The performances take place on the Sundays of summer, in a large open-air theatre holding 6000 persons, and each lasts about nine hours, with a short Intermission at noon. Each scene from the history of Christ is prefaced by a tableau of typical import from the Old Testament. About 700 actors are required, all belonging to the village. The proceeds of the performances are devoted to the good of the c