OBERLINVEREINE. The Oberlin Associations in Germany have worked on the lines of the ,philanthropist J. F. Oberlin (1740-1S20), who, as pastor at Waldersbach in the Steinthal, did so much to improve the spiritual and material conditions of his people. Oberlin was not only the first to start Infant Schools, etc., but he made a desolate district fruitful by improving agriculture, con structing roads and bridges, etc. See the Encycl. Brit., s.v. "Oberlin "; Brockhaus.
OBI. Obi was a name by which medicine-men or magicians were known in the West Indies. Longfellow uses the teem in one of his dramas (Giles Corey of the Salem Farms): "He was an Obi man, and taught me magic; taught me the use of herbs and images." De Quincey has suggested a connection with the Hebrew term Obit. The Septuagint usually translates the Hebrew word by a Greek term meaning " ventriloquists." In Isaiah xxix. 4 it is said : "and thy voice shall be as an obh out of the ground, and thy words (speech) shall chirp out of the dust." In I. Samuel xxviii. 7 the witch
of Endor is said to be the " possessor " of an obh. Leviticus xx. 27 is translated by Driver (Deuteronomy): "a man or a woman when there is in them an 5b or a yiddc`Oni." But " in them " might be translated " with them " or " among them." Kennedy thinks that the necromancer is " supposed to have a daimon or spirit in attendance upon him or even residing within him " (Leviticus in the " Century Bible "). See B. Edwards, West Indies, 1819; De Quincey. Collected Works (A. and C. Black), vol. viii., pp. 287 f., 412.
OBO. It is noted by Burton (Al Medinah and Meccah, new edition of Bohn, i., p. 155, N. 1) that " in Huc's travels we are told that the Tartars worship mountain spirits by raising an Obo '—dry branches hung with bones and strips of cloth, and planted in enormous heaps of stones."