31–40 of 298 posts
Pace Aristippus (and the lentils), telling rich people what they want to hear is not a bad way to arrange for a stream of invites to fancy dinners.
Telling them what they need to hear tends to get you nailed to stuff, though.
In Aramaic, the language Jesus spoke, the word for camel is gamlo (ܓܐܡܠܐ) while the word for rope is gamla (ܓܐܡܠܥ). Mixing these up would be an easy mistake to make. Matthew and Luke both took some info from Mark but also took some info from the Q source and their own sources. Since all three have this same wording, it is likely the error came through Mark.
I know that the most recent biologists have been chiefly anxious to discover a very small camel. But if we diminish the camel to his smallest, or open the eye of the needle to its largest—if, in short, we assume the words of Christ to have meant the very least that they could mean, His words must at the very least mean this— that rich men are not very likely to be morally trustworthy. Christianity even when watered d…
Thanks for sharing. I did not know that and I did not grow up with much Christian influence (or any), but what this man writes is how I felt like for a long time deep inside. It resonates with me very much.
I'm predisposed to mysticism, so I probably read this passage a lot less mundanely than most. I'm also a minimalist and tend to view spiritual teachings as enigmatic ways of pointing out something obvious that we are conditioned to overlook. To me, this passage says: "You don't get to keep anything."
In this case the understanding = the religious stuff.
So it's basically the same.
I don't buy the idea that changing camel to rope is about pleasing rich people, because a rope can still nowhere near get through the eye of a needle. But a rope is qualitatively the same kind of thing as a thread; so if camel is the right word, the message is that what gets into the kingdom of God is a whole different kind of thing than money.
Where this argument pops up is through the modern myth that "eye of a needle" was a reference to a particular gate in Jerusalem (or something similar; there are different variants of this claim). If this were true, then THAT would turn the passage from an impossibility to something that's rather exceedingly difficult, thus pleasing rich people. Rope versus camel doesn't dramatically change the outcome as much as changing the idiom from a literal needle to a gate.
Here's what the IVP commentary says:
19:23–26. Here Jesus clearly uses *hyperbole. His words reflect an ancient Jewish figure of speech for the impossible: a very large animal passing through a needle’s eye. On regular journeys at twenty-eight miles per day, a fully loaded camel could carry four hundred pounds in addition to its rider; such a camel would require a gate at least ten feet high and twelve feet wide. (A needle’s eye in Jesus’ day meant what it means today; the idea that it was simply a name for a small gate in Jerusalem is based on a gate from the medieval period and sheds no light on Jesus’ teaching in the first century.)
Craig S. Keener, The IVP Bible Background Commentary: New Testament, Second Edition. (Downers Grove, IL: IVP Academic: An Imprint of InterVarsity Press, 2014), 94.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Telling them what they need to hear tends to get you nailed to stuff, though.
That’s why Martin Luther was smart and got the nailing part out of the way at the beginning.
* Turn a camel into a fine slurry that can be easily put through the eye of a needle.
* Commission a very big needle.
Or the classic redefinition of rich: most people that complain about the rich always seem to mean someone richer than they are. E.g. If you're writing on HN you are the rich.
I'm predisposed to mysticism, so I probably read this passage a lot less mundanely than most. I'm also a minimalist and tend to view spiritual teachings as enigmatic ways of pointing out something obvious that we are conditioned to overlook. To me, this passage says: "You don't get to keep anything."
I would put it equivalent to Sinclair's famous, “It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends on his not understanding it.” In this case the understanding = the religious stuff. So it's basically the same.
I don't buy the idea that changing camel to rope is about pleasing rich people, because a rope can still nowhere near get through the eye of a needle. But a rope is qualitatively the same kind of thing as a thread; so if camel is the right word, the message is that what gets into the kingdom of God is a whole different kind of thing than money.
I agree, considering the prosperity gospel types have found a way to reinterpret the analogy literally, claiming that Jesus was actually talking about a gateway to Jerusalem called the Eye of the Needle[1] that required those with goods to hand them through the Eye to get where they're going.
The analogy, in that interpretation, means that wealth was able to pass through the Eye, and thus so could the wealthy enter heaven.