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The camel, the rope, and the needle's eye

kiwihellenist.blogspot.com

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Re: The camel, the rope, and the needle's eye

#101

Post by Nition »

hot_gril wrote: post #94
Nition wrote: post #70

This is a bit of a meta-comment but, there are a great deal of of comments in this thread that say something that's already covered in the article. I've noticed that Hacker News comments do seem to be trending more over time to being from people who only read the title, or at best only skimmed the article. If you go straight to the comments on any news post on Reddit, the discussions usually seem relatively insightfu…

I've repeatedly noticed an even worse practice on anything news-related on Reddit: Top-rated comments saying "the title is misleading" when it actually isn't. I don't know if they skimmed the article way too quickly or were just trying to call it fake news because they didn't like it. Anyway, deleted my account there and haven't gone back in a few months.

It's a funny thing psychologically. I think it makes us feel smart to upvote the person saying it's all nonsense. Feels like now we're one level up in understanding. And that feeling makes it even harder to think about how maybe the comment is wrong and the article/title was right after all.

Re: The camel, the rope, and the needle's eye

#102

Post by DontchaKnowit »

ranprieur wrote: post #24

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 dont understand why people refuse to take this line as literally as possible -

A rich person has as much chance of entering heaven as a camel has of passing through the eye of a needle.

Its just a humorous way of saying "fat chance" ... why read into it so much. Never made any sense to me.

Re: The camel, the rope, and the needle's eye

#103

Post by autoexec »

kragen wrote: post #52
djur wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Sect" isn't a pejorative term, at least not in this context.

in english the pejorative term is 'cult', which often trips up second-language speakers from languages where it's the other way around

To help avoid future misunderstandings, which modern languages use "cult" without the usual negative implications?

Re: The camel, the rope, and the needle's eye

#104

Post by hprotagonist »

Zancarius wrote: post #98
hprotagonist wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You might like William Stringfellow's "Impostors of God:Inquiries into Favorite Idols". It's part of a long intellectual tradition that is absolutely wrenching.

Presently reading through a review—looks like a great recommendation! The charges he levies against modernity are pretty damning but not at all untrue. We're not all that dissimilar from the Israelites who were repeatedly condemned to the status of remnant, to be ruled by unjust kings, conquered and displaced by other nations, yet forever snubbing the will of the Most High. We've just swapped more obvious idols (on o…

oh -- well if we're going _there_ then for sure add Brueggemann to your list. His "The Prophetic Imagination" is incendiary, even 40-odd years on.

Re: The camel, the rope, and the needle's eye

#105

Post by galaxyLogic »

This may be a bit un-orthodox, but I think there is some sense in Trinity if you interpret it properly:

"Father" is the concrete DNA that creates each of us. "Son" is each individual that manifests that DNA. "Holy Ghost" is the whole INFORMATION in the DNA-population which gives rise to different concrete DNA strands.

They are all manifestations of the same thing.

Re: The camel, the rope, and the needle's eye

#106

Post by 082349872349872 »

readthenotes1 wrote: post #89
SilasX wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m still scratching my head at that attribution of motive though. “No, rich guys, what He meant to say is that it’s at least as hard as threading a rope through the eye of a needle. So rich guys like you just have to do that simple thing to get into heaven, easy peasy!” ‘Um, that … also seems really hard?’ “Yeah but not nearly as hard as a camel. Like whoaaa those things are bulky and not even the some domain as tai…

If you are rich, you can afford a bigger needle

Or smaller camels? https://su-ami.com/products/miniature-camels-8934

When she gets there she knows, if the stores are all closed / With a word she can get what she came for…

Re: The camel, the rope, and the needle's eye

#107

Post by timbit42 »

Jedd wrote: post #80
timbit42 wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure, but would they all make the same error? Either there was no error or they all inherited it from another source or Matthew and Luke inherited it from Mark. There is some evidence in Matthew that it could have originally been written in Aramaic.

I thought it was fairly non-contentious [0] that the authors of Matthew and Luke borrowed heavily (almost exclusively) from the author of Mark's work, along with this unknown source (usually referred to as Q). It seems fairly reasonable then to assume it was a literary device made by the author of Mark - his writing is actually pretty good as far as allegory goes - that was subsequently lifted near verbatim by the la…

The parts Matthew and Luke didn't get from Mark, but match, are considered to be from Q.

There are some parts of Matthew and Luke that neither come from Mark nor Q so they each also have one or more other sources unique to themselves.

Re: The camel, the rope, and the needle's eye

#108

Post by Natsu »

Zancarius wrote: post #35
ranprieur wrote: post #24

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! 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 mu…

> Where this argument pops up is through the modern myth that "eye of a needle" was a reference to a particular gate in Jerusalem

The article says this theory appears as early as the 11th century, which isn't quite "modern."

Re: The camel, the rope, and the needle's eye

#109

Post by kragen »

autoexec wrote: post #103
kragen wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

in english the pejorative term is 'cult', which often trips up second-language speakers from languages where it's the other way around

To help avoid future misunderstandings, which modern languages use "cult" without the usual negative implications?

the ones i'm thinking of are spanish, french, and portuguese, but i suspect it holds for most languages with a cognate of 'cult' and/or 'sect'

they used to be the other way around in english too

https://www.etymonline.com/word/sect

https://www.etymonline.com/word/cult

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