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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

#161

Post by ben_w »

m463 wrote: post #32
timbit42 wrote: post #22

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.

visually pretty similar. Thank goodness we live in the future with typesetting and even monospaced fonts so rn and m don't look similar.

Sometimes monospace can make it worse: early in my iOS work, I leaned on the alt key without (initially) realising, and got very confused by compiler errors caused by a "–" where it should have been a "-".

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

#162

Post by emodendroket »

Jedd wrote: post #112
timbit42 wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> 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. Given that we know nothing about the provenance or contents of 'Q' - it's lost to time, and its hypothetical existence is effectively intuited by some researches - I do not understand how we can identify the set of things 'not in Q' (or indeed 'in Q'). I'd also note that…

So your theory is they simply made up the exact same stuff? Maybe you do believe in miracles after all then.

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

#164

Post by thfuran »

bee_rider wrote: post #153

I guess the fact that “big animal through a needle’s eye” was a common expression would make it more obvious. But, without knowing it, I kind of thought the rope phrasing seemed better. Without knowing the expression, “camel through a needle’s eye” sounds a bit fanciful, like there must be some sort of fairy-tale exception or trick to make it work. Edit: for example maybe camel fur can be made into thread? I don’t kn…

>Without knowing the expression, “camel through a needle’s eye” sounds a bit fanciful, like there must be some sort of fairy-tale exception or trick to make it work

But isn't that the whole point?

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

#165

Post by gwd »

Jedd wrote: post #43
timbit42 wrote: post #22

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 think there's enough evidence to suggest that whoever the people that wrote Matthew and Luke were, they were capable of introducing their own errors, along with embellishments, from their source material. Given they wrote in Koine, and exhibit some ignorance of the geography of the area, and almost definitely never met anyone that met Jesus, it's reasonable to assume no spoken Aramaic accounts were part of their so…

Can you give me a reference for this?

The only evidence I've seen points in the opposite direction; e.g.:

- The frequency and granularity of place names mentioned match other documents where we're pretty sure the people actually travelled there; vs other documents where we're sure they never travelled there

- The frequency of names and requirements for disambiguation (e.g., Jesus has two disciples named James, but only one named Bartholomew)

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r5Ylt1pBMm8

Regarding Aramaic: I'm just learning Biblical Greek, and one common pattern is rather than saying "X replied, '...'", to say 'X replied, saying '...'" (or "Replying, X said '...'". A Jewish friend who is a classicist told me that this pattern was a "semitism" -- i.e., not something you'd hear in native Koine Greek, but something imported from Aramaic / Hebrew. This would indicate at least that the original source material was written by native Aramaic speakers. (This latter bit is lower significance, because it was an offhand comment she made when discussing something else.)

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

#166

Post by HeckFeck »

defrost wrote: post #115
ShamelessC wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Non contentious? Don’t a large portion of Christians believe the Bible is divine and any words included are there because of God?

There are a large number of camps that don't align about this issue. The King James Only movement alone: asserts the belief that the King James Version (KJV) of the Bible is superior to all other translations of the Bible. and has been divided into five subgroups with varying opinions about the text and its relation to God. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/King_James_Only_movement This barely scratches the surface of th…

> asserts the belief that the King James Version (KJV) of the Bible is superior to all other translations of the Bible.

As one who is fond of classical English literature, I am compelled to agree.

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

#167

Post by kragen »

tsimionescu wrote: post #148
autoexec wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

I believe English is actually one of the only ones where cult has a negative connotation, and where sect does not. French, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, German, Dutch, Polish, Romanian, Swedish, Russian - all of these use "cult" to mean any religious group, even in official language ("the Catholic cult"), and all use "sect" to mean "a fringe, possibly dangerous, religious or quasi-religious group" ("the members of th…

holy shit you speak a lot of languages

respect

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

#168

Post by mastazi »

tsimionescu wrote: post #150
mastazi wrote: post #133

This aricle does a good job in presenting sources in support of its first argument (it was a camel, not a rope) but then it presents exactly zero evidence to support the conclusion (the error was intentional, the goal was to appease rich people). Clearly, the author knows about the importance of supporting argument with sources... so I have the impression that they might be in bad faith.

The quote from the original source of the "rope" claim, Cyril, is pretty explicit: > ‘camel’: he doesn’t mean the pack animal here, but the thick rope, with which sailors bind anchors. He shows that the situation isn’t absolutely permanent, but makes the matter extremely difficult for him in future, and for the present, close to and neighbouring on impossibility. Cyril explicitly considers that replacing "camel" with…

EDIT: I misunderstood your comment originally. My response was based on that misunderstanding. I removed it.

Also, I should not have suggested that the author might be in bad faith.

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

#169

Post by NeoTar »

ShamelessC wrote: post #122
Jedd wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, we get into murky territory here. I'd suggest a large portion of self-identified Christian believers really haven't thought much about it at all, beyond (as you say) some orthodox assumptions about divine nature etc. But as per my link above to wikipedia (Marcan Priority) the larger consensus amongst religious historians / researchers is that Mark was written first, Luke & Matthew were written subsequently, and…

Fascinating! Thanks I’ll have to read up on this mysterious Q figure and why it’s believed to be a ghost writer of sorts (is that accurate? Or is possibly just information lost to time?)

Q is a not a figure, but a document or a number of documents. It could have been written by a single figure, or compiled by many individuals.

What is interesting is that is appears to be a book of quotations, rather than a narrative - so Matthew and Luke agree more than expected when directly quoting Jesus. At the time the theory was proposed we hadn't discovered any gospels like this, but now at least one such book of Jesus quotations has been found.

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

#170

Post by graemep »

brink wrote: post #33
lynguist wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

He's written some fantastic books. Worth a read, imo. He's my favorite author.

His fiction as well. The Father Brown stories are better known now because there was a recent TV series but they really did no convey a lot of what was in the books (I only saw an episode or two).

Oddly enough, the fiction is more a product of its time and feels more dated to me than the journalism and serious writing of his I have read.

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