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

Q is literally 'source' - with unknown author and unknown content - so we don't know what's in it nor what's not in it.

Therefore I challenged the claim by parent that 'anything not in Q ...' because that's an objectively ludicrous statement.

My 'theory', inasmuch as I have one, is that the authors of Luke and Matthew had different target audiences, different incentives, but predominantly the same (probably two sets of) materials.

They made different mistakes than the author of Mark, and indeed each other, though were presumably much more earnest.

The author of Mark was probably just writing allegorical fiction.

The author of Matthew for instance was the only one to talk about saints / zombies rising from the graveyards and walking into town, being seen by many people, etc - which is an odd thing for everyone else to have missed or not think to be worth mentioning.

There's a beautiful graphic showing % breakdowns of the Mark / Luke / Matthew content about half-way down this page: https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Gospels

EDIT: that whole page is worth a read to get a better idea on the bleed between the different texts, a historical context for when they were probably written, and a reminder of the earliest copies we can reliably put dates to.

The only treatment of homosexuality in the NT comes from Paul, and the Greek word he uses for the receiving partner is specifically the word for an underage male slave kept for sexual purposes, so it's unclear how applicable it is to modern consenting adults. I'd certainly much prefer Paul was trying to say "Yo, don't be a pedo, and no matter your circumstance as far as you have control don't ever offer sexual favors for advancement/favorable treatment" instead of "Yo, don't be gay."

However, unfortunately we'll never know how Paul would have felt about modern Western conceptions of homosexuality, and my wishes have zero impact on his actual intent. He would have been familiar with Jewish culture in which homosexuality was forbidden, and Hellenistic culture where creepy mentor/mentee homosexual pedophilia was apparently commonplace. He may not have had any concept resembling our modern Western conception of homosexuality, so even in an alternate history where he wrote "Yo, don't be gay" (somehow miraculously in modern English), reasonable people could still disagree over modern applicability.

An in-depth study of Paul's Koine Greek word choices for homosexuality would probably be much more enlightening than an in-depth study of Aramaic words for rope and camel. Rope vs. camel has zero impact on practical application of the teaching.

Also, the main thrust of Jesus's teaching is against the arrogance of religious authorities and against greed/selfishness. Jesus never mentions homosexuality, and the entire NT maybe mentions homosexuality (or maybe lack of consent was the gripe there) once. The preoccupation some churches have with homosexuality is clearly unwarranted. (On a side note, the OT explicitly mentions that arrogance was the sin that doomed Sodom. Food for thought for anyone citing Sodom, new covenant aside.)

But, even so, it is also indisputable that many who consider themselves devout Christians, rich and poor alike, reach a very different conclusion about the meaning of this whole exchange. I can only imagine this must be motivated reasoning.

I found a thread showing some such rationalizations:

https://christianity.stackexchange.com/questions/60225/how-d...

Interestingly, it seems modern day prosperity gospel sorts don't go for a reinterpretation of the camel, but for a reinterpretation of the word "rich".

I was probably thinking of the author of Mark who had his Jesus doing the roundabout trip via Sidon towards the Sea of Galilee, or the same author having Jesus stepping out of his boat and into a region that is actually 45km from the shore [1].

With regards Hebrew phrasing - I believe the author of Matthew was almost definitely Jewish, not sure on the authors of Mark (who I think was writing for a non-Jewish audience) or Luke. So they were writing in common Greek, but almost definitely were either Jewish, or spoke Hebrew, and/or were well versed in Jewish lore.

Given the earliest copies we have date from a couple of hundred years after the alleged events, and would have been transcribed numerous times by then, we can't confidently read too much into the phrasing nuances, can we?

[0] https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Gospels

[1] pages 72 & 106 -https://ia800707.us.archive.org/17/items/NailedTenChristianM...