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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

#191

Post by johnsonjo »

tsimionescu wrote: post #187
starcraft2wol wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Now read the next verse.

I know - the meaning is actually indisputable from all of the context, regardless of the precise phrase. 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.…

I think gp meant the next two verses. Where the verse two after the one we are talking about says:

Mark 10:27 And Jesus looking upon them saith, With men it is impossible, but not with God: for with God all things are possible.

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

#192

Post by tomohawk »

felipeerias wrote: post #139
DontchaKnowit wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Within the context of Matthew 19, it is clear that the goal was to provide an impossible example. The whole conversation doesn't make sense otherwise. Furthermore, the image of a camel trying to get through the eye of a needle is extremely memorable, which was very important for transmission in the oral culture of the time. Notice that this expression is still used regularly in many languages. ———— Jesus said to him,…

The point being that if you want a relationship with him, you have to be willing to give up everything and trust him only. Those who are wealthy are unwilling to give up their trust in their wealth, but by God's grace, they may be able to do just that. In the case of the young man, he chose to trust in his wealth instead of Jesus. There are accounts in Acts of wealthy people being part of the church.

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

#193

Post by spacebacon »

Jedd wrote: post #190
NeoTar wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I had a look around for this recently discovered book, but can't find references -- can you point me towards some please, it'd be fascinating to read the contents / context.

I can’t find anything either. Q is probably an aggregate of the best creative free form half truth conspiracy writings that one was able to gather from various internet sources mixed with a garden variety of new age mystical belief and a dash of pure fn magic.

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

#194

Post by Tao3300 »

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…

Agreed, the rope metaphor is better.

Having:

"...why beholdest thou the mote that is in thy brother's eye, but considerest not the camel that is in thine own eye?"

isn't better than "beam" or "log" either.

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

#195

Post by Tao3300 »

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.

A carnel through the eye of a needle. Might be a pastry. Might be part of a battlement.

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

#196

Post by debok »

sctb wrote: post #13

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'm less predisposed to mysticism, but I agree with you conclusion on "You don't get to keep anything." I would also add "You don't get to buy your way in."

Often in the gospels we hear Jesus say things that stump both us and the hearers at the time. It is almost like he is inviting us to search for meaning behind his words. He is speaking in metaphors, and that much is clear with how "off" his responses sometimes feel to us.

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

#197

Post by NeoTar »

Jedd wrote: post #190
NeoTar wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I had a look around for this recently discovered book, but can't find references -- can you point me towards some please, it'd be fascinating to read the contents / context.

'Recent' needs to be interpreted in biblical terms - the book I was thinking of is the Gosple of Thomas - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gospel_of_Thomas - discovered in 1945 (the 'Q' hypothesis having been made around 1900).

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

#198

Post by johnsonjo »

It's interesting to me that the focus of these verses has always been on the "impossibility" of rich men entering the kingdom of Heaven. When 2 verses later it says with God all things are possible (in reference to what He just said about the eye of the needle). In my opinion I think Jesus Christ makes it pretty clear throughout the Gospels especially in His sermon on the mount that there are diverse paths to Hell and those paths are broad and "easy" (Matthew 5 doesn't say those terms exactly but the sentiment is there), but the point is not that we're all going to Hell in fact it is far from it. It's that there is a way to Salvation and that we all need that way. The idea conveyed here is the same as breaking any other law of God that you don't really have a chance of making it to heaven without God. In fact that's a little too specific of a condition really it's you don't have a chance of making it to heaven without God even with all the good works in the world (notice this is to say it is necessary God is in the equation to make it to Heaven).

Also another often misquoted bible verse is "Money is the root of all evil" when really it says "For the love of money is the root of all evil" (1 Timothy 6:10). That chapter is a good read for what makes having or wanting riches often lead to evil (for those who don't want to read it; it basically says coveting, lusting, and setting your heart upon riches, instead of God, is evil).

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

#199

Post by moolcool »

gwd wrote: post #178
anonymous_sorry wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The point is it doesn't make sense. "It's easier for a rich man to enter heaven than to park their Range Rover in a smallish garage". So... slightly tricky but perfectly doable? It's not an interesting enough thing to record/claim Jesus to have said. And why then are the disciples said to be so shocked and confused by the metaphor? "Woah there Jesus, you're saying it'll take a rich man a good 5 minutes of manoeuvring…

The way I heard the "needle gate" interpretation is: 1. A camel normally is tall, covered in a tarp / saddle, and loads of baggage. 2. To get through the Needle Gate, a camel needs to take off all his baggage, saddle, and tarp, and then crawl through on his knees 3. So with a rich man: To get into heaven, he must take off all his worldly baggage (i.e., stop loving his wealth) and humble himself by crawling in on his…

But then he would no longer be rich, so this doesn't really change the metaphor.

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

#200

Post by gwd »

Jedd wrote: post #189
gwd wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 on…

Hmm, there's a LOT of inaccuracies between the gospels and trusted historical documents - the bottom section of rationalwiki's Gospel page [0] has some examples - though these are more historical than geographical. 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 th…

From page 72[ed]:

> And on the other hand, if Mark received his Gos- pel from Peter, why is it that the other Gospels have more anecdotes about Peter, including for example, Je- sus telling him, “You are Peter the rock, and upon this rock I will build my church”? Would Peter himself for- get such an incident? It gets worse. Mark shows no un- derstanding of the social situation in the Holy Land, making numerous errors that no one living in early first century Judea would have made. Interestingly enough, when you compare Matthew’s and Mark’s Gospels, one finds that the author of Matthew is constantly correcting Mark’s blunders about all aspects of Jewish society, re- ligion, the calendar, holidays, customs, attitudes – even repeated misquotes of scripture.

I'm afraid this is just not informative at all, and doesn't give me a good impression of the rest of the book.

Why did Mark not include it? The simplest answer is that he didn't think it was important. Mark is the shortest book -- there are lots of things that mark could have included and didn't. His implication is that somehow Mark didn't know where Peter / Cephas / Rock's nickname came from, which I find much more hard to believe than that he just decided not to include it. This is hardly the kind of evidence you can follow with "it gets worse".

But it gets worse. There's absolutely no detail here -- what social situation is Mark allegedly showing no understanding of? What kinds of "errors" is he making? I can't go and verify what he's saying, or consider the claim critically myself. Is Mark's change an "error", showing a basic lack of knowledge about the societal situation? Or is it a deliberate "contextualization", to make the stories accessible to a Greek audience without having to explain loads of irrelevant cultural background? No way to check and judge for myself; I'm expected to just take it on his authority.

And re the geographical "blunder" -- I someone in Cambridge, UK today said, "I'm going by way of Manchester to London", nobody would say they were committing a "geographical blunder". They'd understand that person to mean that they are going to first visit Manchester briefly, and then go to London.

This sort of thing is exactly in line with other things I've read claiming that Jesus didn't exist; I've never seen anything to make me think it's worth spending more of my time digging into.

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