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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

#211

Post by joenot443 »

Jedd wrote: post #181
emodendroket wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

I don't know how you get to that conclusion. 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, b…

I think earnestly citing RationalWiki is enough to give me pause to take the rest of your 'theory' seriously. You know it's a humor website for teenagers, right? It's essentially ED for a different kind of edgy post-reddit nerd, it's not really a serious place to learn about theology.

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

#212

Post by KMag »

Adverblessly wrote: post #202
KMag wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

First of all, Hebrew, Aramaic, Arabic, Greek, English, etc. all have very similar words for camel/gimel/gamal/etc. (The Greek letter Gamma and the Hebrew/Phoenician letter Gimel derive from a drawing of a camel's head. Though, it's probably originally derives from a drawing of a boomerang-like hunting stick with a rhyming name in Demotic, and "throwing-stick" probably got switched to "camel" when the Phoenicians adap…

Just looking it up online as I have no personal knowledge here, the Hebrew word for rope, חבל (hevel, pronounced as ḥ or χ) apparently has shared roots with Arabic, Syriac, Akkadian and Ugaritic that all have similar sounding words and the current guess it that there was a proto-semitic word like "ḥabl" and of course none of those sound like camel or gamal, so you can at least strike Hebrew and Arabic from the list o…

That would be the common word for rope. The claim isn't that it's the ordinary word for rope, but rather a more rare word for rope, maybe for a particular type of rope made of camel hair.

Others here have posted the Aramaic word in question.

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

#213

Post by [deleted] »

johnsonjo wrote: post #198

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 an…

[deleted]

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

#214

Post by cyost »

johnsonjo wrote: post #198

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 an…

Here's St. Basil's commentary:

> ... And it seems to me that the sickness of this young man, and of those who resemble him, is much like that of a traveller, who, longing to visit some city and having just about finished his way there, lodges at an inn outside the walls, where, upon some trifling impulse, he is averted, and so both makes his previous effort useless, and deprives himself of a view of the wonders of the city. And of such a nature are those who engage to do the other commandments, then turn around for the sake of gathering wealth. I’ve seen many who will fast, pray, groan, and display every kind of pious exertion, so long as it costs them nothing, but who will not so much as toss a red cent to those who are suffering. What good do they get from their remaining virtue? For the kingdom of heaven does not admit them; for, as it says, “It is easier for a camel to go through a needle’s eye, than for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of God” (Lk 18:25). But, while this statement is so plain, and its speaker so unerring, scarcely anyone is persuaded by it. “So how are we supposed to live without possessions?” they say. “What kind of life will that be, selling everything, being dispossessed of everything?” Don’t ask me for the rationale of the Master’s commandments. He who lays down the law knows how to bring even what is incapable into accordance with the law. But as for you, your heart is tested as on a balance, to see if it shall incline towards the true life or towards immediate gratification. For it is right for those who are prudent in their reasonings to regard the use of money as a matter of stewardship, not of selfish enjoyment; and those who lay it aside ought to rejoice as though separated from things alien, not be embittered as though deprived of what is nearest and dearest.

https://bekkos.wordpress.com/st-basils-sermon-to-the-rich/

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

#215

Post by robocat »

deepsquirrelnet wrote: post #204
robocat wrote: post #38

Even moderately rich people have a variety of loopholes. * 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 like this direction. But the passage talks about the ease of doing so. I propose something like a wood chipper attached to a conveyor belt that runs through a giant needle and deposits the remains on the other side. You could use an excavator to lift the camel into the chipper just to make sure there’s almost zero effort involved In building such a device, you will have saved all of humanity, rich or poor from the…

Just make it easy: there is an obvious market gap. It should be highly profitable: the market segment is rich old gullible Christians.

I can see 3 levels:

1: camel slurry as a service. An Australian company (you get paid to cull feral camels there - extra profit) - paid for at a dedicated website - with a personalized certificate mailed for completion. Easy.

2: personalized. You travel to the machine in a suitable country and do your own camel. Bring your own needle.

3: home service - for the ultra-wealthy. Harder to do due to animal product export/import laws. Pesky laws - rich people don't need to bother about those or can find the loopholes.

You mention the theoretical tragedy of the commons problem (do you need to do your own camel, or does one machine cover all mankind?). So perhaps your buyer is an evangelical church (or believers that the bible is literal truth?). Or set up a charity.

Personally, I think if you are going to sell something as intangible as salvation, it is only ethical to sell it as many times as possible to as many people as possible! After all a salvated person has no more use for their money.

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

#216

Post by aeneasmackenzie »

DontchaKnowit wrote: post #201
KMag wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The OT references aren't vague, but due to the idea of the new covenant, they likely apply as much as the OT prohibitions against touching pig leather or touching a menstruating woman. 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 m…

agreed - although My understanding is that the word Paul uses there is actually not even a real word, and appears nowhere else in literature at the time - so we really have no clue what he means. I always find it interesting that there is at least this one verse where there is some contention as to whether it is an explicit ban on male homosexual relationships - But there is absolutely no argument whatsoever : there…

In case you are not aware, apostolic churches do not and have never claimed to draw their teaching authority from the bible. It is true that sola scriptura groups are in a pickle here.

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

#217

Post by [deleted] »

lynguist wrote: post #29
hprotagonist wrote: post #8

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.

[deleted]

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

#218

Post by prewett »

moolcool wrote: post #199
gwd wrote: post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

One can be rich (have a lot of money) without loving money, or to the point of the gate explanation, relying on money instead of God.

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

#219

Post by Amezarak »

KMag wrote: post #183
marcus_holmes wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's how I read it. That he was just looking around exasperated trying to explain why rich people don't go to heaven, and saw a camel and made it up on the spot as an example of something that is obviously impossible. I still find it fascinating that this simple, utterly unambiguous line, gets totally ignored or misinterpreted so that rich people get to call themselves christian while persecuting gay folks on the b…

The OT references aren't vague, but due to the idea of the new covenant, they likely apply as much as the OT prohibitions against touching pig leather or touching a menstruating woman. 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 m…

> the Greek word he uses for the receiving partner is specifically the word for an underage male slave kept for sexual purposes,

I've seen this making the rounds on TikTok and it is absolutely untrue. What I find unsettling about this is the people who originally made this claim (not the ones unknowingly spreading it) had to have been deliberately dishonest. It's very easy to verify this for yourself - Greek and English side-by-sides are readily available with Greek dictionaries.

There are actually several Pauline references. The most famous is probably Romans 1:27.

> And likewise also the men, leaving the natural use of the woman, burned in their lust one toward another; men with men working that which is unseemly, and receiving in themselves that recompence of their error which was meet.

You can see the Greek words used, their translations, and look up their meanings and usage here:

https://biblehub.com/romans/1-27.htm

You can see it is literally the same word, "men with men." There is no connotation of boyhood or slavery. The same is true in the other verses usually claimed to "actually" mean underage boys, although two verses do have an unusual word.

One such verse is in 1 Corinthians 6:9:

https://biblehub.com/1_corinthians/6-9.htm

> Know ye not that the unrighteous shall not inherit the kingdom of God? Be not deceived: neither fornicators, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor effeminate, nor abusers of themselves with mankind,

In this case, the word is arsenokoitai, which is an unusual word, possibly of Paul's coinage. But again, we can refer to dictionaries for the meaning and etymology. You can already see the root is the same as before.

https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/%E1%BC%80%CF%81%CF%83%CE%B5%C...

Once again, there is no connotation of being underage or a slave.

To be clear, this is not an endorsement - but we should be honest about what the text says. They usually also make this claim about Leviticus, even though the word used is just "male" and means such throughout the rest of the OT.

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

#220

Post by rom16384 »

DontchaKnowit wrote: post #201
KMag wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The OT references aren't vague, but due to the idea of the new covenant, they likely apply as much as the OT prohibitions against touching pig leather or touching a menstruating woman. 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 m…

agreed - although My understanding is that the word Paul uses there is actually not even a real word, and appears nowhere else in literature at the time - so we really have no clue what he means. I always find it interesting that there is at least this one verse where there is some contention as to whether it is an explicit ban on male homosexual relationships - But there is absolutely no argument whatsoever : there…

Arguably there is a reference to female homosexual relationships in Romans 1:26, "For this reason God gave them up to vile passions. For even their women exchanged the natural use for what is against nature."
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