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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

#231

Post by hot_gril »

spacebacon wrote: post #179
Nition wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I assume most everyone here on their free and unpaid time is here for entertainment purposes. Why waste time reading an article if the title already provides enough entertainment for a creative dialog?

I'm not going to pretend that I read the article every time. But if I'm going to point out something I think the article is missing or accuse the title of being false, yeah I'll check the article first.

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

#232

Post by lo_zamoyski »

bee_rider wrote: post #226
jtbayly wrote: post #222

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, Jesus is saying something particular about the rich here, but not that they are particularly sinful. Rather, they are particularly susceptible to trusting in their money and placing it above God (making an idol of it) which gets in the way of their being willing to follow Jesus and put their faith in Him. This goes along with another famous teaching of Jesus about money: “No one can serve two masters; for either…

In the preceding sections, Jesus basically tells the guy, who’d otherwise lived by the commandments, to come back after giving up all his money and stuff. It seems to me that he’s looking for some more concrete action than an internal change of heart. If I were a Christian I’d make sure to die poor at least, just to be safe.

It is not the concrete action per se, but even if it were, the concrete action would involve a decision that entails a certain "change of heart". In that very act of relinquishing all one's wealth to follow Christ, you would have assented to and demonstrated your faithfulness to the proposition: to follow God is more important than to be wealthy, and if God were to call me to part ways with my wealth to follow God, then I should and would do it. The concrete act makes manifest the very good in question. It demonstrates and attains the temperance and rational order of the soul in question. Faith without deeds is dead.

We all like to think highly of ourselves, but if we were to find ourselves in that situation, how would we react? Most of us would behave exactly like the rich man. Few have the integrity to meet such austere moral standards. Few of us have the humility to admit that we're no better than the rich man.

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

#233

Post by k3vinw »

mminer237 wrote: post #205
grotorea wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Good point but since the whole controversy is about what's the correct point of view to be defended, it depends. My guess: the "fairy-tale exception or trick" could be simply divine mercy towards the rich he feels are deserving. The rich can get into heaven not through brute force but through God's will.

The point of Christ's teaching is that rich or poor, no one is deserving. It's only by admitting one's sinfulness and inadequacy and turning from it to instead accept God's mercy and gift of Christ that anyone can be saved.

Exactly. This is quite a radical departure from the fire and brimstone found in the Old Testament.

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

#234

Post by danans »

tsimionescu wrote: post #146
danans wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> American but also global evangelicals (specifically the pentecostal subset) subscribe to suggests that the rich are rich because God has blessed them. That's far older than modern American evangelicalism. I'd have to guess it goes back to the beginning of the institutional Church in Rome.

Not to the same extent. Many officially recognized saints were extremely poor, and virtually all of the ones who had been rich were only canonized after (at least purportedly) giving all of their wealth away later in life. Nuns and monks, the holiest and most pious worshippers, must take vows of poverty. Clearly, the Catholic (and Eastern Orthodox and other old institutionalized churches) preach that poverty is at le…

> Of course, the church higher ups have always been rich and powerful, but that is not the official doctrine. The explicit belief that you can't be poor and beloved by God is a pretty modern, and pretty extreme, twisting of the meaning of the Bible.

There's doctrine, and then there is practice. The doctrine of the sanctity of poverty is about the idea of justice (if not in this world, then the next) and a counterpoint to the "divine right" of monarchs and aristocrats. However, in practice it is about maintaining the temporal support of the poor (who are the majority throughout history) as a counterbalance to the nobility/aristocracy. This is true across many religions.

I'd argue that depending on the times, this doctrine/practice waxes or wanes, and I suspect that it correlates with both the spread of genuine aspiration to prosperity among the masses coupled with magical thinking about how to achieve prosperity. And when it fails to deliver on prosperity (as it must), you get angry populist reactions.

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

#235

Post by m3047 »

I contend that a camel tethered by a ring on a runner which passes through the eye of a needle, by means of a sheet bend specifically, can "pass through" the eye of the needle just as a float strung on the bridle passes through the eyes of the fishing net.

As to whether or not the thread which would fit through said eye of the needle would be enough to restrain said camel, this is in the hands of God.

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

#236

Post by Zancarius »

vintermann wrote: post #158
Zancarius wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> His words reflect an ancient Jewish figure of speech for the impossible The article claims that the Gospels are the oldest known use of the figure of speech.

Maybe, at least in "modern" writing.

The problem I have with that claim is that the phrasing "eye of a needle" appears in Talmudic writings that predate the NT, so the idea itself likely predates that, and other creatures (elephants) have been used instead of camels.

Granted, this is just hair-splitting, but I would strongly suspect its use dates much earlier.

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

#237

Post by Zancarius »

bee_rider wrote: post #151
Zancarius wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Clearly we should just combine both of these revisions—tossing some rope through a gate would be easy!

I like the way you think!

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

#238

Post by rzl1235 »

Amezarak wrote: post #219
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…

> 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 Engl…

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

#239

Post by rzl1235 »

alternative_a wrote: post #182
OscarCunningham wrote: post #11

I've never really understood the sentences following this quote. > '[…] It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for someone who is rich to enter the kingdom of God.' They were greatly astounded and said to one another, 'Then who can be saved?' Jesus looked at them and said, 'For mortals it is impossible, but not for God; for God all things are possible.' Why do the apostles seem to think that…

The entire “mystery” is due to you, the apostles, and everyone else not understanding what Jesus (AS) was talking about. I remind you in the Gospels (feeding the multitude) Jesus chides the apostles for taking things literally. An entire thread is filled with discussion of “rope” and “camels” and the matter is missed. “Kingdom of heaven” and “perfect” are the terms you should be focusing on. Kingdom of heaven is the…

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

#240

Post by marcinreal »

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…

In the NRSV and ESV it says "a root of all kinds of evils".[0] That seems more accurate to me, because there are different roots of evil, including pride and lust. But if I understand what you're saying, it is true that money itself is not evil. In the early church, it was the glory of the rich to share their possessions with the poor. Rather, to my current understanding, it is evil to obsessively desire something beyond what God has given you, and that's not limited to just money. I wouldn't say that I'm a greedy person in terms of money (open to being wrong about that), but I've always felt unsatisfied wherever I was in life, and that led to all kinds of bad fruit. Anyway, thanks for the comment. :pray:

[0]: https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=1+tim+6%3A10&ve...

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