[HN Gopher] The camel, the rope, and the needle's eye
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The camel, the rope, and the needle's eye
Author : diodorus
Score : 71 points
Date : 2023-11-28 20:10 UTC (2 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (kiwihellenist.blogspot.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (kiwihellenist.blogspot.com)
| 082349872349872 wrote:
| Pace Aristippus (and the lentils), telling rich people what they
| want to hear is not a bad way to arrange for a stream of invites
| to fancy dinners.
| hprotagonist wrote:
| Telling them what they need to hear tends to get you nailed to
| stuff, though.
| labster wrote:
| That's why Martin Luther was smart and got the nailing part
| out of the way at the beginning.
| jowea wrote:
| Martin Luther had a lot of support and allied with the
| politically powerful. The later Radical Reformation was
| something else.
| SilasX wrote:
| I'm still scratching my head at that attribution of motive
| though.
|
| "No, rich guys, what He meant to say is that it's at least as
| hard as threading a _rope_ through the eye of a needle. So rich
| guys like you just have to do that simple thing to get into
| heaven, easy peasy!"
|
| 'Um, that ... also seems really hard?'
|
| "Yeah but not nearly as hard as a camel. Like whoaaa those
| things are bulky and not even the some _domain_ as tailoring!"
|
| 'Okay but it doesn't seem all that meaningful to compare one
| impossibility to another. Like, is dividing 1 by 0 harder than
| dividing 0 by 0?'
|
| "Look, I'm _trying_ to shill for y'all, can I please just get
| the invites?"
| bell-cot wrote:
| Meh. You don't get (or stay) rich by being all that concerned
| about your fate in the hereafter.
|
| I'd say that the seriously rich (and serious wanna-bes) are far
| more interested in Matthew 4:8-9. And in doing whatever it takes,
| to hopefully receive such an offer themselves.
| hprotagonist wrote:
| Mammon is an easy idolatry.
| Zancarius wrote:
| I like this. I literally just caught that word in a
| commentary I was reading on Sunday. Sadly, English
| translations sometimes don't convey the force or cultural
| context of the passage.
| interroboink wrote:
| > You don't get (or stay) rich by being all that concerned
| about your fate in the hereafter.
|
| The Egyptian pharaohs might disagree. They seemed very
| interested in taking it with them, so to speak.
| dylan604 wrote:
| Including those that weren't quite as dead as they were
| moolcool wrote:
| I always find the "eye of the needle gate" deflection funny,
| because why would anyone use metaphor that to make such a general
| point?
| hprotagonist wrote:
| _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 down is hot enough to
| boil all modern society to rags.
|
| The mere minimum of the Church would be a deadly ultimatum to the
| world. For the whole modern world is absolutely based on the
| assumption, not that the rich are necessary (which is tenable),
| but that the rich are trustworthy, which (for a Christian) is not
| tenable. You will hear everlastingly, in all discussions about
| newspapers, companies, aristocracies, or party politics, this
| argument that the rich man cannot be bribed. The fact is, of
| course, that the rich man is bribed; he has been bribed already.
| That is why he is a rich man. The whole case for Christianity is
| that a man who is dependent upon the luxuries of this life is a
| corrupt man, spiritually corrupt, politically corrupt,
| financially corrupt. There is one thing that Christ and all the
| Christian saints have said with a sort of savage monotony. They
| have said simply that to be rich is to be in peculiar danger of
| moral wreck._
|
| Chesterton, 1908 ("Orthodoxy")
| lynguist wrote:
| 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.
| brink wrote:
| He's written some fantastic books. Worth a read, imo. He's my
| favorite author.
| OscarCunningham wrote:
| 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 Jesus's words would make
| it difficult for anyone to be saved? Surely from what he's said
| it's obvious that poor people can be saved. And when Jesus says
| 'for God all things are possible', isn't he implying that some
| rich people might get into heaven? So why do people interpret the
| passage as Jesus saying this is impossible?
| tines wrote:
| Because it was thought that being rich meant you were close to
| God. If the people they thought were closest to God could
| scarcely be saved, then how could anyone else be? So the
| thinking goes. It's an argument a fortiori.
|
| Of course Jesus' point was that the poor and sinners are much
| closer to the kingdom of God than the rich, hence their
| astonishment.
| argsv wrote:
| Well apparently the same analogy is used in the Quran as well.
| https://corpus.quran.com/translation.jsp?chapter=7&verse=40
| timbit42 wrote:
| Yes, some aspects of Islam are based on the views of the
| Ebionites, an early Christian sect who used a Hebrew version of
| Matthew (instead of Greek) and whose beliefs about Jesus (not
| God, didn't actually die, etc.) ended up in Islam.
| lynguist wrote:
| We say now "some sect", but today's mainstream Trinitarians
| were also considered "just some sect" in Early Christianity.
|
| It has turned out to become the mainstream view, but really
| trinitarianism and antitrinitarianism are both valid views of
| Christianity and Islam stems from the "back to the basics"
| antitrinitarian view.
|
| While we're at it, Judaism was also developed contemporarily
| with Christianity and not before (as is the mainstream view),
| because Judaism includes the teachings of the Rabbis.
|
| The root is Middle Eastern monotheism.
| djur wrote:
| "Sect" isn't a pejorative term, at least not in this
| context.
| Zancarius wrote:
| Trinitarianism isn't _necessarily_ a strictly Christian
| construct--or rather the idea of a godhead comprising
| multiple parts. "Two Powers" theology (a transcendent,
| unseeable Yahweh; and Yahweh-as-man) was accepted by Jewish
| thinkers until about the First Century AD, largely due to
| Christian influences. It's visible in passages like Genesis
| 19:24 (two Yahwehs) and most "angel of the Lord" language
| (e.g. Judges 6:11ff).
|
| Alan Segal's _Two Powers in Heaven_ delves into this in
| great detail.
| sctb wrote:
| 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."
| swayvil wrote:
| I would put it equivalent to Sinclair's famous, "It is
| difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary
| depends on his not understanding it."
|
| In this case the understanding = the religious stuff.
|
| So it's basically the same.
| vcg3rd wrote:
| Well, in context, Jesus has just said you must come as a child.
| And He finishes with those who would be first shall be last.
|
| Children aren't focused on money and they were always last. It's
| hard to be childlike (totally dependent) when you think you're
| autonomous and wealth tends to solidify the illusion of autonomy.
|
| I don't think the literal meaning of the Greek word matters that
| much to grasp the meaning of the account.
|
| The analysis at least assumes Jesus said it and it was recorded
| in 3 Gospels. If one starts with that, Jesus (Whomever one
| believes He was [1]) meant something, used some word, and the
| listeners understood what He meant enough to ask a follow-up
| question.
|
| In his advice to Timothy, Paul warns how a focus on words in an
| effort to "gain" is harmful:
|
| "[He] is puffed up with conceit and understands nothing. He has
| an unhealthy craving for controversy and for quarrels about
| words, which produce envy, dissension, slander, evil suspicions,
| and constant friction among people who are depraved in mind and
| deprived of the truth, imagining that godliness is a means of
| gain. But godliness with contentment is great gain, for we
| brought nothing into the world, and we cannot take anything out
| of the world." 1 Tim 6:4-6
|
| I think it ties in nicely with what Jesus said about how
| wealth/gain is often a hindrance to childlike humility,
| innocence, and trust.
|
| [1] I agree with Peter when Jesus asked him "Who do you say that
| I am?"
| rrauenza wrote:
| "All things (e.g. a camel's journey through A needle's eye) are
| possible, it's true. But picture how the camel feels, squeezed
| out In one long bloody thread, from tail to snout."
|
| -- C.S. Lewis, Poems
| CrzyLngPwd wrote:
| In 400 years, people could be interpreting the Harry Potter
| series similarly.
| labster wrote:
| They already are. And not just deep in the Harry Potter fandom,
| but in bitter, highly public schisms over the meaning.
| runeofdoom wrote:
| Balrog wings.
| jmcphers wrote:
| It's happening already. See the popular podcast "Harry Potter
| and the Sacred Text" in which they read Harry Potter as some
| people read the Bible.
|
| https://www.harrypottersacredtext.com/
| timbit42 wrote:
| In Aramaic, the language Jesus spoke, the word for camel is gamlo
| (g'ml') while the word for rope is gamla (g'ml`). 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.
| re wrote:
| > In Aramaic, the language Jesus spoke, the word for camel is
| gamlo (g'ml') while the word for rope is gamla (g'ml`).
|
| The blog author briefly references this Aramaic theory in his
| post and says that it has been similarly debunked, linking to
| this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sf0Fm8aVApk
|
| The supposed Aramaic word for rope doesn't appear in any
| sources until the 10th century CE and is derived at that time
| from the same Cyril origin.
| m463 wrote:
| visually pretty similar. Thank goodness we live in the future
| with typesetting and even monospaced fonts so rn and m don't
| look similar.
| ranprieur wrote:
| I don't buy the idea that changing camel to rope is about
| pleasing rich people, because a rope can still nowhere near get
| through the eye of a needle.
|
| But a rope is qualitatively the same kind of thing as a thread;
| so if camel is the right word, the message is that what gets into
| the kingdom of God is a whole different kind of thing than money.
| Zancarius wrote:
| 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 much as
| changing the idiom from a literal needle to a gate.
|
| Here's what the IVP commentary says:
|
| 19:23-26. Here Jesus clearly uses *hyperbole. His words reflect
| an ancient Jewish figure of speech for the impossible: a very
| large animal passing through a needle's eye. On regular
| journeys at twenty-eight miles per day, a fully loaded camel
| could carry four hundred pounds in addition to its rider; such
| a camel would require a gate at least ten feet high and twelve
| feet wide. (A needle's eye in Jesus' day meant what it means
| today; the idea that it was simply a name for a small gate in
| Jerusalem is based on a gate from the medieval period and sheds
| no light on Jesus' teaching in the first century.)
|
| Craig S. Keener, The IVP Bible Background Commentary: New
| Testament, Second Edition. (Downers Grove, IL: IVP Academic: An
| Imprint of InterVarsity Press, 2014), 94.
| heavyset_go wrote:
| > _I don 't buy the idea that changing camel to rope is about
| pleasing rich people, because a rope can still nowhere near get
| through the eye of a needle._
|
| I agree, considering the prosperity gospel types have found a
| way to reinterpret the analogy literally, claiming that Jesus
| was actually talking about a gateway to Jerusalem called the
| Eye of the Needle[1] that required those with goods to hand
| them through the Eye to get where they're going.
|
| The analogy, in that interpretation, means that wealth was able
| to pass through the Eye, and thus so could the wealthy enter
| heaven.
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eye_of_a_needle#Gate
| robocat wrote:
| 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.
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