[HN Gopher] The camel, the rope, and the needle's eye
___________________________________________________________________
The camel, the rope, and the needle's eye
Author : diodorus
Score : 238 points
Date : 2023-11-28 20:10 UTC (1 days 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.
| labster wrote:
| I don't think that support was guaranteed at the
| beginning, though. Certainly Jan Hus suffered a worse
| fate, being too early, but Luther could have imagined
| meeting the same end (before meeting God obvs). The
| political situation mattered a lot, as did the printing
| press.
| 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?"
| readthenotes1 wrote:
| If you are rich, you can afford a bigger needle
| 082349872349872 wrote:
| Or smaller camels? https://su-ami.com/products/miniature-
| camels-8934
|
| _When she gets there she knows, if the stores are all
| closed / With a word she can get what she came for..._
| 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.
| hprotagonist wrote:
| You might like William Stringfellow's "Impostors of
| God:Inquiries into Favorite Idols". It's part of a long
| intellectual tradition that is absolutely wrenching.
| Zancarius wrote:
| Presently reading through a review--looks like a great
| recommendation! The charges he levies against modernity
| are pretty damning but not at all untrue.
|
| We're not all that dissimilar from the Israelites who
| were repeatedly condemned to the status of remnant, to be
| ruled by unjust kings, conquered and displaced by other
| nations, yet forever snubbing the will of the Most High.
| We've just swapped more obvious idols (on occasion) for
| ones less so (except money).
|
| Thanks!
| hprotagonist wrote:
| oh -- well if we're going _there_ then for sure add
| Brueggemann to your list. His "The Prophetic Imagination"
| is incendiary, even 40-odd years on.
| Zancarius wrote:
| This is dangerous. Logos has quite a few of his works in
| their library.
|
| I'm _never_ going to get through my ever-growing backlog.
| And I _still_ have yet to start on John Walton 's Lost
| World series. Thanks! Haha!
| hprotagonist wrote:
| Rabbi Tarfon said, "Where there is no bread, there is no
| Torah; where there is no Torah, there is no bread."
|
| it's an interesting book that tells you to put the book
| down and go out and check in on your neighbor. So don't
| let your backlog get in the way of that virtuous cycle.
| Zancarius wrote:
| Wise words. It's always a temptation.
|
| I've been tossing around the idea of doing a topical
| Bible study night/meal once a month with some neighbors
| who are interested (or at least tangentially so) along
| with some folks from Sunday school. A friend of mine who
| has been struggling with sin and faith suggested it. I
| feel a sense that your comment is being used to prod me a
| bit further.
|
| One of the fears I've had (just tossing this out there
| for advice I probably already know but need to hear/read
| from someone else) is stepping on toes. I KNOW that if I
| just teach from the word it isn't a problem--or rather it
| isn't a problem unrelated to conviction, but going back
| to your earlier recommendation we all have difficulty
| with the idol of self-perception. I probably need to re-
| read 1 and 2 Timothy, because I've sometimes had issues
| with timidity in the face of those who are older and
| dealing with scripture.
|
| An example: Explaining the nature of the word "elohim" as
| an _ontological_ term (I 'm a Southern Baptist) to a
| church elder who was convinced it's _strictly_ another
| name for God was a good exercise but somewhat difficult,
| even with a Hebrew-English interlinear in hand to show
| him precisely how it is used _in situ_ throughout the
| text. I managed, but my comparative youth against an
| elder and his obstinate refusal to see the word for what
| it was set me back somewhat in deciding whether to go
| forward with, shall we say, giving bread to the
| spiritually hungry.
|
| I guess the only way to feed anyone is to start by making
| a meal. Thank you for the encouragement!
| hprotagonist wrote:
| > I guess the only way to feed anyone is to start by
| making a meal.
|
| if there's one thing that echoes down through the line of
| prophets, it's this seeking out of a hospitable way of
| neighborliness in a world which is stubbornly
| uninterested in it.
|
| "So I called my Jesuit friend, Tom, who is a hopeless
| alcoholic of the worst sort, sober now for 22 years,
| someone who sometimes gets fat and wants to hang himself,
| so I trust him. I said, "Tell me a story about Advent.
| Tell me about people getting well."
|
| https://www.salon.com/1998/12/10/10lamo/
| Zancarius wrote:
| Well said, and there's certainly a dearth of hospitality
| today. Surely that's true of all times, I realize, but
| through the ebb and flow of thoughtfulness and kindness
| it seems the West is at something of a local minimum
| (depending on where you live, of course).
|
| The human condition is broadly uniform post-Fall, subject
| to the natural and elementary forces satisfied only by
| destruction.
|
| Thank you for being a blessing and inspiration to do
| better!
| 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?
| kragen wrote:
| the gospels are uncontroversially full of metaphors and similes
| being used to make general points, generally attributed to
| jesus as in this case
| readthenotes1 wrote:
| Is "full" metaphorical there? Would "composed of" be more
| literal?
| xp84 wrote:
| Same. "It's easier to close all your browser tabs in just 10
| seconds, than it is for a rich person to get into heaven."
|
| "It's easier to grill a steak just right without checking it,
| than..."
|
| People are really desperate to believe this particular figure
| would like them...
| booleandilemma wrote:
| You're asking why Jesus, the guy who speaks in parables, would
| use a metaphor to make a point?
| Jedd wrote:
| More accurately, the question is why the unknown author of
| the book of Mark, who never claimed to have first or even
| second hand accounts of Jesus, used that metaphor in his
| story.
|
| The subsequent two usages by the anonymous authors of books
| Luke or Matthew clearly lifted that story from the earlier
| work - I don't think that's in dispute here.
| anonymous_sorry wrote:
| 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 to get
| into heaven? Say it ain't so, son of Joe!"
| gwd wrote:
| 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 knees.
|
| So at a certain level it does make sense; there is a sense
| in which that's exactly what Jesus asked the Rich Young
| Ruler to do.
| moolcool wrote:
| But then he would no longer be rich, so this doesn't
| really change the metaphor.
| prewett wrote:
| 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.
| anonymous_sorry wrote:
| If you had a lot of money but loved the god described in
| the New Testament more, then wouldn't you give it all
| away to the poor and needy as Jesus says?
| frank_nitti wrote:
| Methinks they don't want the rich man to have to give
| away his wealth, just to "love God more than the money".
|
| So many in these comments (presumably wealthy or aspiring
| wealthy) seem desperate to assure themselves that wealth-
| hoarding is not inherently evil by His standards
| 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.
| deebosong wrote:
| While I was wrestling with personal greed with the crypto
| mania as a laymen (and I try not to write the whole thing
| off as bad), his writings were very helpful to get me to
| see what was drawing me in and what also wasn't sitting
| well with me about the mass hysteria around it.
| graemep wrote:
| His fiction as well. The Father Brown stories are better
| known now because there was a recent TV series but they
| really did no convey a lot of what was in the books (I only
| saw an episode or two).
|
| Oddly enough, the fiction is more a product of its time and
| feels more dated to me than the journalism and serious
| writing of his I have read.
| hprotagonist wrote:
| "The Man Who Was Thursday" still works, i found -- which
| is kind of a surprise!
| 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.
| 542458 wrote:
| Yes, this is a major point in the gospels and one of the
| things that was subversive at the time that's a bit lost on
| modern audiences. At the time, the prevailing belief was that
| good things happens to good people, and bad things happen to
| bad people. This is illustrated in John 9, where the
| disciples ask Jesus about a blind man:
|
| _His disciples asked him, "Rabbi, who sinned, this man or
| his parents, that he was born blind?"_
|
| This is why Jesus going around healing the blind and lepers
| was significant and a bit shocking: those were supposed to be
| the _bad_ people, and if their state was punishment for their
| evil why would you go and help them? But the gospel message
| is that we all do bad things, and judged on our own merits we
| all fall short of goodness. But there is grace, and by grace
| the bad things we do can be put away.
| UncleOxidant wrote:
| > Yes, this is a major point in the gospels and one of the
| things that was subversive at the time that's a bit lost on
| modern audiences. At the time, the prevailing belief was
| that good things happens to good people, and bad things
| happen to bad people.
|
| And yet, here we are again. The prosperity gospel which a
| large chunk of not only American but also global
| evangelicals (specifically the pentecostal subset)
| subscribe to suggests that the rich are rich because God
| has blessed them. This is one explanation for why the
| previous president had so much support among evangelicals:
| He's rich and so it must mean God likes him. This is also
| (as the article suggests) why there has been a long and
| concerted effort to suggest that Jesus wasn't suggesting
| something entirely impossible (like the debunked city gate
| explanation)
| danans wrote:
| > 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.
| tsimionescu wrote:
| 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
| least accepted, if not necessarily required. 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.
| danans wrote:
| > 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.
| jknoepfler wrote:
| That isn't the natural reading of the passage. The listeners
| express surprise when Jesus says "rich folks won't enter the
| kingdom of God". They then ask "well if not the rich, then
| who?" indicating that they think rich folks were the most
| likely to get in. If not them, then who?
|
| Jesus then says "no mortal person," explaining that only God
| makes it possible to enter the kingdom of heaven.
|
| He doesn't say poor people. He says "nobody".
|
| The point is that there is no material means to enter heaven.
| Rich and poor are identical in this regard.
| marcus_holmes wrote:
| Then why does he single out the rich folks? It would make
| more sense in your interpretation to not include the "rich"
| and imply that any man entering heaven was impossible.
| teach wrote:
| Because Jesus loved using parables, a specific type of
| joke with a setup and a reveal that contradicts the
| audience's expectations.
| tines wrote:
| > they then ask "well if not the rich, then who?"
| indicating that they think rich folks were the most likely
| to get in. If not them, then who?
|
| > Jesus then says "no mortal person,"
|
| Except this isn't what Jesus says. He says "With man 'it'
| is impossible." Jesus' response doesn't even make
| grammatical sense as a reply to "who can be saved?" because
| it isn't a reply to that. The question "Who can be saved?"
| was posed among the listeners to themselves, not to Christ:
|
| > And they were astonished out of measure, saying among
| themselves, Who then can be saved?
|
| Jesus' statement "with man it is impossible" is a
| continuation of the thought that it is difficult for a rich
| man to enter the kingdom of Heaven (so hard that it
| requires a miracle above what's required for a normal
| person). It's impossible with men that a camel should pass
| through the eye of a needle, but with God, it's possible
| (and thus possible for a rich man to be saved, though not
| easy).
|
| It's not that there's anything good about poor people that
| gets them in; it's that rich people don't want in.
|
| Any interpretation that makes it as easy for rich people to
| enter as it is for poor people is missing the clear meaning
| of the words.
| NobodyNada wrote:
| Let's look at the context before the quote too: Mark 10:17-27
| (NLT)
|
| > As Jesus was starting out on his way to Jerusalem, a man came
| running up to him, knelt down, and asked, "Good Teacher, what
| must I do to inherit eternal life?"
|
| > "Why do you call me good?" Jesus asked. "Only God is truly
| good. But to answer your question, you know the commandments:
| 'You must not murder. You must not commit adultery. You must
| not steal. You must not testify falsely. You must not cheat
| anyone. Honor your father and mother.'"
|
| > "Teacher," the man replied, "I've obeyed all these
| commandments since I was young."
|
| > Looking at the man, Jesus felt genuine love for him. "There
| is still one thing you haven't done," he told him. "Go and sell
| all your possessions and give the money to the poor, and you
| will have treasure in heaven. Then come, follow me."
|
| > At this the man's face fell, and he went away sad, for he had
| many possessions.
|
| > Jesus looked around and said to his disciples, "How hard it
| is for the rich to enter the Kingdom of God!" This amazed them.
| But Jesus said again, "Dear children, it is very hard to enter
| the Kingdom of God. In fact, it is easier for a camel to go
| through the eye of a needle than for a rich person to enter the
| Kingdom of God!"
|
| > The disciples were astounded. "Then who in the world can be
| saved?" they asked.
|
| > Jesus looked at them intently and said, "Humanly speaking, it
| is impossible. But not with God. Everything is possible with
| God."
|
| Jesus's analogy about a camel going through the eye of a needle
| is commentary on the situation that he and his disciples just
| witnessed. The rich man thinks that he can earn his way into
| heaven through good deeds: he's asking "what must I do to
| inherit eternal life", and probably hoping for a pat on the
| back from Jesus for all the good things he's done. But instead
| Jesus identifies a much deeper issue in his life: his earthly
| wealth is more important to him than anything else, even his
| eternal destiny! The point of the camel analogy is that riches
| are a distraction that make it impossible to "love the Lord
| your God with all your heart, all your soul, all your mind, and
| all your strength."
|
| > 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?
|
| The central point of the Bible is that there are no "good
| people". _Everyone_ is morally corrupt in one way or another,
| and cannot be saved through their own effort, only through
| Jesus 's sacrifice on the cross. "God saved you by his grace
| when you believed. And you can't take credit for this; it is a
| gift from God. Salvation is not a reward for the good things we
| have done, so none of us can boast about it." (Ephesians 2:8-9,
| cf. Romans 3, Psalm 14, John 14). A lot (most?) of Jesus's
| teachings, including the passage in the OP, are addressed to
| people who think they are "good enough" and showing them to be
| self-righteous, hypocritical, and in need of salvation just as
| badly as everybody else.
| amanaplanacanal wrote:
| I would say that you are correct about the New Testament. I'm
| not sure there is a central point in all the books of the Old
| Testament.
| tsimionescu wrote:
| Almost by definition, when you talk about the meaning of
| "the Bible", you mean the New Testament, and that it either
| explicitly supersedes or at least recontextualizes any
| teachings in the Old Testament. If you want to talk about
| the meaning of the Old Testament taken individually, you
| either talk about it directly, or talk about the Torah
| instead of the Bible.
| felipeerias wrote:
| The passage basically says that rich people can not save
| themselves. This contrasted with other religions at the time
| where the wealthy and powerful could organize large games and
| sacrifices to please the gods while living a life of
| debauchery.
|
| The "eye of a needle" has been making rich people anxious since
| the beginning of Christianity. Early Christians eventually
| addressed these anxieties by stating that rich people could
| only be saved if they became pious and devoted their wealth to
| help others.
|
| Peter Brown's "Through the Eye of a Needle" is an amazing book
| about all of this.
| alternative_a wrote:
| 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 highest state of consciousness. Jesus
| (AS) certainly did _not_ say "rich people will go to hell". Try
| this: "Only with the help of God can a 'rich' man enter into
| the state of perfection known as "Kingdom of heaven"".
|
| The most ludicrous reading is the official one: A goody goody
| who is even being more of a goody goody ('I got to go and put
| things in order') is rebuked. Is he is going to "hell"?
| Nonsense.
|
| To be rich means to have possession. To have possessions means
| you have attachments. Attachment is contra _detachment of the
| ascetics_.
|
| "Who can be saved?" "Only with the help of God" will a goody
| goody pass through the TEST of "attachments". Attachments that
| are the source "trials and temptations" and can lead us to the
| clutches of "evil". See Lord's prayers for your morning
| instructions, dear ascetic follower of Jesus. (To follow means
| "do as i do"...)
|
| In sum: You will not go to hell if you have possessions. But
| you will not reach the state of "post-resurrection" 3 guys
| shining with light as amazed disciples look on.
|
| Kingdom of heaven is a state of being here and now. What keeps
| us from experiencing it is 'attachment'. Not even the most
| innocent of attachments are excused.
|
| "Then who can be saved?"
|
| .
| 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 seem to be 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.
| kragen wrote:
| in english the pejorative term is 'cult', which often
| trips up second-language speakers from languages where
| it's the other way around
| autoexec wrote:
| To help avoid future misunderstandings, which modern
| languages use "cult" without the usual negative
| implications?
| kragen wrote:
| the ones i'm thinking of are spanish, french, and
| portuguese, but i suspect it holds for most languages
| with a cognate of 'cult' and/or 'sect'
|
| they used to be the other way around in english too
|
| https://www.etymonline.com/word/sect
|
| https://www.etymonline.com/word/cult
| cyberax wrote:
| Russian and Ukrainian are a couple of examples. "Sect" is
| pejorative, the polite version is derived from the Latin
| word "confession".
| tsimionescu wrote:
| I believe English is actually one of the only ones where
| cult has a negative connotation, and where sect does not.
| French, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, German, Dutch,
| Polish, Romanian, Swedish, Russian - all of these use
| "cult" to mean any religious group, even in official
| language ("the Catholic cult"), and all use "sect" to
| mean "a fringe, possibly dangerous, religious or quasi-
| religious group" ("the members of that sect that poisoned
| themselves").
| kragen wrote:
| holy shit you speak a lot of languages
|
| respect
| tsimionescu wrote:
| Oh, not even close. I speak Romanian, English, and
| French. For all of the others I looked up Google
| translations of the phrase "I think he joined a cult" -
| in all of them, the translation replaced "cult" with some
| equivalent of "sect".
|
| Also, I noticed that for more obscure languages
| (including Romanian), it didn't, so that confirmed to me
| it's not some fully hardocded conversion - for languages
| where it has enough examples it understands the "proper"
| translation, for those where it doesn't it does the
| simpler thing.
| OrderlyTiamat wrote:
| The other comment mentions dutch- As a dutchie I'm not
| entirely sure they're correct that "kult" is less
| negatively charged than "sekte". They both take on
| negative connotations depending on context- "sekte" is
| definitely religious, while "kult" isn't necessarily,
| based on the van Dale dictionary. I'd say "cult" isn't
| always negative in english either, the term "cult
| classic" comes to mind.
|
| For that matter, would you use "sect" in english and be
| confident it would not be seen as pejorative term? I feel
| it's all context dependent.
|
| I also don't think looking through google translate with
| a single phrase is the right method to figure this out-
| for one thing I've heard the european languages are
| usually heavily based on legislature (eu legislature is
| published in all eu languages, so an excellent source of
| translations). In my experience google translate can be
| stilted and formal, so which implications and
| connotations a phrase or term has in different languages
| can definitely be literally "lost in translation".
| 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.
| andsoitis wrote:
| From https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/trinity/trinity-
| history.h...:
|
| _Divine threesomes abound in the religious writings and
| art of ancient Europe, Egypt, the near east, and Asia.
| These include various threesomes of male deities, of
| female deities, of Father-Mother-Son groups, or of one
| body with three heads, or three faces on one head
| (Griffiths 1996). However, similarity alone doesn't prove
| Christian copying or even indirect influence, and many of
| these examples are, because of their time and place,
| unlikely to have influenced the development of the
| Christian doctrine of the Trinity.
|
| A direct influence on second century Christian theology
| is the Jewish philosopher and theologian Philo of
| Alexandria (a.k.a. Philo Judaeus) (ca. 20 BCE-ca. 50 CE),
| the product of Alexandrian Middle Platonism (with
| elements of Stoicism and Pythagoreanism). Inspired by the
| Timaeus of Plato, Philo read the Jewish Bible as teaching
| that God created the cosmos by his Word (logos), the
| first-born son of God. Alternately, or via further
| emanation from this Word, God creates by means of his
| creative power and his royal power, conceived of both as
| his powers, and yet as agents distinct from him, giving
| him, as it were, metaphysical distance from the material
| world (Philo Works; Dillon 1996, 139-83; Morgan 1853,
| 63-148; Norton 1859, 332-74; Wolfson 1973, 60-97).
|
| Another influence may have been the Neopythagorean Middle
| Platonist Numenius (fl. 150), who posited a triad of
| gods, calling them, alternately, "Father, creator and
| creature; fore-father, offspring and descendant; and
| Father, maker and made" (Guthrie 1917, 125), or on one
| ancient report, Grandfather, Father, and Son (Dillon
| 1996, 367). Moderatus taught a similar triad somewhat
| earlier (Stead 1985, 583)._
| Zancarius wrote:
| I think I tend to agree with the conclusion--namely that
| it was predominantly a Jewish influence on Christology.
| Part of my opinion is shaped by changes in and around the
| First Century in Judaism which, ultimately, culminated in
| the Masoretic Text evicting certain parts of the text
| that could _remotely_ suggest anything akin to
| polytheism. Deuteronomy 32 is particularly one of the
| most affected chapters, but curiously "two powers"
| theology was largely left intact.
|
| This is a particularly interesting period in
| Christianity, because you had numerous influences
| (including what would later become gnosticism around the
| same time), the term "trinity" wouldn't appear in extant
| works until sometime in the Second Century, then the
| Council of Nicaea in or around the latter half of the
| Fourth Century establishing it as doctrine.
|
| So, I think the evidence of a decidedly Jewish influence
| is quite strong and would date at least to the Babylonian
| captivity.
|
| I believe Dr. Robert Alter leans toward an evolution from
| polytheism -> monotheism in Jewish thinking (I highly
| recommend his _The Hebrew Bible: A Translation with
| Commentary_ ); but I think the evidence for a sort of
| henotheism is a bit stronger and more sensible, which
| would better fit the sources you shared here, alongside
| the biblical texts.
| monlockandkey wrote:
| Islam isn't based on Christianity or Judasim. Rather is the
| the revival/continuation of the one message which is
| monotheism, given to every prophet and messenger throughout
| history. It would not be unfound for overlap in teachings
| between the prophets as they are ultimately upon one
| religion.
| Galacta7 wrote:
| While I perhaps agree in principle, I think it's also fair
| to say that while Islam isn't strictly based on
| Christianity or Judaism, it was strongly influenced by
| both, to the extent that the Qu'ran borrows quite a bit
| from the New Testament, which in turn borrows heavily from
| the Hebrew Bible. The overlap is not accidental, but rather
| intentional in order to provide a sense of credibility in
| their teachings.
|
| In that sense, both Christianity and Islam view themselves
| as supersessionist to the respective religion that predated
| them, with Judaism being more or less the root of the
| Abrahamic tree (though you could argue that Zoroastrianism
| may have been the precursor for monotheism as a concept,
| predating them all).
| monlockandkey wrote:
| The Qur'an didn't borrow anything, nor was it influenced
| by the previous religions. The Qur'an is a revelation
| from God, as was the original Torah to Moses and the
| Injeel to Jesus. The same accounts of history and
| messages would be told to the prophets from God.
|
| The claim where Muhammad copied from the previous books
| is simply not possible. An unlettered man narrating and
| correcting the histories/traditions of the Jews and
| Christians where they were few and far between in Arabia.
| It was pagan through and throught. Recounting their
| history would require a library to be available and be a
| polyglot in Hebrew/Aramaic/Greek (there were no Arabic
| Bible translation until the 10th Century).
|
| If the motivation is to gain followers from the prior
| Abrahamic religions, the easiest thing to do would be to
| appease their view points and reaffirm what they
| believed, not to correct them. Not to mention the sheer
| volume of recounting the children of Israel and history
| of Jesus in the Qur'an, which does not make sense if you
| are copying as you would want a few lines here and there
| to avoid saying something wrong.
|
| (The tone of this comment sounds firm in writing, in
| reality it is cordial)
| Galacta7 wrote:
| I appreciate your thoughtful reply, and accept it in
| cordiality! :) And I hope you will accept my replies in
| the same kindly spirit.
|
| I think perhaps I inadvertently implied that the Qur'an
| was copied from earlier sacred texts, when I only meant
| that it was likely influenced by them ... in the same way
| that the New Testament was strongly influenced by the
| Hebrew Bible (in some cases referencing portions directly
| - especially regarding prophetic literature, but in other
| ways making very different claims). Where I agree with
| you is that it's simplistic to say that Islam was simply
| a distant branch of another religion -- it's clearly it's
| own tradition, but my understanding is that most Muslims
| would agree that it both shares common roots (i.e. a
| foundational understanding) with Christianity and Islam
| while also superseding them.
|
| In my mind at least, that indicates that there is some
| narrative progression, of which Islam would see itself as
| the most recent, or most complete, revelation; building
| on what came before while also correcting it (where it is
| seen as erring from Allah's/God's intended message). In
| that sense, I think it shares a lot in common with
| Christianity, a religion that more or less treats Judaism
| the same way.
| Nathanba wrote:
| This is of course wrong, Mohammed as an illiterate man
| can copy things because he grew up in a christian and
| jewish influenced society and no doubt heard the stories
| of biblical characters and then decided to incorporate
| them into his own retelling, including various historical
| errors that make his retelling impossible to be true. htt
| ps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary_in_Islam#:~:text=Accordin
| ....
|
| It is also false to say that gaining followers through
| appeasement is the way to go, there is not a single sect
| in christianity that doesnt change vital parts of the
| bible or how to be saved. It is far easier to obfuscate
| and pretend to follow christianity and then make changes
| later.
| tsimionescu wrote:
| I think there are a great many prophets and messengers
| throughout history that preached polytheism of one kind or
| another. There is even one prophet who preached that no
| gods exist, or at least that they are unimprotsnt to the
| struggle for a good life - Siddhartha Gautama, the Buddha.
| 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.
| debok wrote:
| 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.
| 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.
| hot_gril wrote:
| I will fight someone in public over the time turner thing. No
| it's not a closed loop, yes they could've used it to kill
| Voldemort.
| bhelkey wrote:
| It's not a closed loop? It's been quite some time since I
| read the Prisoner of Azkaban but I was under the impression
| that was one of the limits.
| hot_gril wrote:
| It's supposed to be, according to the book, but what I
| mean is it doesn't make sense. The supposed explanation
| for why they didn't use it to kill Voldemort is "because
| they didn't."
| labster wrote:
| Man, I was thinking about the gay Dumbledore thing, and the
| trans thing of course (JKR has very different conceptions
| of her characters than some of her readers do). Those are
| like national newspaper debates.
|
| But not as interesting as the origin of the race of orcs
| and whether it's okay to use a Qenya word in Quenya.
| 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.
| emodendroket wrote:
| I have to admit that the fact that various commentators
| suggest THREE different languages happen to have words for
| camel and rope that sound almost the same does rather bolster
| the case being made here. Someone want to suggest a seafaring
| rope known as kyummel or something?
| KMag wrote:
| 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 adapted the Demotic alphabet.) The word for
| camel got borrowed pretty readily as cultures came into
| contact with camels.
|
| It wouldn't be at all unusual for all three languages to
| have a very similar rare word for rope if the word at least
| originally meant a (rarely made) type of rope made of
| camel's hair.
|
| A couple decades ago, I was told that this saying was an
| intentional play on words between an Aramaic word for a
| rope made of camel's hair rhyming with the Aramaic word for
| camel, to make the saying more memorable.
|
| It's a bit sad to hear it was probably made up rather than
| clever word play.
| Adverblessly wrote:
| Just looking it up online as I have no personal knowledge
| here, the Hebrew word for rope, khbl (hevel, pronounced
| as h or kh) 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 "habl" and of course none of
| those sound like camel or gamal, so you can at least
| strike Hebrew and Arabic from the list of potential
| sources of origin.
| KMag wrote:
| 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.
| 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.
| ben_w wrote:
| Sometimes monospace can make it worse: early in my iOS work,
| I leaned on the alt key without (initially) realising, and
| got very confused by compiler errors caused by a "-" where it
| should have been a "-".
| Tao3300 wrote:
| A carnel through the eye of a needle. Might be a pastry.
| Might be part of a battlement.
| Jedd wrote:
| I think there's enough evidence to suggest that whoever the
| people that wrote Matthew and Luke were, they were capable of
| introducing their own errors, along with embellishments, from
| their source material.
|
| Given they wrote in Koine, and exhibit some ignorance of the
| geography of the area, and almost definitely never met anyone
| that met Jesus, it's reasonable to assume no spoken Aramaic
| accounts were part of their source material.
| timbit42 wrote:
| Sure, but would they all make the same error? Either there
| was no error or they all inherited it from another source or
| Matthew and Luke inherited it from Mark.
|
| There is some evidence in Matthew that it could have
| originally been written in Aramaic.
| Jedd wrote:
| I thought it was fairly non-contentious [0] that the
| authors of Matthew and Luke borrowed heavily (almost
| exclusively) from the author of Mark's work, along with
| this unknown source (usually referred to as Q).
|
| It seems fairly reasonable then to assume it was a literary
| device made by the author of Mark - his writing is actually
| pretty good as far as allegory goes - that was subsequently
| lifted near verbatim by the later two authors.
|
| [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marcan_priority
| timbit42 wrote:
| The parts Matthew and Luke didn't get from Mark, but
| match, are considered to be from Q.
|
| There are some parts of Matthew and Luke that neither
| come from Mark nor Q so they each also have one or more
| other sources unique to themselves.
| Jedd wrote:
| > There are some parts of Matthew and Luke that neither
| come from Mark nor Q so they each also have one or more
| other sources unique to themselves.
|
| Given that we know nothing about the provenance or
| contents of 'Q' - it's lost to time, and its hypothetical
| existence is effectively intuited by some researches - I
| do not understand how we can identify the set of things
| 'not in Q' (or indeed 'in Q').
|
| I'd also note that there's zero evidence to suggest the
| unknown authors of Matthew and Luke had other sources -
| there's more evidence to suggest they were simply _making
| stuff up_.
| guerrilla wrote:
| Have you tried actually reading the proponents arguments
| instead of relying on arrogance? That might be a better
| way to find out why the consensus is what it is.
| Jedd wrote:
| I have read a fair amount on this subject.
|
| If you could cite some rational sources that describe
| what you're alluding to, I'd be delighted to read them.
|
| As I noted in a sibling comment, the consensus is Marcan
| Priority, but a) it's not a huge majority, and b) it's
| ultimately a tallest dwarf competition anyway.
| emodendroket wrote:
| So your theory is they simply made up the exact same
| stuff? Maybe you do believe in miracles after all then.
| Jedd wrote:
| 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, 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.
| joenot443 wrote:
| 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.
| Jedd wrote:
| I was defending my earlier logic (we don't know what's in
| Q, therefore we don't know what's not in it). Have you
| identified a flaw there?
|
| I would prefer to earnestly cite Price, Carrier,
| Fitzgerald etc, but those citations are less convenient,
| especially for casual readers (clicking a link rather
| than obtaining books).
|
| Disliking the style of rationalwiki seems insufficient
| reason to discount the clear assertions made, explained,
| and with original sources cited on that page.
|
| Can you identify matters of factual error in that graphic
| I pointed at, or other material on that link?
|
| I note this is the only comment you've made on the entire
| thread. I don't believe it moves us forward.
| ShamelessC wrote:
| Non contentious? Don't a large portion of Christians
| believe the Bible is divine and any words included are
| there because of God?
| defrost wrote:
| There are a large number of camps that don't align about
| this issue.
|
| The King James Only movement alone:
| asserts the belief that the King James Version (KJV) of
| the Bible is superior to all other translations of the
| Bible.
|
| and has been divided into five subgroups with varying
| opinions about the text and its relation to God.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/King_James_Only_movement
|
| This barely scratches the surface of the many opinions
| held about the collections of smaller books that are
| bound as versions of "The Bible"; which books, which
| translations, which interpretations, etc.
| ShamelessC wrote:
| Thanks! Very interesting.
| graemep wrote:
| There is a lot of disagreement about even what documents
| should be in the Bible:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biblical_canon
|
| and lots of disagreement about translation and
| interpretation.
| HeckFeck wrote:
| > asserts the belief that the King James Version (KJV) of
| the Bible is superior to all other translations of the
| Bible.
|
| As one who is fond of classical English literature, I am
| compelled to agree.
| Jedd wrote:
| Well, we get into murky territory here.
|
| I'd suggest a large portion of self-identified Christian
| _believers_ really haven 't thought much about it at all,
| beyond (as you say) some orthodox assumptions about
| divine nature etc.
|
| But as per my link above to wikipedia (Marcan Priority)
| the larger consensus amongst religious _historians /
| researchers_ is that Mark was written first, Luke &
| Matthew were written subsequently, and based heavily on a
| combination of Mark + some unknown source ('Q').
| ShamelessC wrote:
| Fascinating! Thanks I'll have to read up on this
| mysterious Q figure and why it's believed to be a ghost
| writer of sorts (is that accurate? Or is possibly just
| information lost to time?)
| NeoTar wrote:
| 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 of
| Jesus quotations has been found.
| Jedd wrote:
| 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.
| spacebacon wrote:
| 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.
| djur wrote:
| I think you're talking about a different Q.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Q_source
| spacebacon wrote:
| Yes, good to know that one isn't the mainstream.
| NeoTar wrote:
| '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).
| Jedd wrote:
| Okay, Thomas - lots of dispute about when it was written,
| and the anthology style makes timing even harder to
| determine, while increasing the chance it was modified
| over the centuries.
|
| I recalled something about the intrigue over some
| parchments from this collection, and found this recent
| story [0] about the alleged illegal sale, recovery,
| translation efforts, and (this year) publication of some
| fragments.
|
| One of the researchers is quoted in that article with a
| 'This is not Q' statement.
|
| [0] https://www.thedailybeast.com/scholars-publish-new-
| papyrus-w...
| NeoTar wrote:
| Yes - before I go on, please note this is not my area of
| expertise, but just something I am interested in.
|
| I haven't seen anywhere which suggests that Thomas is Q,
| but to me if a book of biblical quotations is
| hypothesised when none has previously been found, and
| forty-five years later a book of biblical quotations is
| discovered (which, despite uncertainty about its timing,
| certainly dates to at least a millennium before the
| hypothesis) that lends some weight to the hypothesis.
|
| Of course, given my general ignorance in this area,
| perhaps books of quotations from this time are common,
| and hypothesising the existence of one is like
| hypothesising the existing of a website for a popular TV
| show in 2023 (i.e. a meaningless proposition).
| keiferski wrote:
| I think a more charitable (and interesting,
| sociologically) interpretation is that certain Protestant
| groups want the authority of God to not be vested in a
| temporal organization like the Catholic Church, and so
| the book itself serves as a replacement for this. The
| problem of determining what that means arises _then_ ,
| and not initially from a desire to only follow the book
| directly.
| kragen wrote:
| well, non-contentious among scholars, not cosplayers
| otabdeveloper4 wrote:
| Such a belief would be heretical and very much outside
| the bounds of any canonical Christianity.
|
| (The phrase you're looking for is "divinely inspired",
| but Christianity also teaches that all of world history
| is also divinely inspired. It's a very broad category.)
| tsimionescu wrote:
| Isn't it an article of faith for some Christian groups
| that the King James version of the Bible was produced by
| 100 scholars each translating a Greek text independently,
| and each producing the exact same English translation,
| thus proving that God had directly guided them in this
| translation, and essentially making the KJV almost
| literal word of God?
| telotortium wrote:
| Maybe for some very fringe groups but probably not. That
| sounds more like someone confusing the KJV with the
| Septuagint, which has a similar legend - that 70 Hebrew
| scholars independently produced the same Greek
| Translation of the Old Testament.
| gwd wrote:
| 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 only one
| named Bartholomew)
|
| [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r5Ylt1pBMm8
|
| Regarding Aramaic: I'm just learning Biblical Greek, and one
| common pattern is rather than saying "X replied, '...'", to
| say 'X replied, saying '...'" (or "Replying, X said '...'". A
| Jewish friend who is a classicist told me that this pattern
| was a "semitism" -- i.e., not something you'd hear in native
| Koine Greek, but something imported from Aramaic / Hebrew.
| This would indicate at least that the original source
| material was written by native Aramaic speakers. (This latter
| bit is lower significance, because it was an offhand comment
| she made when discussing something else.)
| Jedd wrote:
| 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 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/item
| s/NailedTenChristianM...
| gwd wrote:
| 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.
| xp84 wrote:
| UsefulCharts, is that you?
|
| (Kidding, but it also wouldn't be that shocking)
| timbit42 wrote:
| No, but I'm subscribed.
| trhway wrote:
| I just googled, and the things are even less clearer - looks
| like it isn't just a rope, it specifically means thick rope
| made out of camel hair.
| tsimionescu wrote:
| Note that light googling is very likely to reach the same
| problem as the article shows about Cyril: varied sources that
| are actually all based on a single original unreliable
| source.
| 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.
| Natsu wrote:
| > Where this argument pops up is through the modern myth that
| "eye of a needle" was a reference to a particular gate in
| Jerusalem
|
| The article says this theory appears as early as the 11th
| century, which isn't quite "modern."
| Zancarius wrote:
| Good point. I guess my view of "modern" with regards to
| scripture is somewhat warped by the view that anything
| later than, say, the 7th or 8th centuries is "too new."
|
| Either way, the analogy is anachronistic to the text, which
| is probably the better way to render it.
| bee_rider wrote:
| Clearly we should just combine both of these revisions--
| tossing some rope through a gate would be easy!
| Zancarius wrote:
| I like the way you think!
| vintermann wrote:
| > 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.
| Zancarius wrote:
| 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.
| 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
| kragen wrote:
| the article discusses the origin of this other specious
| interpretation at some length
| Zanni wrote:
| Rope and needle are close enough in scale that passing the one
| through the other is merely improbable. Consider a thin rope
| and a large needle, for example. You could also unbraid a rope
| and pass it through a needle, strand by strand, and reconstruct
| it on the other "side." Much harder to do with a camel.
| DebtDeflation wrote:
| Except that the rope in question here is a "seafaring" rope
| used by sailors. If you're familiar with nautical rope, it
| has no more possibility of passing through the eye of even
| the largest sail needle than a camel does.
| acdha wrote:
| This is true but I don't think this was aimed at people who
| were going to deeply contemplate it as a serious metaphor.
| It seems more along the lines of effective altruism,
| designed to let people sleep comfortably while enjoying the
| pleasures of wealth now while saying that they would thin
| the rope with a massive donation later (why do you even
| need to ask?), which the church could very conveniently
| help receive.
| DontchaKnowit wrote:
| 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.
| sn41 wrote:
| I agree, but I guess it goes against things like the Work
| Ethic [1], the Prosperity Theology [2] and the funding
| sources of megachurches, all which take material prosperity
| as a sign of divine grace. It is strange that some
| megachurches who espouse "Sola fide" and "Sola scriptura"
| also directly contradict one of the famous sayings in the
| Gospels.
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protestant_work_ethic#Weber
| 's_...
|
| [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prosperity_theology
| marcus_holmes wrote:
| 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 basis of vague OT references.
| KMag wrote:
| 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 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.)
| DontchaKnowit wrote:
| 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 is no
| reference at all to female homosexual relationships in
| the bible. Ever. And yet the church is often very
| preoccupied with viewing lesbian relationships as a sin.
| Very strange
| aeneasmackenzie wrote:
| 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.
| rom16384 wrote:
| 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."
| Amezarak wrote:
| > 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%B
| 5%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.
| KMag wrote:
| Thanks for the correction. TIL.
| felipeerias wrote:
| 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, "If you want to be perfect, go, sell what
| you have and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in
| heaven; and come follow me."
|
| But when the young man heard that saying, he went away
| sorrowful, for he had great possessions.
|
| Then Jesus said to His disciples, "Assuredly, I say to you
| that it is hard for a rich man to enter the kingdom of
| heaven. And again I say to you, it is easier for a camel to
| go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter
| the kingdom of God."
|
| When His disciples heard it, they were greatly astonished,
| saying, "Who then can be saved?"
|
| But Jesus looked at them and said to them, "With men this is
| impossible, but with God all things are possible."
|
| --------
| tomohawk wrote:
| 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.
| tsimionescu wrote:
| The reason why people don't want to take this line literally
| is very simple: they don't want to believe that they can't
| live a life of luxury and still go into heaven. If you're
| both a believer and rich, you can either live with the
| cognitive dissonance, renounce your faith, or just
| reinterpret the precepts you don't like to suit you.
| anonymous_sorry wrote:
| There are some lyrics by a band called the Divine Comedy
| (how apposite) that used to make me smile:
|
| The cars in the churchyard are shiny and German
|
| (Distinctly at odds with the theme of the sermon),
|
| And during communion I study the people
|
| Threading themselves through the eye of the needle.
| starcraft2wol wrote:
| Now read the next verse.
| tsimionescu wrote:
| 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.stackexchange.com/questions/60225/ho
| w-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".
| johnsonjo wrote:
| 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.
| NotYourLawyer wrote:
| Or just understand that people spoke hyperbolically 2000
| years ago just like they do now.
| tsimionescu wrote:
| The article explicitly quotes the original source for this
| kamilos theory as claiming exactly this:
|
| > 'camel': he doesn't mean the pack animal here, but the thick
| rope, with which sailors bind anchors. He shows that the
| situation isn't absolutely permanent, but makes the matter
| extremely difficult for him in future, and for the present,
| close to and neighbouring on impossibility.
|
| So, even if you don't agree with Cyril's reasoning, it is clear
| that he believed that "camel through the eye of a needle" would
| have meant complete impossibility, but "rope through the eye of
| a needle" actually allows a slither of a chance.
| 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.
| deepsquirrelnet wrote:
| 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 eternal fires.
| robocat wrote:
| 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.
| deepsquirrelnet wrote:
| OK how about industrial scales of salvation? Here's what I
| propose:
|
| 1. Switch to camel meat farming
|
| 2. Route all sewers through the eye of a giant needle en
| route to water treatment
|
| 3. Receive eternal blessings every morning if you took your
| fiber the previous evening
|
| Sorry vegetarians and vegans, you're still at risk. You'll
| have to use messy camel slurries or just take your chances.
| rando_dfad wrote:
| Huh. I thought the camel/needle's eye thing was about a small
| narrow gate into Jerusalem. You can get a camel through it, but
| it needs to get down on its knees and crawl. Apparently, camels
| don't like to do that.
|
| But I've never seen the gate, and don't have strong views on
| biblical accuracy.
| anonymous_sorry wrote:
| The article tells us that this is not true.
| kragen wrote:
| kjv text for reference
|
| > _And, behold, one came and said unto him, Good Master, what
| good thing shall I do, that I may have eternal life? And he said
| unto him, Why callest thou me good? there is none good but one,
| that is, God: but if thou wilt enter into life, keep the
| commandments. He saith unto him, Which? Jesus said, Thou shalt do
| no murder, Thou shalt not commit adultery, Thou shalt not steal,
| Thou shalt not bear false witness, Honour thy father and thy
| mother: and, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself. The young
| man saith unto him, All these things have I kept from my youth
| up: what lack I yet? Jesus said unto him, If thou wilt be
| perfect, go and sell that thou hast, and give to the poor, and
| thou shalt have treasure in heaven: and come and follow me. But
| when the young man heard that saying, he went away sorrowful: for
| he had great possessions._
|
| > _Then said Jesus unto his disciples, Verily I say unto you,
| That a rich man shall hardly enter into the kingdom of heaven.
| And again I say unto you, It is easier for a camel to go through
| the eye of a needle, than for a rich man to enter into the
| kingdom of God._
|
| https://biblehub.com/kjv/matthew/19.htm
|
| selling all your possessions and giving them to the poor, then
| wandering around the country homeless following a new religious
| movement is what jesus was advocating in this passage
|
| i mention this because a few comments here have been totally
| bogus
| Natsu wrote:
| In context, the new believers were frequently put out of their
| homes and sent destitute, so being willing to give it all up
| was a requirement.
|
| That said, there isn't a whole lot of evidence what is meant
| here and a rope makes more sense than a camel, because a rich
| man can become poorer by giving it up just as a rope can be
| made thinner (by taking away most of the fibers), whereas a
| camel just can't manage at all.
|
| It wouldn't be too surprising if it was an obscure bit of slang
| among a less literate group meant for a joke, but there are a
| few other words that seem to have been coined by gospel writers
| that have seen lots of litigation, e.g. arsenokoites which
| seems to echo a construction from Leviticus.
| pizzafeelsright wrote:
| Take the most challenging interpretation and you're probably
| correct.
| Nition wrote:
| This is a bit of a meta-comment but, there are a great deal of of
| comments in this thread that say something that's already covered
| in the article.
|
| I've noticed that Hacker News comments do seem to be trending
| more over time to being from people who only read the title, or
| at best only skimmed the article.
|
| If you go straight to the comments on any news post on Reddit,
| the discussions usually seem relatively insightful, but if you
| read the article and _then_ the comments, suddenly many of them
| seem ridiculous. Either they 're discussing questions that are
| already answered in the article or covering topics that are
| completely irrelevant. Often they're interpreting the article in
| completely the wrong way..
|
| I've always much appreciated that Hacker News is not like that
| and most comments are responding to parts of the article itself.
| I hope we don't end up that way eventually.
| doublerabbit wrote:
| I'm guilty. I'm just here for the comments. I tend to learn
| more about the subject that way. And if I find the comments
| confusing I'll then jump to the article.
|
| Partly due to the popup spam on any major media outlet site,
| even wikipedia with its constant nagging for donations.
|
| Downvotes: Not sure why some HN readers are upset by this
| comment, I don't have time to read every article or to skim.
| Especially at work. Reading articles on mobile hurts my eyes,
| it's easier to get an understanding via comments.
| Nition wrote:
| Honestly I think going straight to the comments is totally
| fine, as long as you read the article (or at least skim it,
| please) before _posting your own top-level comment_. I 'm not
| sure why you're downvoted either really, because you're not
| doing any harm by just reading them.
|
| However, your method does become less useful if the comments
| that people _do_ post become increasing divorced from the
| article! Sometimes on Reddit people almost create their own
| alternate reality in the comments based only on the title.
| When we only read the comments we end up living in that
| reality.
| potsandpans wrote:
| My unsubstantiated hypothesis is that this is a direct
| correlation to the reddit api changes.
| deadbabe wrote:
| Comments are at least more guaranteed to be human, articles
| could be AI summary garbage.
| Nition wrote:
| This article is quite the opposite of that though, and has
| done a lot of work covering most of the points that are being
| made in the comments here anyway. The Aramaic words, the
| similar verse in the Quran, the rope being "still impossible"
| etc, are all covered in the article.
| DontchaKnowit wrote:
| What? Wouldnt comments be equally likely to be AI?
|
| Why would comments be any less likely to be AI?
| deadbabe wrote:
| No money to be made, so why bother?
| citizenpaul wrote:
| Its a known effect of the popularity of online social networks.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eternal_September
| hot_gril wrote:
| I've repeatedly noticed an even worse practice on anything
| news-related on Reddit: Top-rated comments saying "the title is
| misleading" when it actually isn't. I don't know if they
| skimmed the article way too quickly or were just trying to call
| it fake news because they didn't like it.
|
| Anyway, deleted my account there and haven't gone back in a few
| months.
| Nition wrote:
| 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.
| spacebacon wrote:
| 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?
| hot_gril wrote:
| 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.
| Nition wrote:
| Thanks, this is indeed all I'm looking for.
| pazimzadeh wrote:
| Has anyone considered that this may be a double entendre, and
| that ancient peoples may have been pretty witty?
| galaxyLogic wrote:
| This may be a bit un-orthodox, but I think there is some sense in
| Trinity if you interpret it properly:
|
| "Father" is the concrete DNA that creates each of us. "Son" is
| each individual that manifests that DNA. "Holy Ghost" is the
| whole INFORMATION in the DNA-population which gives rise to
| different concrete DNA strands.
|
| They are all manifestations of the same thing.
| tsimionescu wrote:
| You're trying to find a contrived scientific notion of
| trinitarianism, which is a belief that is built out of the long
| history of Judaism and Christianity. How does this make any
| sense? If you don't believe Jesus was an actual person, or that
| God the Father gave stone tablets to Moses, what does the
| trinity even mean to you? And if you do believe in these
| things, how is "DNA" a satisfying explanation for the Father
| who parted the sea for His people to cross it?
|
| How would you interpret the sacrifice of Jesus/God the Son to
| save humanity (God sacrificing Himself to save humanity) in
| this DNA based framework?
| spacebacon wrote:
| True... the moment you do not accept that Jesus Christ is the
| walking and breathing incarnation of God is the moment you
| completely deny Christianity within the scope of the
| solidified Christian belief system. It is more realistic for
| the Christian to accept Jesus Christ was an alien, the Holy
| Ghost is a tractor beam, and God is the flying purple people
| eater at that point.
| mastazi wrote:
| This aricle does a good job in presenting sources in support of
| its first argument (it was a camel, not a rope) but then it
| presents exactly zero evidence to support the conclusion (the
| error was intentional, the goal was to appease rich people).
|
| Clearly, the author knows about the importance of supporting
| argument with sources... so I have the impression that they might
| be in bad faith.
| tsimionescu wrote:
| The quote from the original source of the "rope" claim, Cyril,
| is pretty explicit:
|
| > 'camel': he doesn't mean the pack animal here, but the thick
| rope, with which sailors bind anchors. He shows that the
| situation isn't absolutely permanent, but makes the matter
| extremely difficult for him in future, and for the present,
| close to and neighbouring on impossibility.
|
| Cyril explicitly considers that replacing "camel" with "rope"
| changes the meaning of the passage from complete impossibility
| to something that is extremely hard but still conceivable. What
| more evidence do you need that this was the reason?
| mastazi wrote:
| EDIT: I misunderstood your comment originally. My response
| was based on that misunderstanding. I removed it.
|
| Also, I should not have suggested that the author might be in
| bad faith.
| spacebacon wrote:
| The size of synthetic fibers used in nautical ropes can
| vary widely depending on the material and manufacturer.
| However, the diameter of individual synthetic fibers
| typically ranges from micrometers (1,000 nanometers = 1
| micrometer) to tens or hundreds of micrometers, depending
| on the specific type of synthetic fiber and its intended
| use in rope-making.
|
| The average eye of a needle typically ranges in size from
| about 300 to 800 nanometers in diameter, depending on the
| needle's gauge or size. This can vary slightly based on the
| needle's purpose and manufacturing specifics, but
| generally, it's within this nanometer range.
|
| While at first blush it may seem impossible to thread the
| nautical rope through one strand at a time one must
| consider that a method to achieve this delicate task using
| specialized tools like a needle threader or a microscope-
| guided threading technique is feasible.
|
| These tools can help manipulate and guide the 10-micrometer
| strand through the 800-nanometer eye of the needle with
| precision and accuracy.
|
| But you may still be wondering how so allow me to
| elaborate...
|
| Generally, nylon is known for its high elasticity, with a
| stretch capacity ranging from 10% to 40% or more of its
| original length before breaking, making it a popular choice
| for ropes requiring flexibility and shock absorption.
|
| I propose a slow and steady heated and compressed stretch
| wins this race nine times out of ten.
| mastazi wrote:
| Sure but this is not easier than putting a camel in an
| industrial sized juicer and then pass the camel, in
| liquid form, through the needle's eye.
| spacebacon wrote:
| Touche
| tsimionescu wrote:
| Edit: saw the edit now, no problem, and thank you very much
| for engaging in good faith! I will leave the rest of my
| comment up, but either way, I didn't interpret your comment
| in a negative way, just trying to get to a common
| understanding.
|
| If there is no other evidence of the word kamilos, rope,
| existing, that represents evidence that Cyril made this
| word up. Then, we know from the two quotes that Cyril
| believes that the rope interpretation is more favorable to
| rich people than the camel interpretation.
|
| So we have reason to believe that Cyril invented this word,
| and we know he thinks that the correct interpretation is
| softer for rich people, so it seems like a simple
| assumption that he invented the word to make the
| interpretation that's better for the rich more plausible.
|
| What other reason would he have to invent a new word that
| happens to support his preferred interpretation?
|
| > please record a video of yourself passing a rope in a
| needle's eye, and I will stand corrected.
|
| This is irrelevant. As I showed in the quote, it is
| indisputable that _Cyril_ thinks that there is some small
| hope for a rope to pass through the eye of a needle. Why he
| thinks this is beyond me, but it is clearly what he
| believes, per his own words.
| bee_rider wrote:
| 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 know.
|
| "Rope through a needle's eye" would just be a mundanely
| impossible task, which, if anything, makes the analogy more
| concrete, in my opinion. The fact a rope is pretty similar to a
| thread, except in the very way that matters for fitting it
| through a needle's eye, makes it more obvious.
|
| It seems like the theory is pretty throughly debunked anyway. But
| it is sort of funny that the misreading doesn't even get you very
| close to the supposed goal.
| vintermann wrote:
| > I guess the fact that "big animal through a needle's eye" was
| a common expression would make it more obvious.
|
| The article suggests it may not have been a common expression
| at all until Jesus popularized it: the gospels are the earliest
| known occurrence of the expression.
| thfuran wrote:
| >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
|
| But isn't that the whole point?
| grotorea wrote:
| 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.
| mminer237 wrote:
| 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.
| bee_rider wrote:
| That seems to soften it a bit, in this story he's saying
| that the rich particularly have an essentially
| insurmountable amount of sinfulness and inadequacy to
| overcome.
| jtbayly wrote:
| 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 he
| will hate the one and love the other, or he will be
| devoted to one and despise the other. You cannot serve
| God and wealth." (Matthew 6:24)
|
| The rich generally have a master they are unwilling to
| give up. It is money. They _think_ they are the master of
| their money, but their money is their master.
|
| Yet by God's grace, He can even change the heart of the
| rich to love Him instead of being devoted to money.
| Praise God for that. It is indeed a miracle. As crazy as
| a camel going through the eye of a needle.
| bee_rider wrote:
| 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.
| lo_zamoyski wrote:
| 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.
| lo_zamoyski wrote:
| This is indeed a passage that is easily misinterpreted by
| many of its readers. A key to interpreting it correctly,
| is to note whom Christ is addressing when he uses the
| expression in question. _It isn't the rich man._ The rich
| man had already left, because he was not prepared to
| prioritize God over material riches. The majority of
| people listening were not rich. They were the common
| folk. The lesson is, as you've made clear IMO, that the
| greatest good is God, and prioritizing other goods above
| God is to make a god of lesser goods, and that this does
| not lead to the ultimate happiness that is what Heaven is
| by definition, which consists ultimately of unity with
| the authentic greatest good first and foremost. And
| indeed, as other verses state, those who prioritize
| lesser goods will ultimately have neither the greatest
| good nor lesser goods. Everyday experience tends to agree
| with this as well. Obsessive pursuit of lesser goods
| (which are indeed good) often makes those goods
| inaccessible to us. We lose on all fronts.
|
| And so, in a very real sense, as you also note, there is
| nothing especially important about the rich man per se.
| The poor can lust just as much, if not more, for money
| than the rich, because the poor can more easily fantasize
| about and project hopes onto what they do not have; the
| rich man is more likely to have become disillusioned with
| his riches.
| k3vinw wrote:
| Exactly. This is quite a radical departure from the fire
| and brimstone found in the Old Testament.
| marcinreal wrote:
| I guess that most applies to the Prophets, who were
| warning a sinful nation of impending destruction, but it
| still seems like an oversimplistic view of the
| scriptures. Even in the Prophets, God's love and mercy
| are emphasized many times.
| bee_rider wrote:
| Seems like he's telling the guy to sell all his stuff and
| give it away, or bugger off.
| Tao3300 wrote:
| 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.
| DeathArrow wrote:
| I think the needle's eye was an actual place in the Jewish
| temple, which was very narrow.
| emodendroket wrote:
| > The 'rope' theory is one of a couple of tactics for softening
| Jesus' condemnation of wealth-hoarding.
|
| I don't see that the message is particularly changed either way.
| It seems like if I hyperbolically said I had a million things to
| do or a billion, either way it's not really like you'd assume one
| meant I wasn't all that busy.
| spacebacon wrote:
| I find it more interesting to web search the hacker news profits
| user names.
| johnsonjo wrote:
| 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).
| cyost wrote:
| 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/
| marcinreal wrote:
| 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...
| backtoyoujim wrote:
| Rich people need to let criticism of their wealth exist without
| complaining.
|
| Holy books are always infallible until they fall on one's own
| lifestyle.
| m3047 wrote:
| 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.
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2023-11-29 23:02 UTC)