[HN Gopher] The camel, the rope, and the needle's eye ___________________________________________________________________ The camel, the rope, and the needle's eye Author : diodorus Score : 71 points Date : 2023-11-28 20:10 UTC (2 hours ago) (HTM) web link (kiwihellenist.blogspot.com) (TXT) w3m dump (kiwihellenist.blogspot.com) | 082349872349872 wrote: | Pace Aristippus (and the lentils), telling rich people what they | want to hear is not a bad way to arrange for a stream of invites | to fancy dinners. | hprotagonist wrote: | Telling them what they need to hear tends to get you nailed to | stuff, though. | labster wrote: | That's why Martin Luther was smart and got the nailing part | out of the way at the beginning. | jowea wrote: | Martin Luther had a lot of support and allied with the | politically powerful. The later Radical Reformation was | something else. | SilasX wrote: | I'm still scratching my head at that attribution of motive | though. | | "No, rich guys, what He meant to say is that it's at least as | hard as threading a _rope_ through the eye of a needle. So rich | guys like you just have to do that simple thing to get into | heaven, easy peasy!" | | 'Um, that ... also seems really hard?' | | "Yeah but not nearly as hard as a camel. Like whoaaa those | things are bulky and not even the some _domain_ as tailoring!" | | 'Okay but it doesn't seem all that meaningful to compare one | impossibility to another. Like, is dividing 1 by 0 harder than | dividing 0 by 0?' | | "Look, I'm _trying_ to shill for y'all, can I please just get | the invites?" | bell-cot wrote: | Meh. You don't get (or stay) rich by being all that concerned | about your fate in the hereafter. | | I'd say that the seriously rich (and serious wanna-bes) are far | more interested in Matthew 4:8-9. And in doing whatever it takes, | to hopefully receive such an offer themselves. | hprotagonist wrote: | Mammon is an easy idolatry. | Zancarius wrote: | I like this. I literally just caught that word in a | commentary I was reading on Sunday. Sadly, English | translations sometimes don't convey the force or cultural | context of the passage. | interroboink wrote: | > You don't get (or stay) rich by being all that concerned | about your fate in the hereafter. | | The Egyptian pharaohs might disagree. They seemed very | interested in taking it with them, so to speak. | dylan604 wrote: | Including those that weren't quite as dead as they were | moolcool wrote: | I always find the "eye of the needle gate" deflection funny, | because why would anyone use metaphor that to make such a general | point? | hprotagonist wrote: | _I know that the most recent biologists have been chiefly anxious | to discover a very small camel. But if we diminish the camel to | his smallest, or open the eye of the needle to its largest--if, | in short, we assume the words of Christ to have meant the very | least that they could mean, His words must at the very least mean | this-- that rich men are not very likely to be morally | trustworthy. Christianity even when watered down is hot enough to | boil all modern society to rags. | | The mere minimum of the Church would be a deadly ultimatum to the | world. For the whole modern world is absolutely based on the | assumption, not that the rich are necessary (which is tenable), | but that the rich are trustworthy, which (for a Christian) is not | tenable. You will hear everlastingly, in all discussions about | newspapers, companies, aristocracies, or party politics, this | argument that the rich man cannot be bribed. The fact is, of | course, that the rich man is bribed; he has been bribed already. | That is why he is a rich man. The whole case for Christianity is | that a man who is dependent upon the luxuries of this life is a | corrupt man, spiritually corrupt, politically corrupt, | financially corrupt. There is one thing that Christ and all the | Christian saints have said with a sort of savage monotony. They | have said simply that to be rich is to be in peculiar danger of | moral wreck._ | | Chesterton, 1908 ("Orthodoxy") | lynguist wrote: | Thanks for sharing. I did not know that and I did not grow up | with much Christian influence (or any), but what this man | writes is how I felt like for a long time deep inside. It | resonates with me very much. | brink wrote: | He's written some fantastic books. Worth a read, imo. He's my | favorite author. | OscarCunningham wrote: | I've never really understood the sentences following this quote. | | > '[...] It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a | needle than for someone who is rich to enter the kingdom of God.' | They were greatly astounded and said to one another, 'Then who | can be saved?' Jesus looked at them and said, 'For mortals it is | impossible, but not for God; for God all things are possible.' | | Why do the apostles seem to think that Jesus's words would make | it difficult for anyone to be saved? Surely from what he's said | it's obvious that poor people can be saved. And when Jesus says | 'for God all things are possible', isn't he implying that some | rich people might get into heaven? So why do people interpret the | passage as Jesus saying this is impossible? | tines wrote: | Because it was thought that being rich meant you were close to | God. If the people they thought were closest to God could | scarcely be saved, then how could anyone else be? So the | thinking goes. It's an argument a fortiori. | | Of course Jesus' point was that the poor and sinners are much | closer to the kingdom of God than the rich, hence their | astonishment. | argsv wrote: | Well apparently the same analogy is used in the Quran as well. | https://corpus.quran.com/translation.jsp?chapter=7&verse=40 | timbit42 wrote: | Yes, some aspects of Islam are based on the views of the | Ebionites, an early Christian sect who used a Hebrew version of | Matthew (instead of Greek) and whose beliefs about Jesus (not | God, didn't actually die, etc.) ended up in Islam. | lynguist wrote: | We say now "some sect", but today's mainstream Trinitarians | were also considered "just some sect" in Early Christianity. | | It has turned out to become the mainstream view, but really | trinitarianism and antitrinitarianism are both valid views of | Christianity and Islam stems from the "back to the basics" | antitrinitarian view. | | While we're at it, Judaism was also developed contemporarily | with Christianity and not before (as is the mainstream view), | because Judaism includes the teachings of the Rabbis. | | The root is Middle Eastern monotheism. | djur wrote: | "Sect" isn't a pejorative term, at least not in this | context. | Zancarius wrote: | Trinitarianism isn't _necessarily_ a strictly Christian | construct--or rather the idea of a godhead comprising | multiple parts. "Two Powers" theology (a transcendent, | unseeable Yahweh; and Yahweh-as-man) was accepted by Jewish | thinkers until about the First Century AD, largely due to | Christian influences. It's visible in passages like Genesis | 19:24 (two Yahwehs) and most "angel of the Lord" language | (e.g. Judges 6:11ff). | | Alan Segal's _Two Powers in Heaven_ delves into this in | great detail. | sctb wrote: | I'm predisposed to mysticism, so I probably read this passage a | lot less mundanely than most. I'm also a minimalist and tend to | view spiritual teachings as enigmatic ways of pointing out | something obvious that we are conditioned to overlook. To me, | this passage says: "You don't get to keep anything." | swayvil wrote: | I would put it equivalent to Sinclair's famous, "It is | difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary | depends on his not understanding it." | | In this case the understanding = the religious stuff. | | So it's basically the same. | vcg3rd wrote: | Well, in context, Jesus has just said you must come as a child. | And He finishes with those who would be first shall be last. | | Children aren't focused on money and they were always last. It's | hard to be childlike (totally dependent) when you think you're | autonomous and wealth tends to solidify the illusion of autonomy. | | I don't think the literal meaning of the Greek word matters that | much to grasp the meaning of the account. | | The analysis at least assumes Jesus said it and it was recorded | in 3 Gospels. If one starts with that, Jesus (Whomever one | believes He was [1]) meant something, used some word, and the | listeners understood what He meant enough to ask a follow-up | question. | | In his advice to Timothy, Paul warns how a focus on words in an | effort to "gain" is harmful: | | "[He] is puffed up with conceit and understands nothing. He has | an unhealthy craving for controversy and for quarrels about | words, which produce envy, dissension, slander, evil suspicions, | and constant friction among people who are depraved in mind and | deprived of the truth, imagining that godliness is a means of | gain. But godliness with contentment is great gain, for we | brought nothing into the world, and we cannot take anything out | of the world." 1 Tim 6:4-6 | | I think it ties in nicely with what Jesus said about how | wealth/gain is often a hindrance to childlike humility, | innocence, and trust. | | [1] I agree with Peter when Jesus asked him "Who do you say that | I am?" | rrauenza wrote: | "All things (e.g. a camel's journey through A needle's eye) are | possible, it's true. But picture how the camel feels, squeezed | out In one long bloody thread, from tail to snout." | | -- C.S. Lewis, Poems | CrzyLngPwd wrote: | In 400 years, people could be interpreting the Harry Potter | series similarly. | labster wrote: | They already are. And not just deep in the Harry Potter fandom, | but in bitter, highly public schisms over the meaning. | runeofdoom wrote: | Balrog wings. | jmcphers wrote: | It's happening already. See the popular podcast "Harry Potter | and the Sacred Text" in which they read Harry Potter as some | people read the Bible. | | https://www.harrypottersacredtext.com/ | timbit42 wrote: | In Aramaic, the language Jesus spoke, the word for camel is gamlo | (g'ml') while the word for rope is gamla (g'ml`). Mixing these up | would be an easy mistake to make. | | Matthew and Luke both took some info from Mark but also took some | info from the Q source and their own sources. Since all three | have this same wording, it is likely the error came through Mark. | re wrote: | > In Aramaic, the language Jesus spoke, the word for camel is | gamlo (g'ml') while the word for rope is gamla (g'ml`). | | The blog author briefly references this Aramaic theory in his | post and says that it has been similarly debunked, linking to | this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sf0Fm8aVApk | | The supposed Aramaic word for rope doesn't appear in any | sources until the 10th century CE and is derived at that time | from the same Cyril origin. | m463 wrote: | visually pretty similar. Thank goodness we live in the future | with typesetting and even monospaced fonts so rn and m don't | look similar. | ranprieur wrote: | I don't buy the idea that changing camel to rope is about | pleasing rich people, because a rope can still nowhere near get | through the eye of a needle. | | But a rope is qualitatively the same kind of thing as a thread; | so if camel is the right word, the message is that what gets into | the kingdom of God is a whole different kind of thing than money. | Zancarius wrote: | I agree! | | Where this argument pops up is through the modern myth that | "eye of a needle" was a reference to a particular gate in | Jerusalem (or something similar; there are different variants | of this claim). If this were true, then THAT would turn the | passage from an impossibility to something that's rather | _exceedingly difficult_ , thus pleasing rich people. Rope | versus camel doesn't dramatically change the outcome as much as | changing the idiom from a literal needle to a gate. | | Here's what the IVP commentary says: | | 19:23-26. Here Jesus clearly uses *hyperbole. His words reflect | an ancient Jewish figure of speech for the impossible: a very | large animal passing through a needle's eye. On regular | journeys at twenty-eight miles per day, a fully loaded camel | could carry four hundred pounds in addition to its rider; such | a camel would require a gate at least ten feet high and twelve | feet wide. (A needle's eye in Jesus' day meant what it means | today; the idea that it was simply a name for a small gate in | Jerusalem is based on a gate from the medieval period and sheds | no light on Jesus' teaching in the first century.) | | Craig S. Keener, The IVP Bible Background Commentary: New | Testament, Second Edition. (Downers Grove, IL: IVP Academic: An | Imprint of InterVarsity Press, 2014), 94. | heavyset_go wrote: | > _I don 't buy the idea that changing camel to rope is about | pleasing rich people, because a rope can still nowhere near get | through the eye of a needle._ | | I agree, considering the prosperity gospel types have found a | way to reinterpret the analogy literally, claiming that Jesus | was actually talking about a gateway to Jerusalem called the | Eye of the Needle[1] that required those with goods to hand | them through the Eye to get where they're going. | | The analogy, in that interpretation, means that wealth was able | to pass through the Eye, and thus so could the wealthy enter | heaven. | | [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eye_of_a_needle#Gate | robocat wrote: | Even moderately rich people have a variety of loopholes. | | * Turn a camel into a fine slurry that can be easily put through | the eye of a needle. | | * Commission a very big needle. | | Or the classic redefinition of rich: most people that complain | about the rich always seem to mean someone richer than they are. | E.g. If you're writing on HN you are the rich. ___________________________________________________________________ (page generated 2023-11-28 23:00 UTC)