What I've heard about this from a guy who was a scholar in such matters was
that the words for "camel" and "rope" were spelled almost the same in the
original Aramaic and that the verse probably should read something like
this: "It's harder to thread a needle with a rope...etc."
Bonnie
-----Original Message-----
From: owner-extropians@extropy.com
[mailto:owner-extropians@extropy.com]On Behalf Of Zero Powers
Sent: Sunday, June 04, 2000 12:01 AM
To: extropians@extropy.com
Subject: Re: Theological clarification, was:Re: Mother Teresa
>From: "Everitt Mickey" <evmick@pnv.net>
>From: zeb haradon <zebharadon@hotmail.com>
> >And don't forget the thing about how "it would be easier to fit a camel
> >through the eye of a needle then for a rich man to enter the gates of
> >heaven" (or something like that).
> >
>
>Gotta be careful here...."the eye of the needle" was the name of one of the
>gates in the wall surrounding jersuleam.....a camel COULD fit thru it...but
>only with great difficulty.....
My former pastor gave that explanation during a sermon one Sunday morning.
However, when I pressed her for references for that claim, she had none and
explained that she had heard it in a sermon by some other pastor. I
subsequently did my own research on it and came up with a big fat nothing.
My guess is that this story is just a myth to water down the extremism of
Jesus' message. If anyone has any refs one way or the other on this "eye of
the needle" question, please enlighten me.
-Zero
"I like dreams of the future better than the history of the past"
--Thomas Jefferson
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