Comment by ipaddr
2 months ago
"eye of the needle" refers to a small gate or passage in ancient city walls, used after the main gates were closed at night. A camel could only pass through this narrow opening if it was unloaded of its baggage and possibly crawled through on its knees.
Not as hard or impossible as it first appears but still harder.
From what I understand, this is actually highly debated among biblical scholars.
This idea that he meant "it's hard but not impossible" seems to generally be pushed by wealthy religions and "prosperity gospel" types.
Reading everything else Jesus said, I find it more likely that he literally meant the "eye of an actual needle". He did not seem to be a fan of the rich or powerful in any way.
It's not impossible for a rich person to develop spiritually and attain heaven. They just have to give up all their riches. So functionally it is easier for a camel to do this other equivalent nearly-impossible thing.
In a Catholic and the way those verses are interpreted is that it’s not that you have to give up all your money but give up greed, it basically means that you should not worship your wealth but place your highest of high towards God, then and only then you can use your wealth towards the Good as you have no more attachments.
I think Protestant have similar interpretations but I could be wrong as they have many denominations.
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> They just have to give up all their riches.
Well, then they aren't rich anymore, and the camel doesn't need to pass through the eye of the needle. Problem solved.
Yeah, Jesus clarifies as such a few verses later:
> Jesus looked at them and said, “With man this is impossible, but with God all things are possible.” (Matthew 19:26, CSB, emphasis mine)
To be fair, needles at the time probably weren't as fine as they are these days, so you may still have a gap a millimeter across instead of a fraction of that.
That's still too small for the average camel.
> "eye of the needle" refers to a small gate or passage in ancient city walls,
There's a lot of discussion on this verse. Apparently, the gate interpretation didn't exist until the 11 century.
It was rethought to be Rope for a while but this blog post discredits that. https://kiwihellenist.blogspot.com/2023/11/camel.html
A common myth! No, no gate or passage was ever referred to as "the eye of the needle" in antiquity. [1] That verse is intended to be taken literally. Jesus Christ was quite outspoken on his feelings about the wealthy, but of course, wealthy Christians need a way for him to have meant something figurative when he told them to surrender their worldly riches.
[1]: https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/new-testament-studie...
There is a hypothesis the Greek word means rope instead of camel, that the parable means we cant thread a rope through a needle.
Arabic word for camel and rope are same in a similar verse.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eye_of_a_needle
Jesus literally told his followers to give up their worldly possessions, but… sure. He intended to give a free pass to those who came after, that hinged on a quirk of city planning that would not exist until centuries later.
No when he said "worldly possessions" he mostly just meant funkopops.
This is categorically false: https://www.tiktok.com/t/ZTYveLPTC/
Also it just doesn’t make sense.
there are better citations than tiktok, please.
In this case the video is a bona fide Biblical scholar who does public outreach on TikTok. It's a good source.
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The source is Dan Mccllelan, not TikTok. TikTok didn’t publish this, Dan did. TikTok is the medium, not the author.
Otherwise it’s like complaining about citing “words printed on paper” when citing a book or journal.
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No one asked for your opinion on TikTok.
I never knew that. Makes the metaphor a lot more applicable.
Even better, thanks for that explanation
It's not true though (and no evidence that such a gate existed with that name).
It's more likely exaggeration referring to actual camel (the large animal of the area) and the eye of a needle (an example of the smallest hole one would be readily familiar with at the time).
If it was reffering to a named place, the very capable in both Jewish and Greek authors of the New Testament wouldn't have translated it as "τρυπήματος ῥαφίδος" (needle's opening) or "τρυμαλιᾶς ῥαφίδος" (needle's hole), as opposed to something like "narrow gate" or similar that would convey to people unfamiliar with Jerusalem the point.
Except it’s not true, that’s a myth.
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