• Alien Nathan Edward@lemm.ee
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    7 months ago

    Christians are so desperate to ignore Christ that they literally made up a gate that they called The Eye of the Needle and said that’s what Christ was talking about. This gate, which definitely never existed and was not at all what Christ was referring to, was supposedly a bit narrower than other gates and a camel could get through it if it was only carrying a moderate amount of wealth rather than an extreme amount.

    • prime_number_314159@lemmy.world
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      7 months ago

      I talked to one of the authors of the New American Bible, who told me the text is a mistranslation, and it’s more like “harder than putting a rope through the eye of a needle”, which would’ve been an idiom familiar to the fishers in the area.

      It means “impossible”, which is suitable because the things Jesus called for you to do make a rich person into a not rich person, as far as material wealth goes.

      • Live Your Lives@lemmy.world
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        7 months ago

        According to the Lexham Bible Dictionary, this interpretation “dates back to the fifth century and suggests that kamelos, the Greek word for camel, should actually be read as kamilos, which denotes a rope or a ship’s anchor cable. … However, most scholars reject this interpretation because the meager textual evidence most likely can be attributed to speculations about this verse by some church fathers (Origen, Cyril of Alexandria; see Fitzmyer, Luke, 1204; Barclay, Matthew, 239).”

        They also disagree with the gate interpretation, saying that “Scholars have found no historical foundation for this view, and no evidence supports the existence of such a small gate in Jerusalem’s walls.”

      • Alien Nathan Edward@lemm.ee
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        7 months ago

        I’d be curious to see some actual source on that. Shit like that happens all the time and I find it fascinating.

    • drolex@sopuli.xyz
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      7 months ago

      Maybe Jesus was referring to cigarettes and meant that only Marlboro smokers could go to heaven.

      Although ‘Jesus’ means ‘Mexican First Name’ in Spanish so it could be something entirely different that we are missing

    • LittleBorat2@lemmy.ml
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      7 months ago

      Camel could also mean rope which is a very similar word in Aramaic. Of course I don’t read Aramaic but that’s what someone said.

      • Asafum@feddit.nl
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        7 months ago

        That would actually make more sense as the concepts are similar enough, instead of thread its rope as opposed to thread vs a riding/pack animal lol

        • Gabu@lemmy.ml
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          7 months ago

          That would actually make more sense

          It doesn’t and it isn’t. The whole point of the parable is to say that it’s impossible for a rich person to go to heaven.

          • Asafum@feddit.nl
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            7 months ago

            It’s still impossible to get a rope through the eye of a needle unless a rope and a thread can be used interchangeably. I’m not much of a language expert to say for sure lol

      • Live Your Lives@lemmy.world
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        7 months ago

        According to the Lexham Bible Dictionary, “most scholars reject this interpretation because the meager textual evidence most likely can be attributed to speculations about this verse by some church fathers.”