storytime

(Matthew 19:16-26) "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.

Honor thy father and thy mother, and, Thou shalt love thy neighbor 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 what 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 with difficulty 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.

When his disciples heard it, they were exceedingly amazed, saying, Who, then, can be saved?

But Jesus beheld them, and said unto them, With men this is impossible, but with God all things are possible."

You are asuming that the rich man giving what he had to the poor would deplete his resources? That his wealth prevented him from entering the kingdom of God? "Who then can be saved"?

storytime

"eye of a needle" - rock formation that held an extremely thin or narrow pass, it's appearance compared to a needle. (as seen in the old western movies)

Maybe Jesus was accustomed to seeing rich Jews manuever their camels through the eyes of needles, or something. Or maybe he was talking about rich Arabs, but naa, that doesn't sound as if it'd fit the scene of Jesus Jewish teaching of his students.

And.. Jesus was able to somehow keep his wealth hidden in fishes mouths, specifically for the purpose of paying taxes. What poor Jew would have thought of that trick?

ApostateAbe

I know you are speaking from a hyperskeptical point of view. When I speak about historical knowledge of early Christianity, I assume that my audience accepts the modernist method of deriving probabilistic conclusions from uncertainties, not just settling on uncertainties. You can go ahead and give your postmodernist denials to anything I say, the same as aa5847 does. I will not be commenting on most of it, because I can not easily reason with hyperskepticism.

Newfie

Actually, since a lot of these folks also believe that dinosaurs still existed and were domesticated at the time, wouldn't the richer people have ridden one of these? I wonder, what would have been the Cadillac of dinos?

Toto

There's no such thing as "hyperskepticism." This is a term used by those who maintain that the gospels must be given the benefit of the doubt and assume that they have some historical basis which can be teased out by their special methods.

You only need ordinary skepticism to question the existence of a historical basis to the gospel stories.

ApostateAbe

Yes, you need only ordinary skepticism to question the existence of a historical basis to the gospel stories, and you need hyperskepticism to make such a question a basis of one's entire paradigm, especially when it seems to be contrary to the evidence and patterns of history. Sometimes, I do conclude that a myth contains little if any historical basis, but I do that when the evidence favors it. Hyperskepticism exists among people who are strongly interested in concluding that a myth is nothing but myth, and any attempts to reason with them seem to be a recurring chain of, but how do you know, how do you know, how do you know, a skepticism that would be acceptable if the uncertainties were truly insurmountable, but almost all probabilities seem to be treated as mere speculation no better than any other kind of speculation. With their general way of thinking about Biblical history, reason has absolutely no effect, and I learn very little from debating them, except a few things about psychology.

ApostateAbe

Such a rock formation may be found today if it exists, and we may find text that refers to it as, "the eye of the needle," though I find that metaphor ill-fitting. Ever since Christians accepted that rich people could go to heaven, the traditional explanation has been that there is a short and narrow gate in the wall of Jerusalem called, "the eye of the needle," where travelers would have to squeeze their camels through at night when the main gate is closed. But there has been absolutely no evidence of such a gate--it is completely ad hoc. Given Jesus' repeated radical condemnation of the rich and radical praise of the poor, chances are he really meant "the eye of a needle" when he said, "the eye of a needle."

Toto

So you can't explain how you know, other than you think ancient documents deserve some respect?

John Kesler

See here:

This may not be a mistranslation. First, using the "more difficult reading is likely to be correct" criterion, it is more likely that a scribe "corrected" the word for camel by changing it to rope than that the "correction" went the other way. Bruce Metzger believes this is indeed what happened.

Second, later rabbinic literature made reference to an elephant passing through the eye of a needle, so it seems plausible that Jesus, too, referenced a large animal to point out the difficulty of the task.

See this source for example:

bacht

That could be, but there were precedents for poor teachers, like the Hebrew prophets (some of them) or the Greek Cynics (most of them?)