Amos

But AJ, it doesn't matter what you think because the myth tells us that we are banned from Eden and therefore we cannot eat from the tree of life and must go by the tree of knowledge instead . . . which is good, of course, but only for as long as we are banned from Eden. Things get bad only when we have knowledge of both and that is when we are saved on one hand and not saved on the other.

AJ113

So the fact that it is a myth doesn't cause you a few teensy weensy problems in terms of credence, then?

Amos

Not at all. Myth is real. Its just like a painting but then with words instead of paint. It's actually more than a painting because it describes the world in a different way. Maybe you are confused with 'Disneyfied myths.'

seanie

But a man without any adjectives would be adjectiveless.

Which would be an adjective.

Catch-22.

contracycle

And therefore nothing, becuase there was no Eden and we are not banned from it. end of story.

AJ113

Semantics my dear Amos, and a fallacious red herring to boot.

There was never an assertion that the myth is not "real." Of course it's "real." The words are "real" and the words convey a "real" story, but none of this validates the veracity of the story.

What if the painting of which you speak depicted a pink unicorn? Would this validiate the existance of such a beast? I think not.

Your myth is a nothing more than a kiddies' story, a fairytale, a whopping great lie.

Jaelum

I have seen it said somewhere that this tag at the end of the verse was a late addition to the manuscript, and is labeled as such in some Bibles. True?

Jaguar Prince

One of the remarkable things about the story of the camel (or more probably: rope) not being able to go through "the eye of a needle" is how its stern condemnation of the rich has been circumvented in the following verse by the trite saying: "what is impossible to man is possible to God", which is a blatant example of Pauline Christianity retrojected in a Galilean context where only deeds matter.

Note also the amazement of the disciples on hearing Jesus' harsh words: Mark speaks of the disciples being "astonished out of measure" (KJV), Matthew says that they were "exceedingly amazed"(KJV). Only Luke, for a change, does not embellish the story with fantastic details.

But is this bottomless amazement (my own epithet ) plausible? Why should poor Galilean fishermen and artisans be astonished that the rich should not be able to enter the Kingdom? After all, the prophetic literature of Israel can be seen as a long curse directed at those "who eat the flesh my people" (Mic 3:3). The times when prosperity was regarded as a blessing from God were gone and Mary's magnificat in Luke condemns the rich in no uncertain terms: "...the rich He hath sent empty away (1:53)."

In reality, it was the rich people who were hearing the gospel in the fifties and afterwards who had spasms of anguish when they heard this bad news, and it is for their dubious spiritual consumption that the gospel authors invented Jesus' soothing words that God can save the rich because of His omnipotence and infinite mercy, a most improbable statement in Jesus' mouth since it makes so much wasted hot air and saliva of his fresh and richly evocative condemnation of them as totally unfit for the Kingdom.

Dean Anderson

I've closed this thread since it is over a year old, and we discourage the ressurection of old threads.

If you wish to discuss the verse in question, feel free to start a new thread about it.