The Ever Famous 'Eye of The Needle' Quote

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I think we need a thread on this one just because, I get tired of seeing people throw it around as if they're biblical scholars and know exactly what he meant, who he was speaking to, what group of people had which particular views on wealth, what it may or may not have meant in the broader context in relation to everything he generally preached.

I'll drop a couple of links here that have some interesting information:

http://www.eyeoftheneedle.net/Church%20 ... needle.htm
http://www.creationtips.com/eye_of_needle.html
http://www.biblicalhebrew.com/nt/camelneedle.htm
http://www.bteministries.org/node/160

I feel like I need to bring this up because; if he was speaking to Jews who, at the time, believed that the rich were closer to God because of their providence and the poor were cursed by God - his use of the rich man as an analogy would be to a) tell them that the rich are no more blessed than the poor; you get in through him not through acts as the Jews at the time believed b) one of these sites also linked the possibility that he may have been waving spiritual riches to the man who had material wealth as a far superior wealth.

When people take this one at 2009 word per word without context and see it as "Oh, Jesus was for Christians giving up everything they have to the poor" - I have a really hard time digesting that one, mainly because in a Kantian way it would be very dangerous for both the survival of the faith and the ability of Christians to staple themselves into the dynamic thread of society. I won't get too much more into the politics and economics with this one...I really have to bite my lip though...mainly because I'd really rather see other people discuss their viewpoints on it. Atheists - I know - there is no God so its superfluous, chalk this one up as an aspie exercise in detail obsession and yes, people's general views of what fairy tale books mean still effect you.

without actually going to the sites, I seem to remember that the original was 'rope', instead of 'camel' man', going through a needle. Scans better. the word 'camel' and 'rope' were similar, at least to a New Testament Greek...

It would be easier to get a freight train through the eye of a needle than to get me to believe in Jesus.

I think Jesus is trying to say something...

This post was an accident, it's identical to my last one which I was trying to edit, if you're a moderator, please delete this post. For some reason, the little X button for deleting my own post doesn't appear on this thread like it does in all the other ones. could that be an accidental setting for this particular forum section?

Last edited by normally_impaired on 20 May 2009, 10:44 pm, edited 2 times in total.

How about what James said?

Perhaps there is more context than just the items listed in the OP?

Confer James 5:1-6

It's not that having riches makes a person be a jerk, but it's the whole of the Patrician attitude which comes with the love of money. Heck, my step-dad is at most an Equite, but he has a most deplorable Patrician attitude and thinks he owns everything and anything in his house, whether bought with his money or mine or my sister's belongs to him. He counts to three all the time, to win arguments, whereby if we don't admit we are wrong and he is right, we have no place to live. It's a love of power that comes with money that is the danger of wealth, as well as a false feeling of superiority that turns a man into an ass.

Without reading the web links as I understand it this is a literal saying. There was a passage into the city called the Eye of the Needle or something similar and it would have been impossible to get a camel through it. As I remember it I learnt this from a BBC documentary series ''Jesus; Christ or Man"

Who the heck would name a town "Eye of the Needle"?

Also, trusting a theological exegesis of a documentary which questions the Deity of Christ,
as with a presumed answer rather than truly questioning, is questionable.

reading my post back I see what you are getting at. The city was Jerusalem. This particular passage into Jerusalem was called the 'eye of a needle' because of its size and shape.

Hum, even given that Jerusalem may have had a nickname of "eye of the needle" due to an aerial view or something like that, I don't see how it would be any less possible for a camel to go through Jerusalem than any horse of the Roman army, or any donkey of normal people.

Even if it were impossible for a camel to go through Jerusalem and that was a reference and not metaphorical, it would still have the relational quality addressed to people who are attached to their property more than their soul or even more than they are concerned for those less well off who are also made in God's image the same as they.

NO NO there was a passage way into the city of Jerusalem this passage way was known as the ''eye of a needle.''



Well yes this is the point of the lesson. The camel and the eye of a needle was a literal explanation of how nearly impossible it would be to enter heaven a rich man

Yes, that passage refers to a narrow gate - it might not be impossible to get a camel through, but was very difficult.

Christianity survived for centuries with its believers giving up all that they had to follow God.

False Christians have hijacked the Republican Party, and are deadset on bringing the entire nation to Hell.

Well, if you look at it as everyone should literally give away everything they own (and starve to death naked in the freezing cold), yes, that wouldn't work. On the other hand, if most Christians committed their lives to helping others instead of pursuing wealth, then the faith would be much stronger. Obviously, only the saints are truly selfless, but it would be a huge change if people were simply less selfish ... a measure of selfishness is good for self-preservation, but once certain needs are met, altruism and compassion should become more important.

Well, I do think that Jesus wasn't Kantian at all, so for these ideas to be invoked in a Kantian manner seems rather absurd.

I mean, yes, Jesus was pro-giving. Yes, I think that Jesus was more opposed to materialist living in all of it's forms than most of his followers are, but no, Jesus is not about people having to just be excruciatingly poor for little good reason. Living cheaply? Perhaps. Giving very freely? Sure. Nearly destitute? No. This has less to do with becoming "good members of society" and more to do with pragmatics. Although, I suppose it is arguable that a church could technically counter-balance this impoverishment if it acted as a communal support facility, making my point somewhat superfluous, however, this does not happen much today, and considering it does not, my point seems valid.

I'd be looking more at the human element of the church that way - if Jesus was God there's no point in thinking Kantian because of course, all things are possible and by his will.

I do get really confused and it does remind me that I'm more of a Christian-leaning agnostic than a full-fledged Christian; when I look at the stuff that Henriksson provided I also notice that those would have to point more toward spiritual self-actualization, ideal states to attain, etc. but as upside down as this world is its difficult for me to think of anyone going to hell for living by their beliefs to the best of their ability and doing the best they can with what they have. I always tended to think that the reason why many people seemed selfish is that they only had so much physical energy to go around - they'd have enough in them to make it through the day, deal with the spouse and kids, deal with housework or something to stay fit, and there's enough left to do a little bit but to really get in there and go the full mile in helping people is definitely much more a vocation and one for likely a select few.

I guess what I see people proposing here of these words is that anyone who's living an upper-middle class lifestyle is already doing something wrong. I can't fathom that. We're all different, have different drives, different capacities, different needs for happiness and everyone's free to take their best course (or the best course could easily be seen as predestiny or the lack of free will from some angles). Maybe I'm just way out the right of Ragtime and don't know it, but I can't see what the socialist-Jesus people are saying. A guy who quite literally built the ways of the world along with the world would have to have a deeper meaning than just what's at face value, and that's by no means saying it should be dismissed but its saying that when something doesn't make sense, doesn't add up, epecially along a narrow conduit where most other things around it do make sense - it probably needs more careful evaluation because there are likely other dynamics at play, counter-narratives, other things really being implied that may not necessarily flip the meaning on its head 180 degrees but may have a completely different driving focus. I also know that while I'm definitely not rich I have to really puzzle at how people attack the group who's already paying 70% of the taxes; Jesus spoke of the rich but did he speak of pirhanas?