From: Jeffrey Gibson (jgibson@acfsysv.roosevelt.edu)
Date: Wed Feb 04 1998 - 18:39:25 EST
On Thu, 5 Feb 1998, Andrew Kulikovsky wrote:
>
> I think this is significant since, it IS IMPOSSIBLE for a camel
> to go through the eye of a needle just as it is impossible for a person
> who places more value on wealth than anything else to enter the Kingdom
> of Heaven.
>
It is curious, isn't it, that the translation of KAMIILON as Camel
actually *diminishes* the harshness of the saying (not to mention that it
mixes apples and oranges, or dromidaries with small daggers), in that as
long as the idea of the eye of the needle has something to do with a gate
in a city wall, there is left over the *possibility* of passage, rough or
difficult as that might be. But it is only when we translate KAMIILON as
"rope" or, more "alliteraly", "cable" that the true sense of Jesus'
metaphor, which I take is something inteneded to stress impossibility, is
maintained. A rope CANNOT pass through a needle's eye.
Jeffrey Gibson
jgibson@acfsysv.roosevelt.edu
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