Camels and Needles
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[edit] Definition
In the synoptic gospels (Matthew 19:23, Mark 10:25, Luke 18:25) Jesus is represented as saying: "It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God."
[edit] Discussion
[edit] Camels and Hawsers
A small minority of early Greek manuscript read "kamilon" instead of "kamelon": that is "ship's hawser" rather than "camel". It has been suggested by some that "kamilon" is the correct reading, on the grounds that it makes the metaphor more sensible, and that "kamelon" is an error in transmission. We may note that, if so, this would not be the only time when camels have crept unbidden into the text of the Bible: they also appear in the Rebekha's Camels Bible, where they replace "damsels" --- a far more spectacular slip.
Alternatively, the original word may have been "kamelon", and the minority reading may have been introduced by scribes as a supposed emendation because they thought "kamilon" was more sensible.
On the whole, we tend towards the second view. In the first place, "kamilon" is, after all, a minority reading, and it is easier to imagine a few scribes changing a camel into a hawser than vice versa.
In the second place, the metaphor is meant to describe a flat impossibility. It is no criticism of the "kamelon" reading to say that no-one would try to pass a camel through the eye of a needle: that's the point of the parable.
We find a similar metaphor in the Gospels when Jesus speaks of "You blind guides, straining out a gnat and swallowing a camel." Again, the appeal of the metaphor relies on its absurdity. Of course in this case it is clear that "camel" and not "hawser" must be the correct reading.
In the Babylonian Talmud, we read of the impossibility of passing an elephant through the eye of a needle. It is just possible that the text of the Talmud was influenced by the Gospels: but it seems more plausible to suppose that such phrases were a common idiom for anything impossible.
On this basis, we suggest that the "kamelon" reading is more likely to be correct.
[edit] The "Needle's Eye Gate"
One gloss sometimes put on the phrase is that "the needle's eye" was the name for a small gate in Jerusalem through which a camel could only pass if divested of its baggage and in the kneeling position. This would make the parable more precise: the rich man, like the camel, should divest himself of his wealth, and get on his knees (to pray) in order to enter the "Kingdom of God".
This is all very ingenious, but there is no evidence of any gate in Jerusalem known as "the eye of the needle", nor does this interpretation appear until the ninth century.
Nor does it sit well with the context in which the line appears. The disciples are "exceedingly amazed" by the parable and complain "Who, then, can be saved?"; to which Jesus replies that "With men, this is impossible": hardly an apt answer if the passing of camels through "the eye of the needle" was a common occurrence in first-century Jerusalem.
Finally, it is not at all clear that camels are capable of passing through a gate, or anything else, in the kneeling position.
Hence this interpretation, though cute, is almost certainly entirely spurious.
