Needle Through the Camel's Eye

Cecil's Columns/Staff Reports
1

Regarding
http://www.straightdope.com/mailbag/mrichman.html

I had heard once that the Hebrew word for “rope” is very close to the word for “camel,” and this marvellous metaphor is actually the result of a mistranslation. Any evidence to support / denounce this theory?

2

See the followup column :
http://www.straightdope.com/mailbag/mrichma2.html

Saint Eutychus
www.disneyshorts.org

3

Thanks!

4

A relative who listens to a lot of “Religious TV” recently told me that she heard this story:

One of the walls of Jerusalem contained an opening called “The Eye of the Camel,” to pass thru which, one must completely unload all the stuff that is piled on top and around it.

The metaphor would then apply to people.

This is the first I’ve heard of this.

Anyone else???

5

Mjollnir –

That was more or less covered in the original link cited.

6

D’OH.

What a jackass!

I read the second link cited without looking at the first one.

7

No, Mjoll… a camel, not a jackass.

8

I saw a reference recently that the entire Dead Sea Scrolls are now available in translation. Whether true or not (I believe they are definitely partly-available), they would make an interesting additional reference to the various Bible-as-document (as opposed to Bible-as-revelation) and Semitic history questions that seem to crop up here from time to time. (Or is it just me?)

Of course, I personally have better things to do with my time and money…

9

The Dead Sea Scrolls do indeed shed a great deal of interesting information. There are copies of almost every Old Testament Bible book (sometimes slightly different from the canonical version)… and those differences are sometimes enlightening (a word or phrase that is missing from the later canonical version may hep explain a fuzzy verse) and sometimes questionable (it’s possible that the Dead Sea Scroll had a scribal error in it, for instance.)

The non-Biblical scrolls shed a great deal of insight into life at the Qumran sect, somewhere around (say) 100 BC to 100 AD. However, the scrolls must be read carefully; there is consensus that these were the works (or the property) of a sect that pulled itself away from mainstream life. The bottom line question is always: to what extent do these insights into life in the sect correspond to life in the broader Israelite community of the time?