Camels and Ropes and Eyes of Needles
There is a parable in the Bible that goes something along the lines of “it’s easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than a rich man to enter the kingdom of God”.
Originally written in Greek, the word for ‘camel’ is κάμηλον. Interestingly, the Greek word for ‘rope’ is κάμιλον.
κάμηλον
κάμιλον
See the similarity? I’m thinking that the word ‘rope’ makes sense in the context of difficult things to thread through the eye of a needle. Especially because things like ropes (i.e. thread) can go through the eye of a needle.
I remember hearing an explanation for this long ago that the ‘eye of the needle’ was actually a gate in the wall of a city and that the camels entering this gate would have to shuffle through on their knees – a nice analogy of humility – but now I’m wondering if someone just made this up in order to cover for what is an odd-ball parable because of a mistranslation.
Any Greek scholars out there? Is this odd parable the result of a simple mistranslation?
Tags: camel, eye of needle, greek, parable, rope
Try this:
http://www.biblicalhebrew.com/nt/camelneedle
Or this:
http://www.eyeoftheneedle.net/Church%20Traditions/eye_of_a_needle.htm
Very interesting. So if the gospels were originally written in Aramaic instead of Greek we have a word that is actually the same (gamla) for camel, rope and beam and its usage depends entirely on context. I had a quick look around and it seems to be the opinion of most scholars I came across that the synoptic gospels (particularly Mark which Matthew and Luke are supposed to be derivatives of) were originally written in Greek. Although they concede that the author of Mark may have been a native Aramaic speaker.
Neat stuff.
The earliest manuscripts are often assumed to be the most accurate, but this could be an example that this is not always the case…
It’s possible that Jesus and other Jews knew Greek. Scholars have differed as to how common Greek-speaking was among Jews. Philo and Paul are two obvious examples (not to mention Josephus) of Jews who wrote in Greek, but they were very well educated, and the Jewish attitude to the Greek language (and the culture so attached to it) was not exactly ‘eager’…
Certainly, the ‘rope’ option does indeed make it less ‘strange’, but the sayings’ meaning is clear enough: ‘entering’ God’s ‘Kingdom’ is hard to do. This comes (in all synoptic versions) just after the famous encounter with the man (said to be ‘rich’ in all three, but specified as a ‘ruler’ in Luke) who was grieved at Jesus’ suggestion that if he was to completely keep ‘the law’, he had to give to the poor. The ‘Kingdom’ of God is a self-less kingdom, and being self-less is hard to do…
-d-
Whether the word is camel or rope, Jesus’ use and meaning of the saying is fairly clear. (Its apparent odd-ballness is probably due to it being from a different culture and time).
So, it is impossible for anyone to enter the Kingdom, except by God’s own hand. This is what Jesus mission was all about. To fulfill the means by which all folk may enter the His Kingdom. This counters all the other (including ‘religious’) options that people espouse such as burning incense, being enlightened, prayer wheels/scarves, meditation, church or temple going, being rich or poor, powerful or desolate, or being just plain nice.
I always thought that “camel” was an odd sort of non-sequitir for a man claiming to be god to use. I never investigated the case in the greek, but I did come across an explanation in Lamsa’s translation from Aramaic. Apparently, the similarity of the two words in Aramaic is even greater, making the mistake even easier. It’s funny how many explanations try to justify its use without mentioning serisously that is could easily have been miscopied. Such an explanation would remind believers that men are intimately involved in the creation and transmission of these boooks; something about the holy ghost going “whoops” just doesn’t fly with these folks.
“…something about the holy ghost going “whoops” just doesn’t fly with these folks…”
…especially if ‘these folks’ have a strict, mechanistic ‘dictation’ view of inspiration of the bible…
-d-
Either way the expression makes sense though. This is an ancient teaching that was also conveyed by the Buddha and many others. The impossibility of the act (camel or rope) is meant to convey the impossibility of the rich man to vacate his ego, deny the material world, and see that the kingdom of heaven is all around him, there for the taking. This is the fundamental teaching and is easily seen in many other seemingly nonsensical parables.
The Greek word for camel in that saying (Matthew 19:24) is κάμηλος
The Greek word for rope in the New Testament (as in Acts 27:32) is σχοινίον, which is very different.
The claim about the camel and the eye of a needle is a claim about verbal similarity in Aramaic, likely the everyday language of Matthew, since the word for rope and camel are the same.
But there is no serious case that this is a mistranslation from the Greek manuscripts into English.
Regarding the Gospels being written in Aramaic, it cannot be stressed strongly enough that there is absolutely no manuscript evidence to support this contention – not even a little. There’s literally not one piece. Anywhere.
This theory is mostly popular with people who themselves prefer to use as many Hebrew words in their English talk about God, and who actually, at times, seem to think that the Hebrew language itself is holy, to the point of almost being magical.
Thanks Glenn, I was suspicious of the Aramaic claim as it seemed the more reliable sources held that the gospels were written in Greek. So, does κάμιλον not mean rope?? I was led to believe it was and it made sense to me that if the original document said κάμιλον (rope) then it would be a simple copyist’s error to alter it to κάμηλον (camel).
I agree, if the original story was “rope through the eye of a needle” then the error would have crept in either verbally in the Aramaic retelling or as a copyist’s error in the original Greek (or possibly even in a verbal dictation to a scribe in Greek). It’s possible too that the analogy was commonplace back in those days and had already become ‘camel’ in much the same way that we might say ‘ginormous’.
fwiw, I agree the greek (somehow) morphing from kamilon to kamelon seems very plausible. If it were a morph from camel to rope (which it could be given that the few ‘rope’ manuscripts are apparently later than the ‘camel’ ones?) I’d want to ask how such a striking/memorable saying (a camel!! really?) slid into a less striking one… But the caution inn the discipline is not to assume that “early = more accurate”. the later manuscripts may have been composed with access to more reliable (widely known/used/read) copies – even the original autographs.
Oh? I wasn’t aware that later manuscripts had ‘rope’? Perhaps the best explanation for that would be that they thought the same thing as me, i.e. that it was supposed to be ‘rope’ in the first place and made the correction?
quite possible, in my view
at the site you linked to above (net bible), footnote 30 says this:
But no modern versions say ‘rope’?
none that I’ve seen. they would be adopting the standard practice of appealing to what most manuscripts have, not necessarily the earliest (or, of course, latest). past interpretation also influences things too.
Well, the Greek word for rope in the New Testament is σχοινίον.
That word is used every time the NT writers referred to rope, with no exceptions that I know of (and admittedly references to rope or cord is rare: Acts 27:32, John 2:15). That weighs against it being a copying error, since it’s likely that if “rope” were the original intent in Greek, then σχοινίον would have initially been used. If a late witness used a hapax legomenon (unique word compared to the rest of the NT) like κάμιλον then that would make sense as a misreading, and points to the original word being κάμηλον rather than σχοινίον (the likely word if rope was intended).
Re: the manuscript tradition, the modern versions don’t necessarily favour the majority reading (i.e. the reading found in the largest number of manuscripts). In fact, some advocates of the “King James Only” position make precisely that point: That modern versions don’t follow the majority, but the King James does (which is why the family of Greek manuscripts used for the King James is now called “the Majority text’), so therefore the King James Bible must be better.
Modern versions strive to seek out the earliest possible readings from older manuscripts. In particular two important manuscripts: Codices Vaticanus and Sinaiticus, are centuries older than any other complete manuscripts available. That being said, modern translations are also informed by smaller finds of part-manuscripts as well, and in my view certainly provide a more reliable guide to the original writings.
Advocates of the Majority text (rather than the oldest available manuscripts) sometimes argue from silence that it’s possible (i.e. not disproven) that there are other, older, now forever lost manuscripts that really would show that the majority text is best. Trouble is, there’s clearly no evidence for this.
Almost a year later…
This morning in my devotional bible reading I got to this passage in Mark, so was doing a little research and found that the ‘camel’ (Gk: kamilos) reading (which if I’m not mistaken is in the earliest manuscripts) may be more likely than I’d thought above in this thread. Apparently it was common to describe an impossible situation to make a point; for example, the Babylonian Talmud:
There seem to be more than enough words in the Greek language for issues like this to happen every so often
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