Jesus said..

[tinkerbells]

Hello,
Not sure if this is the right catagory but anyway...
When Jesus said ''It Is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than a rich man to go to heaven'' What was he meaning?
Thanks x

[Booldawg]

basically Cliff Richard is screwed.....

[grandmak]

Something to do with camels passing through narrow gates into a city when they were fully laden with goods.
Hope this helps.

[tinkerbells]

Thanks x

[Catron]

There are many sites dealing with this saying - this is one of them:

http://www.users.bigpond.com/rdoolan/eye_of_ne edle.html

[Cetti]

Jesus is being deliberately humorous here in suggesting the 'impossible' - a camel going through the eye of a literal needle.

They were surprised because they thought riches were a reward for goodnes - an index of a person's spiritual state.

[Catron]

That is your interpretation Cetti - it would not be the interpretation of others.

[Peter Pedant]

The eye of the needle was a pedestrian gateway in J which sort of squished you, and so a camel would not have been able to get through.

I thought

[Big Stu]

you rich you going to hell? ......................i dunno

[Booldawg]

Cetti is spot on IMO. Jesus was using a camel passing through the eye of a needle as an allegorical term for something that is impossible to acheive; the bible is full of examples of Jesus using parables and explaining himself using similies to get his message across. This teaching falls in line with other passages in the bible including 'the meek will inherit the earth' and 'store not up your riches on earth'.

[jno]

I've always thought the mistranslation was the likeliest: that what he said was the word for rope, which is similar to camel. Camels and needles don't really belong together. The surrealists last century talked about' the chance meeting on a dissecting table of an umbrella and a sewing machine', deliberately bringing totally different objects together for shock/humorous effect, but you don't generally find that sort of random thinking in writings any earlier than that. I'm not convinced this odd image would have occurred to Jesus or made any sense to his followers. Nor did most of his other teachings show any similar sort of humour.

[gonzo00]

think jesus was using this in the context of money being the root of all evil....possibly!!!

[ruby_soho]

Literally means you can't buy your way into heaven.

[ann_h]

Whatever the camel and needle were, it's still obvious and accepted as meaning an impossibility
As to the rich man:
If you read the whole chapter, the man asks how to achieve perfection and Jesus says to lay down your wealth and then follow me - by this he means it is easy to behave in a "Christian" fashion eg give time to prayer, and be generous with your money time and effort to others when you have all your own needs met. It is the real test of a person's faith and good nature to be pleasant, generous, helpful and moreover thank God for their life when they are in dire straits. Job being the example of one who did. (Poor s0d)

So being rich in itself shows that you probably have not proven yourself truly faithful.

[sfy]

In the bible there are many examples of the big JC being humerous. In fact I hear he's got a stand up video called Justice coming out for easter . Apparentley he was also ironic
:o)

[sfy]

I thought it was something like Peter Pedants answer about the pedestrian passage