Camels and Needles.

One of my favourite New testament scholars goes by the name of Eugene Boring. In an interview he pointed out that he has spent his life good-naturedly fielding the steady stream of obvious jokes about his surname. I have most of his books, including a superb commentary on Revelation and his commentary on the Gospel of Mark. Boring they are not!

 

I mention this because yesterday I was revisiting Mark 10.17-31, and the story of the rich young man. That's where the text, "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." Boring has no patience with those who try to make that text bearable and reasonable with far-fetched explanations. Amongst his comments, this gem:

"'Needle's eye refers to a Jerusalem gate.

 

'" Perhaps the most ingenious and well known attempt is the interpretation that posits a narrow gate in the city wall of Jerusalem known as 'the needle's eye'. It was difficult but possible, for a camel to squeeze through it, but only by removing all its baggage, having the camel get down on its knees, and try REALLY hard. The homiletical usefulness of this approach is somewhat obviated by the fact that there was no such actual gate, which first appears in a ninth century commentary on the passage."

So there you are!

Comments

[Dave Summers]

I was taught that explanation in Sunday School. It was a long time before I learned it was false.