ps Your cat isn’t god, I have 3 cats and they each are god.

Very interesting stuff, and thanks for the links. I should point out that my interest in is this is actually far more to do with my field (linguistics) than religion, so I appreciate that everyone else might become bored to death by the detail of this. However, it’s all very curious, and I did a bit more digging in my old semitic books. So, just from a purely academic point of view, I’ve drawn the following conclusions:

1) Kamelos/Kamilos (Greek) are very similar words, and easily transcribed incorrectly. Straight Dope’s assertion that the bizarre translation is more likely to be correct has *some* merit, but I think it’s a stretch to suggest either (a) that it’s a rule (e.g. my grandmother’s maiden name went from ‘Grimes’ to ‘Crimes’ because of a misspelling on her birth certificate – you would’ve thought *someone* would’ve noticed…), or (b) a conjecture that can be considered to be ‘evidence’ one way or another.

2) Written (Classical) Greek rarely came out perfect anyway. Place three ancient versions of the Odyssey side by side, and you’ll see a fair amount of variety between them – both in words used and in spelling. This is most notable for the vowel sounds (such as the short and long Greek “e”).

3) Intriguingly, the Aramaic words for camel and rope are identical (Gamla). As the New Testament, albeit written in Greek, was based on events affecting Aramaic speakers (whether real events or not), it is widely assumed that much of the ’source’ material (whether true or fictitious) came from Aramaic speakers. So perhaps a mis-translation came about between the Aramaic and the Greek, rather than the Greek and the Latin.

4) The usual explanation that the phrase means ‘taking a camel through the Eye of the Needle (where the Eye of the Needle was a gate in Jerusalem) has no written or archeological evidence to support it. No such gate appears to have existed.

Beyond all that, I think we probably can’t say for sure. We’ll probably never know, unless new sources come to light. So I think it remains one of those wonderful historical, linguistic mysteries that makes looking back in time so fascinating (at least to me!)

The New Testament might be a load of superstitious garbage in terms of its content, but as a piece of ancient literature it’s an outstanding and fascinating piece of work. Please don’t all shout at me for saying that. To twist the old saying about guns a little: it’s not books that do damage, it’s how people use them. If only we could delight in the Bible, Qu’oran and other old texts for what they were – a window into the beliefs and lives of our ancestors – rather than as a tool for oppression, brain-washing and spreading nonsense. I hope one day that we’ll get there, and that my children or grandchildren will one day study the religious texts alongside Homer and Virgil, and be taught to have the same critical eye for all of them.

I had always thought that the “camel / eye of the needle” thing was an obscure reference to the difficulty a priest might have with a young altar boy.

If you get my drift, that is……..

And it’s more efficient too. No need to waste good female virgins. It’s like a gift that keeps giving. ;o)

They must be virgins too, because only a male virgin would be horny enough to kill himself (and others) to get laid.

Yes, obviously, the religious are irrational and cult-like, and will try to shove their religion down your throat.

There’s a difference between “virgins” and “female virgins”…

PS: I have at least 72 raisins in my kitchen. Is it a sign? Should I count them?

The Rasins are virgins, anf they are dark eyed. Like a collection of My Chemical Romance fans.

Hey! Eternity with Gothgurls? Sign me up Mohammed!

It does matter in a practical sense of course, because there are people daft enough to take them as the word of god, and acting upon that, try to impose something on those around them. But you can also argue that it doesn’t matter, in the sense that they are no more the divinely inspired word of god than (say) the comments on this page are. So who cares? If it says something good, fine. If not, we look elsewhere.

Anyone know if there was some particular reason for the number 72? Maybe it was the biggest number they’d heard of! 71 would be one every five days for a year but that’s maybe too complicated an idea for the seventh century. Ah I know, the 72nd one was for leap years.

(That was funny!)

Thanks for the insight, ex-Muslim. I did not know any of that.

The rope/needle mistranslation thing is pretty definitely wrong. The Straight Dope covered it rather thoroughly in two articles here:

http://www.straightdope.com/columns/read/1560/whats-the-meaning-of-jesus-teaching-about-the-camel-going-through-the-eye-of-a-needle

http://www.straightdope.com/columns/read/1559/more-on-camels-passing-through-the-eyes-of-needles

In fact, the second link points out that in historical manuscript research, it’s usually the more bizarre translation that’s likely to be correct, because later translators are more likely to attempt to “correct” odd-sounding phrases than go the other way around and insert odd words by mistake.

Which, come to think of it, appears to be exactly why the phrase is under debate today. It’s also why I personally don’t give much credence to the Syrian “raisin” hypothesis either.