Camel eye of a needle
Matthew 19:23-24 contains this passage: “Then Jesus said to his disciples, “Amen, I say to you, it will be hard for one who is rich to enter the kingdom of heaven. Again I say to you, it is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for one who is rich to enter the kingdom of God.”
Catholic Fundamentalism began when a young man, a Protestant Fundamentalist, was struggling with that passage. “Surely, if the Fundamentalist approach to Scripture is right, an actual camel can go through the eye of an actual needle.”
He found no assistance in that exploring that idea. “The gate refers to ‘the needle’s eye’, a gate in Jerusalem’s city wall that was so narrow camels had to be unloaded to get through it.” He was also told, repeatedly, that “The passage is allegorical.”
Alternative Bible Reading
The young man was paralyzed. “I have just quit my tenured teaching job to start a business in order to become more prosperous. I have to get going because I have to support my family. Now, I find out that if I get rich, my soul can’t get into Heaven unless a camel can go through a needle’s eye.”
After wrestling with this conundrum, he sat quietly. He realized that a camel could go through the eye of a needle that was a block long. He also understood that a camel could be incinerated, its ashes diluted, and over time could be pumped through a tiny hypodermic needle through the eye of a sewing needle.”
“That won’t do.”, he felt another thought thinking. “The big needle is no longer a real needle and the incinerated camel couldn’t walk.”
Another thought entered his mind: “What you do is take an egg from an ovulating camel. You fertilize it with a donation from a male camel. When the fertilized egg is in the process of dividing, you put it in a drop of amniotic fluid under a microscope. A small, sterilized needle can be passed through the droplet. You will see that the fertilized, growing egg passes through the needle’s eye as easily as a ping-pong ball through a basketball hoop.
“Then, you implant the fertilized egg in the womb of the mother camel. When that young camel is born, it will be a camel that has gone through the eye of a needle.”
And that, dear friends, was the beginning of Catholic Fundamentalism.
