The majority of JC teaching would hardly have been considered unique by his contemporaries. Where he made ethical pronouncements he was usually very far off the mark (as in turn the other check, chop off bodily parts for sins, not taking care of the morrow) and has been unsurprising ignored.

His doctrine of "loving your neighbour" is lifted from Leviticus and had also been pronounced by greater thinker than him many hundreds of years before. Almost every fundamental aspect of the teachings unique to him are being ignored by his followers today. Why they call themselves Christian is beyond me.

However, Jesus' most last and indelible legacy to posterity has been the doctrine of hell as a place of eternal torment and punishment. I would like to suggest that since this is the most significant of JC teachings, maybe followers of JC should call themselves Hellians instead of Christians.

In fact, as of today, I shall start referring to the all followers of JC as Hellians.


The second of JC greatest innovation was a intense dislike for wealth and progress as evidence in "the eye of a needle" comment, and Luke 14: 33. Just as well this is is largely ignored by his followers.

I believe that a certain Zoroaster got there before him. Beat him to it by a few centuries in fact.

check here: http://www.hell-on-line.org/AboutZOR.html



Sins and Sinners

Since the texts do not comprehensively describe the geography of hell, it is difficult to get any notion of whether sinners are consigned to specific areas. Despite its prohibitions against evil thoughts, evil words and evil deeds, descriptions of Zoroastrian hell only catalog sinners guilty of evil deeds: acts either committed or omitted. Punishments correlate to sins. The Book of Arda Viraf, in particular, describes 85 punishments and specifies the sins that occasion them. Both men and women are among those punished, with men slightly outnumbering women. Children appear only to torment parents, but adults may be punished if they were bad children. Usual sins include sodomy and adultery; theft, lying, perjury, deceit, slander, extortion, making false covenants, breaking promises, and murder.

There are also sins:

against a spouse: abuse and neglect
against a child: abortion, infanticide, abuse and neglect
against religion: apostasy, sorcery and profanity
against the civil order: false measures, false justice, bad administration, failed hospitality, injustice of employers or partners, disloyalty of subjects
against the social order: particularly violations of purity laws concerning fire and water; seeds, food and crops, poison and opium; and menstruating women
against animals: neglect, abuse or murder, especially of quadrupeds, and most especially of cattle
against the self: laziness, vanity, excessive grief, miserliness, withheld goodness.
The standard punishment found in the majority of texts is for the wicked to be fed fetid and putrid things while waiting thousands of years in the company of demons until the final resurrection. However, the Book of Arda Viraf elaborates on all manner of punishment, which are so disgusting that E. W. West’s translation in Sacred Books of the East broke off midway, explaining: “From here onward the pictures of the tortured souls become too nauseous to follow.”

huxley:

The majority of JC teaching would hardly have been considered unique by his contemporaries. Where he made ethical pronouncements he was usually very far off the mark (as in turn the other check, chop off bodily parts for sins, not taking care of the morrow) and has been unsurprising ignored.

His doctrine of "loving your neighbour" is lifted from Leviticus and had also been pronounced by greater thinker than him many hundreds of years before. Almost every fundamental aspect of the teachings unique to him are being ignored by his followers today. Why they call themselves Christian is beyond me.

However, Jesus' most last and indelible legacy to posterity has been the doctrine of hell as a place of eternal torment and punishment. I would like to suggest that since this is the most significant of JC teachings, maybe followers of JC should call themselves Hellians instead of Christians.

In fact, as of today, I shall start referring to the all followers of JC as Hellians.


The second of JC greatest innovation was a intense dislike for wealth and progress as evidence in "the eye of a needle" comment, and Luke 14: 33. Just as well this is is largely ignored by his followers.

Huxley! Huxley! Huxley! (shaking head very, very slowly).

@huxley
You still have about 4.5 billion people to convince.

Its no use running, when you are on the wrong road.

imhotep:

@huxley
You still have about 4.5 billion people to convince.

Its no use running, when you are on the wrong road.

Yup!!!

huxley you are a retarded, demented, traumatised soul garbed in analysis paralysis. Get off those cheap weeds and get help fast.

youngies:

huxley you are a retarded, demented, traumatised soul garbed in analysis paralysis. Get off those cheap weeds and get help fast.

I would have liked to have seen a constructive contribution to the post rather than throw insults at me. Have you got the the intellectual ability to refute the points I raised?

huxley:

The second of JC greatest innovation was a intense dislike for wealth and progress as evidence in "the eye of a needle" comment, and Luke 14: 33. Just as well this is is largely ignored by his followers.

You would never understand anything if you dont open your heart to know more. You want to know what Jesus Christ meant by the parable about the eye of the needle? I think the following will help you understand it

'The camel and the eye of the needle', Matthew 19:24, Mark 10:25, Luke 18:25

Just where is that gate in Jerusalem?
"It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle, than for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of God." (Matthew 19:24)
For the last two centuries it has been common teaching in Sunday School that there is a gate in Jerusalem called the eye of the needle through which a camel could not pass unless it stooped and first had all its baggage first removed. After dark, when the main gates were shut, travellers or merchants would have to use this smaller gate, through which the camel could only enter unencumbered and crawling on its knees! Great sermon material, with the parallels of coming to God on our knees without all our baggage. A lovely story and an excellent parable for preaching but unfortunately unfounded! From at least the 15th century, and possibly as early as the 9th but not earlier, this story has been put forth, however, there is no evidence for such a gate, nor record of reprimand of the architect who may have forgotten to make a gate big enough for the camel and rider to pass through unhindered.

Variations on this theme include that of ancient inns having small entrances to thwart thieves, or the story of an old mountain pass known as the "eye of the needle", so narrow that merchants would have to dismount from their camels and were thus easier prey for brigands lying in wait.

Mangled Greek maybe?
There are some differences in the transmitted Greek. The needle in Matthew and Mark is a rafic. In Luke it is a belone. But both are synonyms for needles used in sewing, but Luke's is more likely to be used by a surgeon than a seamstress.

Another possible solution comes from the possibility of a Greek misprint. The suggestion is that the Greek word kamilos ('camel') should really be kamêlos, meaning 'cable, rope', as some late New Testament manuscripts1 actually have here. Hence it is easier to thread a needle with a rope rather than a strand of cotton than for a rich man to enter the kingdom. A neat but unnecessary solution!

A variation on all of the above is that the needle was a 6 inch carpet needle and the rope was made of camel hair- but this is again clutching at straws or camel hair, and is an unnecessary emendation.

Makes sense in Aramaic
An alternative linguistic explanation is taken from George M Lamsa's Syriac-Aramaic Peshitta translation2 which has the word 'rope' in the main text but a footnote on Matthew 19:24 which states that the Aramaic word gamla means rope and camel, possibly because the ropes were made from camel hair. Evidence for this also comes from the 10th century Aramaic lexicographer Mar Bahlul who gives the meaning as a "a large rope used to bind ships". (cf. http://www.aramaicnt.org/HTML/LUKE/evidences/Camel.html)

Some have even suggested a pun in Aramaic between camel and gnat or louse from the Aramaic kalma 'vermin, louse'.

Just as the apocryphal Acts of Peter and Andrew 3 refers the saying to a literal camel and needle, so we are not meant to reason away the apparent difficulty of getting a camel through a needle's eye. For the difficulty is not apparent it is real, and not be solved by textual trickery but by taking the ludicrous language at face value.

What we have instead then, I believe, is a beautiful Hebrew hyperbole, as in the tree sticking out of one's eye whilst one is removing a speck in another's eye! Indeed, Jewish Talmudic literature uses a similar aphorism about an elephant passing through the eye of a needle as a figure of speech implying the unlikely or impossible:
"They do not show a man a palm tree of gold, nor an elephant going through the eye of a needle."4
This first instance concerned dreams and their interpretation and suggested that men only dream that which is natural or possible, not that which is unlikely ever to have occurred to them.
"… who can make an elephant pass through the eye of a needle."5
In this case, the illustration concerns a dispute between two rabbis, one of whom suggests that the other is speaking "things which are impossible".

The camel was the largest animal seen regularly in Israel, whereas in regions where the Babylonian Talmud was written, the elephant was the biggest animal. Thus the aphorism is culturally translated from a camel to an elephant in regions outside of Israel.

The aim is not, then, to explain away the paradox and make the needle a huge carpet needle for, elsewhere, the Jewish writings use the "eye of the needle" as a picture of a very small place, "A needle's eye is not too narrow for two friends, but the world is not wide enough for two enemies."6 . The ludicrous contrast between the small size of the needle's eye and the largest indigenous animal is to be preserved for its very improbability.

Jesus' hearers believed that wealth and prosperity were a sign of God's blessing (cf. Leviticus and Deuteronomy). So their incredulity is more along the lines that, "if the rich, who must be seen as righteous by God by dint of their evident blessing, can't be saved, who can be?". Later Christians have turned this around to portray wealth as a hindrance to salvation, which it can be – but no more so than many other things, when the message is that salvation is impossible for all men for it comes from God alone.

But beyond impossibility is possibility with God for, elsewhere, a Jewish midrash records:
"The Holy One said, open for me a door as big as a needle's eye and I will open for you a door through which may enter tents and [camels?]"7
In other words God only needs the sinner to open up just a crack for him and God will come pouring in and set up room for an oasis. God only needs a 'foot in the door', so to speak.

This is similar to the Talmudic use of two Hebrew letters, one which represents God holiness ('Q' Qoph, as in qadôsh 'holy') and another representing evil ('R' Resh, as in ra' 'evil'), in a story told for the purpose of teaching the Hebrew alphabet and Jewish morals. It is said that 'q' has a separated opening in order that should 'r' repent he may enter into God's holiness through the small opening.

A brief survey of sermons or search on the Internet reveals how many perpetuate the myth of the small gate in Jerusalem. Victorian travellers to the Holy Land even claim to have been shown it. The inaccuracy may appear harmless but it is neither good scholarship nor good exposition. The exaggerated and contrasted size is deliberate and is not an overt judgement on riches or poverty. Jesus reflects on how hard it often is for the rich to enter the kingdom of God. The riches are a distraction and hard to share if one is too attached to them. The disciples' incredulity is that if even the rich cannot be saved, who can? But the verdict is that even the rich, not only the rich, will find it impossible to save themselves – but with God all things are possible.

http://www.biblicalhebrew.com/nt/camelneedle.htm

babaearly:

You would never understand anything if you don't open your heart to know more. You want to know what Jesus Christ meant by the parable about the eye of the needle? I think the following will help you understand it

'The camel and the eye of the needle', Matthew 19:24, Mark 10:25, Luke 18:25

Just where is that gate in Jerusalem?
"It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle, than for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of God." (Matthew 19:24)
For the last two centuries it has been common teaching in Sunday School that there is a gate in Jerusalem called the eye of the needle through which a camel could not pass unless it stooped and first had all its baggage first removed. After dark, when the main gates were shut, travellers or merchants would have to use this smaller gate, through which the camel could only enter unencumbered and crawling on its knees! Great sermon material, with the parallels of coming to God on our knees without all our baggage. A lovely story and an excellent parable for preaching but unfortunately unfounded! From at least the 15th century, and possibly as early as the 9th but not earlier, this story has been put forth, however, there is no evidence for such a gate, nor record of reprimand of the architect who may have forgotten to make a gate big enough for the camel and rider to pass through unhindered.

Variations on this theme include that of ancient inns having small entrances to thwart thieves, or the story of an old mountain pass known as the "eye of the needle", so narrow that merchants would have to dismount from their camels and were thus easier prey for brigands lying in wait.

Mangled Greek maybe?
There are some differences in the transmitted Greek. The needle in Matthew and Mark is a rafic. In Luke it is a belone. But both are synonyms for needles used in sewing, but Luke's is more likely to be used by a surgeon than a seamstress.

Another possible solution comes from the possibility of a Greek misprint. The suggestion is that the Greek word kamilos ('camel') should really be kamêlos, meaning 'cable, rope', as some late New Testament manuscripts1 actually have here. Hence it is easier to thread a needle with a rope rather than a strand of cotton than for a rich man to enter the kingdom. A neat but unnecessary solution!

A variation on all of the above is that the needle was a 6 inch carpet needle and the rope was made of camel hair- but this is again clutching at straws or camel hair, and is an unnecessary emendation.

Makes sense in Aramaic
An alternative linguistic explanation is taken from George M Lamsa's Syriac-Aramaic Peshitta translation2 which has the word 'rope' in the main text but a footnote on Matthew 19:24 which states that the Aramaic word gamla means rope and camel, possibly because the ropes were made from camel hair. Evidence for this also comes from the 10th century Aramaic lexicographer Mar Bahlul who gives the meaning as a "a large rope used to bind ships". (cf. http://www.aramaicnt.org/HTML/LUKE/evidences/Camel.html)

Some have even suggested a pun in Aramaic between camel and gnat or louse from the Aramaic kalma 'vermin, louse'.

Just as the apocryphal Acts of Peter and Andrew 3 refers the saying to a literal camel and needle, so we are not meant to reason away the apparent difficulty of getting a camel through a needle's eye. For the difficulty is not apparent it is real, and not be solved by textual trickery but by taking the ludicrous language at face value.

What we have instead then, I believe, is a beautiful Hebrew hyperbole, as in the tree sticking out of one's eye whilst one is removing a speck in another's eye! Indeed, Jewish Talmudic literature uses a similar aphorism about an elephant passing through the eye of a needle as a figure of speech implying the unlikely or impossible:
"They do not show a man a palm tree of gold, nor an elephant going through the eye of a needle."4
This first instance concerned dreams and their interpretation and suggested that men only dream that which is natural or possible, not that which is unlikely ever to have occurred to them.
"… who can make an elephant pass through the eye of a needle."5
In this case, the illustration concerns a dispute between two rabbis, one of whom suggests that the other is speaking "things which are impossible".

The camel was the largest animal seen regularly in Israel, whereas in regions where the Babylonian Talmud was written, the elephant was the biggest animal. Thus the aphorism is culturally translated from a camel to an elephant in regions outside of Israel.

The aim is not, then, to explain away the paradox and make the needle a huge carpet needle for, elsewhere, the Jewish writings use the "eye of the needle" as a picture of a very small place, "A needle's eye is not too narrow for two friends, but the world is not wide enough for two enemies."6 . The ludicrous contrast between the small size of the needle's eye and the largest indigenous animal is to be preserved for its very improbability.

Jesus' hearers believed that wealth and prosperity were a sign of God's blessing (cf. Leviticus and Deuteronomy). So their incredulity is more along the lines that, "if the rich, who must be seen as righteous by God by dint of their evident blessing, can't be saved, who can be?". Later Christians have turned this around to portray wealth as a hindrance to salvation, which it can be – but no more so than many other things, when the message is that salvation is impossible for all men for it comes from God alone.

But beyond impossibility is possibility with God for, elsewhere, a Jewish midrash records:
"The Holy One said, open for me a door as big as a needle's eye and I will open for you a door through which may enter tents and [camels?]"7
In other words God only needs the sinner to open up just a crack for him and God will come pouring in and set up room for an oasis. God only needs a 'foot in the door', so to speak.

This is similar to the Talmudic use of two Hebrew letters, one which represents God holiness ('Q' Qoph, as in qadôsh 'holy') and another representing evil ('R' Resh, as in ra' 'evil'), in a story told for the purpose of teaching the Hebrew alphabet and Jewish morals. It is said that 'q' has a separated opening in order that should 'r' repent he may enter into God's holiness through the small opening.

A brief survey of sermons or search on the Internet reveals how many perpetuate the myth of the small gate in Jerusalem. Victorian travellers to the Holy Land even claim to have been shown it. The inaccuracy may appear harmless but it is neither good scholarship nor good exposition. The exaggerated and contrasted size is deliberate and is not an overt judgement on riches or poverty. Jesus reflects on how hard it often is for the rich to enter the kingdom of God. The riches are a distraction and hard to share if one is too attached to them. The disciples' incredulity is that if even the rich cannot be saved, who can? But the verdict is that even the rich, not only the rich, will find it impossible to save themselves – but with God all things are possible.

http://www.biblicalhebrew.com/nt/camelneedle.htm

What the hell is all this? I would like to see your own opinion! Whatever "the eye of the needle" was, I think that a comparison was meant between that entity and a rich man.

Or does "a rich man" nor mean a wealth man, but some abstract entity in old jewish mythological figure?

huxley:

I would have liked to have seen a constructive contribution to the post rather than throw insults at me. Have you got the the intellectual ability to refute the points I raised?

But Huxley, I've pointed out that Zoroaster preached about hell long before Jesus Christ so it can't be an innovation. You made no response.
Also the Stoics had a similar attitude to wealth and they preceded Jesus christ too. what do you have to say about these?