NT in Hebrew, camels, needles, and riches

[Amy Z]

Wotan wrote:

> Possibly I'm getting hopelessly muddled up! Probably thinking of Old 
> Testament Hebrew. 
> 
> Is Aramaic the same as Syriac? (dim and distant memories of school 
RI 
> lessons).

I'm not sure...and my NT courses shouldn't be that dim and distant, 
given that I graduated from seminary all of one year ago.

Jesus spoke Aramaic, and large chunks of the OT are Aramaic; it's 
close to the Hebrew of the time (modern Hebrew's pretty different, but 
not as different as classical from modern Greek or Old from modern 
English--I think).

But I checked my NT notes, and my handy photocopy of the Matthew 
article from some terrific NT encyclopedia I wish I owned said that 
Matthew wrote in Greek, perhaps for a Greek-speaking Jewish population 
such as the one in Antioch.  He uses a lot of Greek plays on words.  
(Later, the church translated the NT to Latin, then later still to 
various vernaculars--then-modern English, French, Hebrew, what have 
you.  Which are, of course, the definitive version.   As one elderly 
woman said when it was suggested that she use something more 
up-to-date than the King James Version:  "If it was good enough for 
Jesus, it's good enough for me!")

Anyway, something I have read about this passage is that "the eye of a 
needle" was the term for a very narrow opening in city walls that 
allowed camels to come into the city without going through the huge 
main gates.  I.e., that Jesus didn't mean "it is impossible for a rich 
man to get into heaven" but "it is difficult for a rich man to get 
into heaven."

So far, however, no one has wormed their way out of "sell what you 
have and give it to the poor."  That one doesn't leave much room for 
interpretation . . . 

Amy Z