Twenty years is a long time to be doing this. It’s a long time to be doing anything.
From March 6, 2006, “Filtered camels“:
Our official tour guide was a little bald man named Tony. He looked like an Armenian version of Danny DeVito. Standing outside the Lion’s Gate to the Old City, I asked him about another famous gate in Jerusalem — one I’d heard about my whole life growing up in evangelical Christianity. Now that I was there, I wanted to see it for myself.
“Where’s the ‘Eye of the Needle’ gate?” I asked.
If you’ve never heard of it, I should explain. In Mark 10:25, Jesus said, “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.”
This, it had been explained to me countless times, was a reference to the smallest of the gates in the walls of Jerusalem. This passage was less a gate than a single door, just large enough for a man to walk through, but too small to afford a breach to a hostile army.
The Eye of the Needle was too small for a camel to walk through — particularly if that camel was laden with worldly goods. If the other gates were closed, however, it could be managed. First, everything had to be taken off of the camel. Then the beast would be made to kneel, almost to crawl, to duck through the tiny gate. And then, on the other side, it could again stand up and everything could be put back on the camel.
So, OK, back to 1990.
“Where’s the ‘Eye of the Needle’ gate?” I asked.
Tony laughed. “Always, always Americans are asking to see this Eye of the Needle gate. There is no such gate. I do not know where this idea comes from.”
Read the whole post here.
Ad-Free & Subscriber Log-In