For the Bible Reading Challenge this summer, I decided to read George Lamsa’s translation of the New Testament—meaning a translation into English from an early Aramaic version. And for the most part, it is like reading an ordinary modern version of the NT, in that all the expected phrases and passages are there, right where they ought to be. But there are occasional curve balls.
One of those curve balls was in Matthew 19:24.
“Again I say to you, It is easier for a rope to go through the eye of a needle, than for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of God.”
Matthew 19:24 (Lamsa Translation)
The attentive reader will have noticed that we are dealing with a rope going through the eye of a needle instead of a camel. Now the reason for this translation is that the Aramaic word for rope and the word for camel are the same word—gamla. And this, in its turn, raises a host of interesting questions. I will jumble them all into one paragraph for you.
In the first instance, Jesus taught in Aramaic. On the other hand, the canonical autographs of His teaching have come down to us in Greek, which means the canonical text is a translation. Nevertheless, it is the canonical text, against which all interpretations are to be measured. Rope would certainly be a legit translation from the Aramaic (as would camel be), but the Greek word (kamelos) does not appear to have the same semantic range that gamla does. One possible take is that when the Greek autographs were penned, many of the original readers of the Greek would have known the Aramaic background, and would therefore have known what was going on, thus preserving original intent. The last thing is that trying to thread a needle with a rope seems (to me at least) to be a much more apt metaphor—unless of course Jesus originally meant camel, in which case I withdraw my evaluation and retire quietly to the back row of the disciples.