Silly Notions

[jaybreak]

Literal interpreters of Scripture can come up some silly notions.
 This comes from our former Pastor and used to make me cringe when he said it from the pulpit occasionally. I shall paraphrase 
      " If I knew how many people were alive when God sealed Noah and his family into the arc, I could tell you when the Lord will return because Jesus said "As it was in the days of Noah.... ".  Now, that's just plain nutty.
 If you've got any silly stuff like the "Noah Equation" do share.

The "camel through the eye of a needle" thing. I've heard many interpretations of that, and I haven't bothered to look up what the real one is. The literal interpretation, referring to an actual sewing needle head with the loop at the top, might be the correct one (it paints a silly, exaggerated picture that Jesus employed often), but I don't think that's what was intended.

   I heard it said the eye of the needle was actually a tiny gate in the walls of Jerusalem where, a camel had to be unloaded and then somehow shuffled through on it's knees. All very reasonable until you realize Jerusalem was not that big of a city and had plenty of gates to walk a fully camel through without all that rigamarole. Freaking Pharisees. I call all the literalists Freaking Pharisees. It's what they are. "I'm for Israel" Freaking Pharisee. Zionista's are FPs too, as a matter of fact, most Christians are FPs.

That may be true re: the needle gate, and I think I've heard that interpretation before. I think it's plausible because "passing through the eye of the needle" may have been a local expression, so people wouldn't have literally tried to do it, but it was a figure of speech to express that something's impossible or very unlikely. Like when someone says "shovel sh*t against the tide," etc. I'm not sure, though.