[Lexicog] Re: When Semantics Doesn't Matter

[Mike Maxwell]

Hayim Sheynin wrote:
> Aramaic texts can confirm or overturn the theoretical conclusions of the
> scholars in respect to a Greek original. For me not only particular 
> Aramaic quotations, but also certain Semitic structures of the Greek 
> text point either to preceding Western Aramaic text or to authors who 
> wrote Greek but thought in Aramaic.

This looks like the ideal forum to ask a question that I've wondered 
about for a long time.

In Matthew 19:24 and the other synoptic gospels, Jesus says that "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."   My (mis?)understanding is that 
the Aramaic word for 'camel' can either mean 'large rope, hawser', or 
sounds similar to the Aramaic word for 'large rope', as attested by a 
tenth century lexicographer.  If this is true, one interpretation is 
that this is a pun--Jesus said that it is easier for a camel, but it 
sounded very like the word for rope, which would certainly make more 
sense in the context, at least as a hyperbole.  (Or if the two words 
were identical, perhaps the Greek is a mis-translation of the Aramaic, 
that is, a translation of the wrong sense.)

Is there any truth to this?  What are the Aramaic words for 'camel' and 
'large rope'?  And do we have any corpus attestation for the latter, or 
is this a tenth century guess about what might have made sense?

(Perhaps related: apparently the two words (κάμηλον 'camel' and κάμιλον 
'rope') are similar in Greek.)
-- 
	Mike Maxwell
	maxwell at ldc.upenn.edu


 
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