“Wait, are they saying a camel can’t get through the eye of a needle?”
The reference stems from laden pack camels not being able to enter through a city’s gates without first unloading, passing thru, then reloading on the other side. It does beg the question, why weren’t the architects aware of the need to build a gate large enough and high enough to accomodate a fully-laden camel? Were there no camels around at the time the gates were built?
Done on purpose as a security measure.
Why weren’t the gates tall and wide enough for a camel to walk through ...
I heard that the “eye of the needle” could be the people-sized door in the full-sized city gate. A camel could get through it but only if it was unpacked and made to crawl through on its knees.
City gates were locked at night, so if you got there late you had to do all this with your camels.
IIrc, the Eye of the Needle was a particular gate, not just any ol’ gate.
The Eye was the “night gate” and made small enough that only one (or two men, side by side, not sure) man at a time, possibly towing a donkey, could get through.
To get camels through if, say, a caravan arrived after the main gates closed for the night and wanted to get themselves and their goods into the city anyway, camels not only had to be unloaded, but put into a kneeling/sitting position and then dragged from the front and pushed from the rear to get them through.
It was a whole different type needle than the ones that angles dance upon the heads of.
It is my understanding there were two types of gates...main gates for commerce and built into one of the main gates was a smaller man size gate. Kinda like the doors used on old fire station doors. Camels could not enter through the man size gate.