by Bonnie Calhoun

Good Monday to you all! Tonight I would like a few more places in the Biblical Lands. Several of these are an extremely interesting study, because recently I was told that the Bible couldn't be real because it doesn't talk about the Pyramids of Egypt. To that I say,"Hrump!" Let's start with another rumor that needs to be dispelled!

The ancient cities of the Near East were usually walled, and at night the gates were closed for protection against invaders. In case any of the citizens were unable to return before nightfall, one small opening was left in the gate, an opening known as "the needles' eye." It was so low and so narrow that a camel laden with riches could never fit through. Only when the owner unloaded the camel and left the load outside the gate could the camel, with its head bent low, squeeze through.

Now this has added significance because of the Matthew 19:24 reference to "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." The myriad of stories that you can read discount the needle gate, saying that Jerusalem never had a "needle gate" therefore the reference is erroneous.

It is true that Jerusalem never had a needle gate, but other cities did! Thus the reference stands! Jesus teaching in Matthew 19 seized on the analogy of the camel making its way through "the needle's eye" and compared it to a rich man trying to leave the earth with riches to get into heaven. A rich man can enter the kingdom of heaven─but only if he first casts off his worldly goods and. Like the camel squeezing through the needles' eye, bows his head in humilty.

The civilization of the Egyptians was already an ancient one by the time Joseph arrived there some 3,650 years ago. The first pyramid was built about five thousand years ago. It is known as the Step Pyramid because it rises in a series of steps or terraces to a height of 250 feet, much like the ziggurats of Babylon.

The Great Pyramid of Cheops at Giza, built only a few hundred years after the Step Pyramid, was the tallest structure ever erected until the nineteenth century. It rises to a height of 481 feet, and its base is 756 blocks of stone, many blocks weighing as much as five thousand pounds. This pyramid was built with no other mechanical equipment that the lever and the roller, because at that time the Egyptians has not yet learned the use of the wheel.

More than thirty major pyramids were built during the thousand years before Joseph. Each one guarded the body of a pharaoh entombed in a chamber deep inside the pile of stone blocks. However, no pyramids are mentioned in the Bible. Despite the fact that these structures would have certainly been the talk of the ancient world, the authors of the Bible didn't consider them worthy of note. They did not play a part in the unfolding of the biblical narrative.

There are many other incidents of "facts of life" that are not included in the Bible. Their exclusion does not make the bible erroneous....It just makes these, so called "facts" irrelevant to biblical history!