Bible Times and Trivia: The Bible Times V

   663. Ophir very well may have been located in India or Ceylon, because the Bible states that the round-trip voyage took three years and that the ships brought back "gold, and silver, ivory, apes, and peacocks" (1 Kings 10:22 KJV).

   664. 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 needle's 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.

   665. 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 needle's eye, bows his head in humility.

   666. 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.

   667. 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 than the lever and the roller, because at that time the Egyptians had not learned the use of the wheel.

   668. 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.