Camel

The dromedary camel — the one-humped variety of the Middle East — is one of the most remarkable animals ever domesticated. It stands nearly two metres at the shoulder and can carry two hundred to three hundred kilograms of goods across forty kilometres of desert in a single day. Its broad, padded feet do not sink in sand. It can go ten to fifteen days without drinking, then consume enormous quantities of water at once. Its hump stores fat, not water. Its knobbly knees allow it to kneel to be loaded and rise with its burden. For desert trade, there was nothing like it.

Abraham's wealth was partly measured in camels (Genesis 12:16), and the courtship of Rebekah turned on the arrival of ten of Abraham's camels at a well (Genesis 24). Jesus chose the camel deliberately for his two most famous sayings of scale. 'It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God' (Matthew 19:24) — the camel was the biggest, most impossible object any Palestinian peasant could picture squeezing through the smallest possible gap. 'You strain out a gnat and swallow a camel' (Matthew 23:24) — the tiniest impurity picked out while the largest possible animal goes down whole. John the Baptist's camel-hair garment (Mark 1:6) signalled a wilderness prophet's rugged identity, evoking Elijah.