back in olden times everything was copied by hand. it's way more likely a mistake would be made and perpetuated if it seemed to make MORE sense that the original. that's why it's almost certainly the case that jesus said "passing a camel through the eye of a needle" and NOT the similar word that means "thread" found in some texts, cuz if people had substituted camel for thread people would for sure have noticed and been like "huh what that makes no sense i think you fucked up"
"Cyril of Alexandria (fragment 219) claimed that "camel" was a Greek scribal typo where kamêlos (κάμηλος, camel) was written in place of kamilos (κάμιλος, meaning "rope" or "cable").[3][5][6] More recently, George Lamsa, in his 1933 translation of the Bible into English from the Syriac, claimed the same."
