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> His words reflect an ancient Jewish figure of speech for the impossible

The article claims that the Gospels are the oldest known use of the figure of speech.

Maybe, at least in "modern" writing.

The problem I have with that claim is that the phrasing "eye of a needle" appears in Talmudic writings that predate the NT, so the idea itself likely predates that, and other creatures (elephants) have been used instead of camels.

Granted, this is just hair-splitting, but I would strongly suspect its use dates much earlier.

There are no Talmudic manuscripts that predate the NT. There is a reasonable inference that much of what is in them does, but there is no guessing which bits those are.

Ah interesting, thanks! I didn't realize the only surviving manuscripts for which we have evidence date approximately to the time range of the MT. Whereas the Sinaiticus majuscule is easily 2-4 centuries earlier. Still, I would expect the idiom was well-established by the first century.

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