On Forgiving the Exodus Road

Another way to read it

There are obvious objections, and I don't hold this reading with much confidence. What I would defend is narrower: that the text leaves room for it.

1[...] enclosed in the [place ...] being subjected uncertainly [... its] weight unweighed [...] but [while] they were puzzled [as] to [his] strange question, Jesus walked and stood [on the] bank of the Jordan [river.] And reaching out with [his] right hand [...] and he sowed [on] the [...] and then [...] water [...] the [...] and [...] he produced [...] fruit [...]

知られざる福音書（エゲルトン・パピルス2） 4:1（Mattison 訳（英語））

I went through several scholarly treatments and found nothing decisive. On reflection, the absence of anything decisive may be the most appropriate result this passage could produce.

（マタイによる福音書 第15章）

Another way to read it

There are obvious objections, and I don't hold this reading with much confidence. What I would defend is narrower: that the text leaves room for it.（士師記 15:10-12）

Let me set the terms. This is not an argument about doctrinal correctness. It is one reader's account of what the text can be made to yield. I am going to leave the ending open on purpose.（テサロニケ人への第二の手紙 1:10-12）

In an ordinary week

Pull a single verse out of its paragraph and you can make it say almost anything. This particular verse has been made to say a great deal. Which is precisely why it deserves to be read with what stands on either side of it.

8ピリポはイエスに言った、「主よ、わたしたちに父を示して下さい。そうして下されば、わたしたちは満足します」。

ヨハネによる福音書 14:8（口語訳（日本語））

Here is the conclusion, which is not an answer. I have decided to read this as a promise rather than a command, for the plain reason that I can live inside the first reading and not the second. Whether that is a legitimate reason I genuinely do not know.

A word about ordinary life. I think about this passage in the kitchen and on the train, almost never in a pew. I have come to suspect that is not accidental.

4しかるに、あわれみに富む神は、わたしたちを愛して下さったその大きな愛をもって、

エペソ人への手紙 2:4（口語訳（日本語））

Comparing translations

Reading the non-canonical material alongside this shows how wide the shared vocabulary of the period really was. Looking only at what was eventually collected hides that width entirely.（イザヤ書 8:2）