Notes on the Morning of Genesis

What I read

This is where I stopped. I could not go forward, so I stayed with the same few lines for a long time. I have come to think the staying was the point.（トビト記 7:11-13）

This is where I stopped. I could not go forward, so I stayed with the same few lines for a long time. I have come to think the staying was the point.

Before we start

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.（シラ書（集会の書） 27:13-18）

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.

How you render this one word determines the meaning of the whole paragraph. A translator has to decide, and the decision is already an interpretation. Readers deserve to know that a decision was made.（イエスの語録 P.Oxy 5575 2:1）

Anticipating the objection

Now set it back into its own century. What was the community that first heard this actually worried about? Simply imagining that changes the temperature of every line.（トマスによる幼児福音書 13:2）

Finally, back to the text. No amount of commentary competes with the texture of the sentences themselves. Read it out loud once before you read anything else about it.

A note

This is where I stopped. I could not go forward, so I stayed with the same few lines for a long time. I have come to think the staying was the point.