Notes on the City in Revelation

What I read

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.（ストレンジャーの書 4:30-32）

• A by-product of sermon preparation, reworked into something readable.
• One verse, read slowly, with one word held up to the light.
• A by-product of sermon preparation, reworked into something readable.

Put the translations side by side and the same verse arrives differently each time. One is soft, another is severe, and the original is a third thing that is neither. That difference is itself a way in.（ガラテヤ人への手紙 2:16-18）

18愛には恐れがない。完全な愛は恐れをとり除く。恐れには懲らしめが伴い、かつ恐れる者には、愛が全うされていないからである。

ヨハネの第一の手紙 4:18（口語訳（日本語））

The first time I read this passage I understood nothing at all. I carried that incomprehension around for years, and then one afternoon it turned slightly, the way a key turns, and something opened. What follows is an attempt to describe the turn.（ペテロの第二の手紙 2:6-8）

Some people are consoled by this verse and others are wounded by it, often in the same room. The writer almost certainly did not anticipate that. It is left for readers to carry.（テサロニケ人への第一の手紙 4:7）

• Written out of a failed attempt to explain this passage to a child.
• Notes from reading a canonical and a non-canonical text next to each other.
• A by-product of sermon preparation, reworked into something readable.
• Notes from reading a canonical and a non-canonical text next to each other.