Notes on the Day of Fasting

Anticipating the objection

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.

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.

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.（ダニエル書 1:6）

• A direct look at the part of this text that rarely gets preached.
• Notes from reading a canonical and a non-canonical text next to each other.
• A by-product of sermon preparation, reworked into something readable.
• Moving back and forth between an ordinary week and an ancient text.

What I read

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.

1Jesus said, "I tell my mysteries to [those who are worthy of my] mysteries. Don't let your left hand know what your right hand is doing."

トマスの福音書 62:1（Mattison 訳（英語））

A note

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.（ペテロの第二の手紙 2:7）

4それは、忍び込んできたにせ兄弟らがいたので――彼らが忍び込んできたのは、キリスト・イエスにあって持っているわたしたちの自由をねらって、わたしたちを奴隷にするためであった。

ガラテヤ人への手紙 2:4（口語訳（日本語））

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.（列王紀下 5:8）