Letting Go of Paul's Letters

Closing

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.（ヨナ書 1:5-6）

The text itself

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.

72するとすぐ、にわとりが二度目に鳴いた。ペテロは、「にわとりが二度鳴く前に、三度わたしを知らないと言うであろう」と言われたイエスの言葉を思い出し、そして思いかえして泣きつづけた。

マルコによる福音書 14:72（口語訳（日本語））

Leaving the question open

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.（バルク書 1:2-6）

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.（テサロニケ人への第二の手紙 1:5）

• Written out of a failed attempt to explain this passage to a child.
• I stopped here in the middle of a read-through, and wrote from the stopping.
• Written from the experience of being hurt by words drawn from this passage.

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.

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.