Holding the Question in the City in Revelation

Anticipating the objection

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.

Following the context

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.（マカバイ記一 9:27-30）

The text itself

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.

Anticipating the objection

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.

Anticipating the objection

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.（マリアの福音書 4:11）

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.（エゼキエル書 41:14）

A note

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.（歴代志上 25:18-22）

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.

In an ordinary week

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.（マナセの祈り 1:5-9）

2And grace will be with all who fear the Lord. Amen.

ヤコブによる幼児福音書 25:2（Mattison 訳（英語））

In an ordinary week

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.

3Let no man deceive you by any means: for that day shall not come, except there come a falling away first, and that man of sin be revealed, the son of perdition;

テサロニケ人への第二の手紙 2:3（KJV（英語））

Another way to read it

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.

• One verse, read slowly, with one word held up to the light.
• I stopped here in the middle of a read-through, and wrote from the stopping.

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.

1さてダビデは自分の家に住むようになったとき、預言者ナタンに言った、「見よ、わたしは香柏の家に住んでいるが、主の契約の箱は天幕のうちにある」。

歴代志上 17:1（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.

3father and come to me and see what is the doom of the Lord God concerning him. His creature is he, and God hath pitied him.' And all angels blew their trumpets, and cried:

アダムとエバの生涯 46:3（Wells 訳（英語））

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.

3割礼を受けようとするすべての人たちに、もう一度言っておく。そういう人たちは、律法の全部を行う義務がある。

ガラテヤ人への手紙 5:3（口語訳（日本語））