Reading Paul's Letters

martinez_naomi2026/6/18

A by-product of sermon preparation, reworked into something readable.

In its own century

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.

（マカバイ記二第1章）

A short detour. There is a passage elsewhere with the same shape though no direct connection, and setting them next to each other makes the writers' different concerns visible.

A note

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.（ユダの手紙 1:2）

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.

One verse, read slowly, with one word held up to the light.
One verse, read slowly, with one word held up to the light.
An attempt to read a famous passage all the way through without lifting it out of 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.（ヘブル人への手紙 9:15）