道真理命 michi shinri inochi John 14:6 The Way, The Truth, The Life

The way, the truth, the life: the three things Jesus says he is, kept as three nouns with the sentence around them dropped, as the Latin motto via veritas vita has done for centuries. The characters are the Japan Bible Society's colloquial Bible's, whose verse runs わたしは道であり、真理であり、命である, and the reading of the middle word, shinri, is that Bible's, truth as Japanese reads the characters today. The older Bibles read the middle word as makoto, a native word for truth, and two hymnals sang the verse that way, so michi, makoto, inochi is how a Japanese Christian's grandparents heard it; both readings are true of the characters. Whether the middle word is shinri or makoto when you say it is yours.

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