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 does. The characters are those of the Japan Bible Society's colloquial Bible, whose New Testament came out in 1954 and whose verse runs わたしは道であり、真理であり、命である; read as written today, the middle word is shinri. In this verse the older Protestant Bibles read the middle word makoto, a native word, and three hymnals sang it that way, while the same Bibles read it shinri elsewhere; so michi, makoto, inochi is this verse's older reading, and 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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