1Mary asks whether the eastern teachers intend Jesus to abandon the God of his ancestors. Jesus places two lamps on a bench and asks whether light changes when the clay changes.
2Two lamps burned from the same oil, though one stood beneath a Hebrew letter and the other beneath the sign of the open hand.
3Narseh warns that names are not empty: stories attached to them can teach mercy or sanctify violence.
4“Does truth need defending?” Jesus asked. Mary answered, “People need defending. Truth needs only that we stop using it as a weapon for ourselves.” What remained unresolved mattered less than the person who could no longer be ignored.
5The first answer sounded complete because no one affected by it had been invited into the room. The contradiction survived explanation and yielded only when someone changed behavior.
6They agree that no name should be protected from moral examination merely because ancestors feared to question it.
7Jesus kept the question and released the vocabulary, learning that truth could survive translation without one people owning it. The result could be measured only in the next person who was treated differently.
8In the days after “The Lamp Behind the Name,” Jesus repeated the choice in smaller circumstances, where fatigue and inconvenience revealed whether the insight belonged to conscience or only to one memorable scene.
9When a sacred text was used against a living person, the memory of The Lamp Behind the Name would keep Jesus from mistaking quotation for obedience.
10A lamp is known by what it reveals, and a god-name by what it permits people to become.