1Jesus repeats a lesson about purity to a laborer whose hands are stained by tannery work. The man asks whether clean hands have ever fed Jesus without first becoming dirty.
2The tanner’s hands smelled of hides and lye; the teacher’s hands were clean enough to point, but not yet wise enough to touch.
3Jesus returns ashamed and accuses Narseh of giving him an incomplete rule.
4“May a sacred book be wrong?” Jesus asked. Narseh replied, “A book cannot repent. Its readers must learn how.” The listener who had been most certain looked away first.
5A stranger supplied an example that broke the lesson’s symmetry. The teacher had to choose between protecting the teaching and protecting the truth. Fear offered a respectable reason to postpone the good act.
6Narseh refuses to protect his authority and says a teacher who cannot be corrected is already training disciples to lie.
7The lesson ceased belonging to the teacher once a stranger improved it. Nothing dramatic announced the change; a repeated habit simply lost some of its power.
8Before the day associated with “The Question That Returned” ended, Jesus performed one ordinary act that made the lesson costly: the person most easily ignored was given time, food, work, protection, or an honest answer. No ledger called it a miracle.
9The argument of The Question That Returned would return in public as a shorter sentence sharp enough to survive translation.
10The day the student sees beyond the teacher is not betrayal; it is the day the teaching proves it was alive.