The best I can do is try to visualize the scene and figure out what other people would have been thinking, and then guess--and since my guesses aren't consistent I'll leave them out and you can make your own.
Jesus left the majority Jewish region and is in the neighborhood of Tyre--reason unspecified, but there are probably a lot more pagans than Jews here. He enters a house--presumably a fellow Jew's, presumably welcomed, and with at least some of the 12. The passage doesn't say if they were preparing to recline at the table to eat, though that would have had to happen sooner or later. At banquets the Greeks and richer Romans reclined with the men eating first; I gather there's not a lot of evidence of Jewish practice here--and family meals were different. Greeks used chairs or stools around a table for family meals, low tables for banquets.
So who is present, and what's going on? This isn't a Jewish area, so I'm not sure they had the custom of open door banquets where non-guests can stand around and marvel at the feast and the wonderful guests the host has found. The door is open, though, for temperature control, if nothing else. If the host is introducing his family the children will be present, otherwise probably not.
You'd get dogs only at the family table--I leave to you to imagine what dogs would do at one of the low banquet tables. (Jesus' word for dog is a word for pet or puppy, not the street dogs of universal disrepute.)
Jesus' analogy is of a family occasion, and the gentile woman is included. What does the homeowner think of this? He'd almost certainly think of the wild curs if you mentioned "gentile dogs," not pets; and the assumption that the gentile woman is a loved part of the family would be a bit jarring.
Was the analogy intended for the woman, for the host, for the 12, for all of them? If it is a gentle rebuke to the woman, what is He rebuking? (We aren't always told the details--see Mark 9:18-19--why does He call them perverse and unbelieving?) If for the host, what attitude is He trying to correct? If for the 12, what is He trying to show (sent to the lost sheep of Israel--but we know He didn't limit Himself to them)?
I'm bothered by the translation you linked's use of 'race,' which is inappropriate for the ancient or Medieval world. The Sacra Vulgata gives that as "Syrophoenissa genere," which I would translate as 'the Syrophoenician kind.' It's not nearly as strong as 'race,' especially in the context of early America. A difference in religion would matter much more.
ReplyDeleteThe passage sounds like she's not a Jew, and Jesus is indicating that he was sent especially to the children of Israel. Yet the difference in religion is dispelled, as it were, when she shows faith in him: for that is the right religion, after all.
It is the right religion indeed.
ReplyDeleteI'd understood the use of "race" in most pre-20'th century English to refer to nationality and ethnicity within nationality, not just the broad categories used today.