This one is for the Dogs

Category: Religion and Philosophy

Thursday of the Fifth Week in Ordinary Time

Reflection:

If you read my Blog regularly you may be wondering why it is taking me so long to get my reflection up for Thursday's readings. It is actually simple. The readings are difficult and caused me to really go out and find out what the heck was being discussed in the Gospel.

The reading from Kings was pretty straight forward - Solomon had really goofed and allowed the religion of his wives to interfere with his scrupulous observance of Hebrew Law. One big example of why it is important in a marriage to decide, before tying the knot, whose religion was going to be practiced. Solomon got one of the worst punishments a parent can get. He was told that he would not take the heat for what he did, but his son would.

I guess the tenor of the fist reading was really leading into the Gospel, the story of the Syrophoenician woman. What first bothered me was the symbolic discussion they had:

"He said to her, 'Let the children be fed first.
For it is not right to take
the food of the children
and throw it to the dogs.'
She replied and said
to him,
'Lord, even the dogs under the table eat the childrens scraps.'"

Immediately after this exchange, Jesus said the usual - "For saying this, you may go. The demon has gone out of your daughter.

It was like the woman had said something devout or spiritual but I didn't get it so I started looking at commentaries and to my horror, I found that the references to dogs in the exchange were actually referring to gentiles, and that the food was Christ's gifts. What a terrible thing to say. This is one of the reasons I am really in favor of the Catholic view on scripture. We believe that it is the inspired word of God, communicated through human authors. In my research, some of which was from protestant sources others from Catholic, I found that it is proposed by scholars that these references were somehow intended to affirm the Church's mission to the Gentiles and the reference to them as "dogs", well, I think I'll quote my sources here rather than trying to paraphrase:

From http://www.studyjesus.com/lifeofchrist/lesson_39.htm (Since the version being quoted is the KJV, I am assuming this one is from a Protestant source).

v 27 ... and cast it unto the dogs. The Jews in general, and the Pharisees with especial scorn, used to speak of all Gentiles as dogs, and dog in the East is the one expression which conveys the deepest contempt and hatred (Farrar).

But this was not Jesus own attitude or feeling. He stated the difficulty, and expressed the feeling which she knew the Jews had. But Jesus used another word than the accustomed word, not dogs, but pet house-dogs. The picture is of a family meal, with the pet house-dogs running round the table (Farrar).

There is a touch of infinite beauty and graciousness in the expression, which it is easy for us to miss. The word He uses for dogs is not the word which was used for the wild creatures which go about in troops in Eastern cities, and which were regarded by the Jews with great disgust. It is the word for little dogs, living in the house and with the family, and lying under the table at meal time.

Her womans wit was sharp that day, and she seized the one advantage Jesus had afforded her.

And from Michael A. Turton's Historical Commentary on the Gospel of Mark http://users2.ev1.net/~turton/GMark/GMark_index.html (this is a very scholarly work, which means I could not understand half of it. He is using the NAB so I assume he is Catholic. I could be wrong but what does it matter.)


27: And he said to her, "Let the children first be fed, for it is not right to take the children's bread and throw it to the dogs."

v27: "dogs." Dogs were unclean in ancient Judaism and were ordinarily not permitted in Jewish homes, unlike Gentiles. "Since Jewish law considered both dogs and gentiles to be unclean," Joan Mitchell (2001, p110) observes, "dog made a ready name for gentiles." In virtually all theological interpretations this pericope is taken to be from the period of the expansion of Christianity out of its Judaic cradle and into the gentile world.

v27: "children must be fed." In the two feeding miracles, Jesus first feeds Jews and then Gentiles.

v27: "Let the children first be fed." Here Jesus says the children of Israel are to fed first, perhaps an echo of Romans 1:16, where Paul argues "to the Jews first" (Donahue and Harrington 2002, p40).

v27: Sawicki (1992) notes:

The affinity between dogs and women in Greek is abetted philologically. The verb for carrying and being pregnant, kyo, is related to kyon, dog. Also in the group are kyneo, "kiss," and proskyneo, which means to drop down before something as if to kiss its feet. Forms of proskyneo appear in the LXX to indicate worship involving bodily prostration in the eastern fashion; Greeks for their part would think it unmanly to assume such a doglike foot-licking posture, even for a god.


So where does that leave us relative to the scripture and what it means to us? For one thing it means that Jesus did come for all peoples of all cultures. That is important for us in the day when there are international riots because many of the radical Islamic leaders want the rest of the world to behave as if Islam were the only valid religion. Christ came for them too, and thank God (the Father) His message was one of peace.

The message also reaffirms the power of faith. The Woman's daughter was healed because of the mother's faith. Still one has to wonder about the rational for this one. Pax