Why was Jesus so polite to the centurion and so rude to the Canaanite woman?
The story of the Canaanite woman (Matt. 15:21-28; cf. Mk. 7:24-30) has been going round in my head the last few days, partly because I have been marking a number of undergraduate essays comparing the two versions of the episode, partly because I happened across quite a good podcast in which Trevin Wax and Brandon Smith ask why Jesus called the woman a dog. I wonder if there isn’t, in Matthew’s telling of the story, a rather mundane and pragmatic explanation of the disturbing episode.
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