Why did the Canaanite woman in Matthew ask Jesus to heal her daughter?

A:

In Matthew 15:21, Jesus went to the region of Tyre and Sidon, where a woman came to him, asking Jesus to cure her daughter, who was vexed with a devil. Jesus at first refused, saying that it is not meet to give the children's bread to dogs, meaning that his mission was to help the Jews, not gentiles whom he was likening to dogs. She persisted, saying that even dogs eat the crumbs that fall from the master's table.

It seems strange that a gentile woman in faraway Tyre and Sidon would know of Jesus and be so confident that he could help her. It seems strange that Jesus would travel to an exclusively gentile region and then be so offensively racist, particularly as we also know that Paul would become an apostle to the gentiles. Perhaps there is more to this passage, and it should not be read literally. It is one of several consecutive events and discourses in which the common element is food, even metaphorically.

If this passage ought not be read literally, we should establish what the author intended by the passage and howhe intended this to symbolise the mission of Jesus. However, Matthew was not the author of this passage. It has been established that the author of Matthew's copied some 90 per cent of Mark's Gospel, including these passages with a theme of food.

So Mark's Gospel may show what the passage means. Mark 6:33-8:21 form an integrated set of passages with ten references or allusions to food, including a summary by Jesus of the two feasts in 8:19-21, maintaining a consistent theme of food, plus a minor theme of not understanding. Much of this is also found in Matthew's Gospel, but without the elegant structure of Mark's Gospel:

• Jesus and the disciples had no leisure so much as to eat, so they went into a desert place
• Feeding the 5000
• When Jesus walked on water the disciples were amazed, for they considered not the miracle of the loaves
• Pharisees complain about the disciples eating with unwashed hands
• Discourse - what goes into a man goes into his belly and does not defile
• Greek woman metaphorically begs for crumbs from the table
• Feeding the 4000
• Disciples are hungry and have only one loaf of bread
• Jesus warns the disciples about the leaven of the Pharisees and they reason, "It is because we have no bread," showing they do not understand
• Summary by Jesus of the two feasts

Mark's Gospel is based around a parallel structure, an ancient literary form that creates emphasis or develops themes that would otherwise not be apparent. The above group of passages is matched in that structure by the Last Supper, theologically one of the most important events in the entire gospel. The parallel structure emphasises the importance of that event. So although we should not look for literal meaning in the account of the Greek woman asking Jesus to cure her daughter and Jesus at first refusing her, we can see that it contributed to Mark's literary development.