Difficult texts: ‘A dog at the table’ in Matthew 15.21–28

This article addresses the story of the Canaanite woman in Matthew 15.21–28 and Jesus’ likening of the woman to a ‘dog’ in verse 26. It provides an overview of the passage as a whole and deals in more detail with this imagery.

Crossing boundaries: Social-scientific reading of the faith of a Canaanite woman (Mt 15:21–28)

Social-scientific criticism refers to an interpretation of the biblical text that takes into cognizance the social system that produced that text. This article presents a social scientific reading of the faith of a Canaanite woman in Matthew 15:21–28. The article outlines models of social systems in Matthew 15:21–28 like landscape and spatiality, gender and sexuality, ethnicity, purity, and social status in order to achieve a social scientific reading. The purpose of this article is to firstly demonstrate that the models of social system in Matthew 15:21–28 served as boundaries to the faith of a Canaanite woman. Secondly, it is to demonstrate that the Canaanite woman crossed such boundaries in Matthew 15:21–28 for her daughter to receive healing. Lastly, the Canaanite woman serves as a model for South African women today who have to cross boundaries like landscape and spatiality, gender and sexuality, ethnicity, purity, and social status.

Evangelisk ironi

This article addresses the question whether unreliable narration, as the concept is understood in the tradition following Wayne Booth’s original definition, can occur in non-fictional stories. Contrary to Pekka Tammi’s conclusion in a recent article, this article’s answer is affirmative. It seeks to demonstrate, through a comparative analysis of respectively Mark’s and Matthew’s stories about the Canaanite woman (Mark 7:24–30 and Matthew 15:21–28), how Matthew comes forward as an unreliable narrator, and that his narrative unreliability is a function of what James Phelan has termed underreporting. The textual analysis, which leans on Gregory Currie’s and James Phelan’s theories of unreliable narration, argues that far from being more or less identical stories, as is suggested by various exegetes, Matthew’s pericope is significantly different from that of Mark. It is different both thematically and regarding the portrayal of the figure of Jesus, but also, and not least, by pursuing a more complex and daring communicative strategy based on unreliable narration and a system of multilayered irony. In concluding the theoretical discussion of unreliable narration, I suggest not only that unreliable narration is possible in non-fictional stories, but also that it is a somewhat misleading concept when applied to the kind of stories Wayne Booth normally referred to, namely fictional first-person narratives.

The Canaanite woman’s request or about prayers as forms of linguistic politeness

The paper aims to establish the semantic boundaries between the terms prayer and request, and implicitly the pragmatic meanings actualized by the two lexemes on different levels of language. Through prayers, a sender conveys a message to a referentially indeterminate receiver in the pragmatic context of the phenomenal world, but “identifiable” exclusively in the world of necessities. The author will adduce as an example a dialogue between the representatives of two spiritually delimited spaces (the Canaanite woman and Jesus Christ). The woman asks for her own mercy with the purpose of exorcising her daughter’s evil spirits. Due to the skilfulness with which she negotiates meanings while observing situation roles, the woman proves to be a good practitioner of the cooperative principle, in general, and of pragmatic politeness, in particular. The locutor uses devices to support the most appropriate discourse strategies which would lead her to obtain an optimum level of communication – more precisely, to accomplish the aim of her prayer: her daughter’s recovery.