Thread by @TravelingNun

1. White progressives going at Jesus for being “racist” toward the Syrophoenician woman is peak 2021.

News flash. “Racist” Jesus isn’t a thing.

2. The claim centers on the story of the Syrophoenician woman begging Jesus to cast a demon out of her daughter. Jesus responds, “It is not right to take the children’s bread and throw it to the dogs” (Mk 7:27).

What’s going on here? Is Jesus being a racist a**hole?

3. The Bible is a piece of literature as much as it is a historical document. Pay attention to the structure of the Gospel of Mark and it becomes pretty clear what’s going on.

4. The first thing to understand is that the Gospel of Mark was written to the *gentiles.* As in the intended audience was *non-Jewish* people.

5. Yes. An *entire Gospel* was written to a group of people presumably considered outside the reach of God’s grace—as the Kingdom was presumed to be the inheritance of the Jewish people alone. This fact by itself should give you a hint at the point of Mark in the first place.

6. But let’s zoom in to the section of Mark under scrutiny, Mark 6-8. In ch. 6, Mark tells the tale of Jesus feeding the 5000. But take a look at v. 44. This was 5000 *men* from a *Jewish* region. Women and gentiles were *not* included.

7. Oh no! Does this mean Jesus is racist AND sexist? C’mon people. Use your brain. Do you REALLY think Mark is trying to paint Jesus Christ, a man he believes is God incarnate and the Messiah of the world—gentiles and women included—as a racist misogynist?

8. No that’s not the point! Instead, Mark sets up Ch 6 to be a literary foil for Ch 8, where Jesus again feeds a huge crowd. But this time Mark counts the crowd differently. Now it’s 4000 *people* who hailed from a *gentile* region of the world. Women & gentiles are included!

9. Why the sudden change in counting method? What happened between Ch 6 and Ch 8? Yep, that’s right! The story of the Syrophoenician woman.

10. Is this because the Syrophoenician woman somehow “teaches” Jesus how to be less racist, thereby altering the trajectory of his ministry and catapulting women and gentiles into the Christian faith? This is such a stupid take I can’t even believe I’m writing a thread about it.

11. No. Mark includes the story of the Syrophoenician woman in order to clarify the nature of who *Jesus* is and what the teachings of *Jesus* mean to the world. These aren’t the teachings of the Syrophoenician woman. These are the teachings of *Jesus*—God in God’s self.

12. Consider: Immediately *before* the story of the Syrophoenician woman, Mark records Jesus *decimating* the laws of purity, declaring, “There is nothing outside a person that by going into him can defile him, but the things that come out of a person are what defile him” (7:15).

13. Just before that, Jesus quotes the prophet Isaiah saying, “This people honors me with their lips, but their heart is far from me” (7:6). In other words, Mark establishes the teachings of Jesus & *then* elaborates the implications of those teachings in the stories that follow.

14. If Jesus was a racist a**hole when he encountered the Syrophoenician woman, he would have just ignored her. Instead, by acknowledging her and treating her question as worthy of response, he is validating this gentile woman as being of equal status to a Jewish male!

15. When Jesus says, “It is not right to take the children’s bread and throw it to the dogs,” (v 27) he is making an allusion to the codes of purity that he himself *already* declared illegitimate.

16. In other words, he is inviting the woman to make plain what he has been trying to get the disciples to understand. When the woman responds, “Even the dogs under the table eat the children’s crumbs,” Jesus let’s her answer stand! (v 28). Not only that, he healed her daughter!

17. Immediately after, Jesus encounters a gentile man who is deaf and mute and heals him. People rejoice and say, “He even makes the deaf hear and the mute speak.”

18. In other words, Jesus comes not just to God’s “chosen race.” Jesus comes even to the most outcasted and reviled people in society, and he declares even those outcasted by the laws of “purity” to have access to God’s table!

19. The narrative concludes w/ Jesus feeding 4000 *people*—women & gentiles included. And he feeds them not just with the crumbs of his table but with so much food that they are “satisfied” (v 8).

20. This is not some kind of “awakening* that Jesus receives, where the Syrophoenician woman sets his racist a** straight. This was Jesus unfolding the truth about God’s grace in real time, and Mark structures the telling of this story for maximum impact to get the point across.

21. *All* people have access to God’s table, regardless of race, sex, ability, or any other categories created to exclude by the “traditions of men” (7:7). This was the entire *original* point of Jesus’ ministry, and the story of the Syrophoenician woman underscores that point.

22. Literally every time someone tries to twist this story into a story about “racist” Jesus, biblical scholars do a facepalm because this claim is SO OFF BASE you can literally do a Google search to figure out how wrong you are.

23. But if you’re interested in learning more, here’s one article to get you started, written in 2018.
gospelofmarkworkshop.com/did-the-syroph…