JESUS EXHIBITED A VIOLENT HATE TOWARDS VULNERABLE MEMBERS OF OTHER RACES

Jesus would have believed as a Jew for most of his life that the dead went to Sheol to live as ghosts and finally fade away.

He also regarded non-Jews and unclean ritually and also spiritually.  The Jews alone had a covenant with God.  It was after Jesus had died that Peter started to report that God had fixed the non-Jews so now they were clean and could be admitted into the Jesus community as equals with those who were born Jewish.  To call non-Jews fixed is still racist. 

Jesus spoke of demons as unclean spirits and aroused fear - and naturally hatred - of them.  Make no mistake.  The world is full of hypocrites who preach love but who make sure this message will fall on stony ground by advocating and feeding fear.  He was just another one.

I'd stake my right hand on the claim that these spirits were considered to be the spirits of non-Jews.  Also, by casting out demons, at least in some cases, he may have thought that he was expediting their fading away.

The Gospel of Mark by any standard has the most important story of how Jesus treated a pagan Greek woman born in the Syro-Phoenican region. She does not make any act of faith in him in that gospel and we are told that she went to him because her "little daughter" was in the grip of an evil spirit. And Jesus was reportedly staying in a house at the time but the story does not say if he was in the house or not when he harmed this woman.

 If the story is true, then Mark is the oldest account and the simplest and so the most reliable.  Not one line of Mark says Jesus was perfect or sinless.

He crossed into her region.  He was outside of Jewish territory.  Tyre then was part of what is Lebanon today and the vast majority there were non-Jews.  It was under Gentile rule.  Jesus at that time was very annoyed with Judaism being so disinterested in his message.  As the gospel says Jesus thought he was Messiah, a king, he was acting like a coloniser or one trying to symbolically indicate that colonisation was valid.

She had a daughter who needed to be healed of a demon.  She cried for help for her girl and he ignored her. 

She did call him Lord son of David and call for mercy for her daughter was suffering terribly from a possession.  Was that coming from a place of faith?  It means nothing for she did not ask for somebody to initiate her into the true faith.  The story tellingly does not say if she had faith or not.  As a pagan, she would have seen him as a magician or a god.  The argument that he was testing this woman's faith can be safely ignored.  And you do not treat people that way in the guise of testing their loyalty.

He snaps that it is not right to take the bread of the children, the Jews, and throw it to the dogs.

I would link this to how according to Matthew and Luke he made it a core teaching that there is nothing special about loving those who are kind to you for even the "pagans" or "Gentiles" do that.  This is the bigotry of low expectations and when you consider how he as a Jewish person both on the race level and religious was part of an apartheid this is quite damning.  Pagans or gentiles was shorthand for non-Jews.  It is racism.

He calls her a dog kynariois which is the Greek word for house dog or puppy. Dogs in those days were not treasured as today.  They were there for raising the alarm if burglars came around.  And for keeping rats down.  They were considered unclean animals.  There is a word Kuon which means wild dogs.  It is irrelevant that Jesus didn't use this word.  A wild dog is not necessarily worse than one tied outside a house.  Plus wild dogs were free while house dogs were prisoners and slaves in a manner of speaking.  

She says that even the dogs get the crumbs that fall.

She is asking for a crumb.  A lighter possession of the daughter would be enough if that is all he will grant.  Or even a temporary release.  She is afraid to ask this evil man for anything more.

And crumbs fall by accident.

Jesus does not exorcise here.  There no grand utterance, "Come out".  He does not say what force will get the demon out.  Curiously he does not ask anybody to pray and fast to get it out like he does elsewhere.

He gives the crumb - that is to say, he arranges that by luck the demon would go.  You may say the woman cast the exorcism spell herself by saying she was a dog.

When we turn to Matthew, Jesus makes it clear that the term dogs is a term of gross insult.  He says you must not put noble things before dogs or swine for they will trample on them and devour you.  And in those times, it was a racist slur used by Jews against non-Jews.  And the dogs and swine are groups.  If he said you cannot put your pearls down before a dog or a pig it would be one thing.  But he opens the door to racist ideology by making it about groups being wild animals and monsters.

Some suggest that dogs here is bitches, female dogs.  If so, the story shows his hatred for her gender. 

Some say that as the story just slams her as a dog, Jesus does not care what we think this means.  He would be no better than one who hates her for her race, her religious views and her gender.

Some suggest that the woman might not have been a Jew but still a true believer in the one true God. If the woman in fact was a believer but not an official Jew by conversion or was a real convert, then he was hating her simply for her race.  There is no record of Jesus as a Rabbi working with Godfearers or initiating them.  This would be deliberate and hateful for his Pharisee tradition believed in spreading the word and had a two tier system where you have full Jewish members of the faith and the rest were Gentile members. The latter because they were not Jews got spiritual care but not full membership. 

This woman was clearly at risk of attacks from racists.  Jesus was being extremely irresponsible and using inflammatory talk in an insane violent age.  She could have been murdered a few days later for all we know.


Lacantius wrote that pagans strangled unwanted babies. Some felt they were too holy to do that so they exposed the babies to the elements and to the dogs. He penned, “Can those persons be considered innocent who expose their own offspring as prey for dogs?” Jesus by calling her a dog was very loaded indeed.

If you think the gospels reported what Jesus permitted, then what did he want that terrible story in for?  You know there is only one answer.



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