The Power of the Gospel Explodes in Radical Inclusion
The Syrophoenician Woman in Mark 7:24-31
©2007 Cindy F. Serio
Intro to New
Testament
Professor K. K. Yeo
Garrett-Evangelical Theological Seminary
The emotional desperation of a
mother failed to open the heart of Jesus the Healer as she begged him to cast a
demon from her daughter. However, the
persistent wisdom of this woman opened the mind of Jesus the Teacher as she
appealed to the inclusive nature of his own teachings regarding purity. Without even knowing what those teachings
were, she led him to see their inclusiveness from a different point of view. As a result of the verbal interaction between
Jesus and the Gentile Syrophoenician woman, the power of the gospel explodes in
radical inclusion.
Scripture references throughout Paper: Harold W.
Attridge, ed. et al, The HarperCollins
Study Bible Revised Edition, NRSV (New York: HarperCollins
Publishers, 2006).
I.
Background: Historical and Cultural Tension
The author of the Gospel of Mark
may or may not have been the man traditionally proclaimed as friend and
confidante of Peter, the disciple of Jesus Christ. Although early tradition locates the writing
of the Gospel “at Rome, sometime after the
martyrdom of Peter during the persecution of Nero (A.D. 64)”[1]
recent scholarship reveals a more likely location as “Galilee or southern Syria”[2]
perhaps between the years 60 CE and 75 CE.[3]
The longer time span indicates a historical
context in which there is increasing upheaval in the Christian community due to
the Jewish Rebellion which eventually led to the destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem
in 70 CE. Although the Jesus movement
had initially been seen as a sect of Judaism, and his followers had enjoyed the
protection of the Roman government in order to express their religion freely,
the Christian community was blamed for the fire of Rome in 64 CE which led to their persecution
by Nero.[4] Therefore, we know by the time of the writing
of the Gospel of Mark, “Christians were [then] clearly regarded as distinct
from Jews.”[5]
With the background of separation
and increased friction between Christians and Jews in Rome
spreading throughout the empire, our pericope locates Jesus in “the region of Tyre.” (Mark 7:24) “Three different cultural ‘worlds’ met in this
region”[6] and
as Jesus traveled into the unknown, his encounter with the Syrophoenician woman
brought those worlds together. First,
Phoenician and Jewish culture had long been in historical conflict. Second,
Hellenistic culture permeated the city areas and into the country. Third, the Jewish culture was moving into the
outer areas of Tyre
as Jews continued to move into villages along the borders they shared.[7] Having noted these three cultural worlds, one
should recognize that they did not emerge as distinct entities at any one time
or place. Different people coming from
different worlds will always interact and influence each other and will
inevitably clash at times.
By the time of the writing of the
Gospel of Mark, the Hellenistic and Jewish cultures would have blended to some
extent as the Christian community became a merged family of Gentile and Jewish
Christians. These Christians lived
alongside the Jewish people with increasingly close proximity throughout the
region.[8] Conflict developed both inside and outside
the community.
No conflict was as contentious as
the struggle over the purity system, which can be defined as “a social system
organized around the contrasts or polarities of pure and impure, clean and
unclean.”[9] Purity issues created division between
people. In order to be a part of the
community one had to be pure, meaning that one was “free from any physical,
moral, or ritual contamination.”[10] Simple contact with anyone or anything considered
impure rendered a person unclean. The
unclean person was ostracized and instantly expelled from the fellowship of the
community. “Physical signs of impurity
were seen as the symptoms of … moral or religious imperfection … which
necessitated the complex system of purificatory rituals”[11] for
that is the only way one would have been welcomed back into that fellowship of
the community. “Rules surrounding meals
were deeply imbedded in the purity system”[12]
which was diligently studied and followed so that one would know what one could
eat and who one could eat with. The power
of the purity conflict in the cultures of the first century cannot be
emphasized enough, for without a thorough understanding of this struggle, one
may not understand the depth of the radical inclusion that emerged when Jesus interacted
with the Syrophoenician woman. Within this
cultural context – the verbal interaction between the Syrophoenician woman and
Jesus becomes an intriguing puzzle with which to deepen our journey.
II.
Exegesis: The
Journey from Exclusion to Inclusion
The gospel story circulated orally
for over thirty years before being transformed into a cohesive narrative by a
literary master into the Gospel of Mark. With today’s highly visual learning styles which
stress reading rather than listening, the modern reader often misinterprets or
misses completely many of the literary signals which captivated the attention
of readers in ancient times.[13] In addition, the Gospel of Mark flows at
such a brisk pace as it builds anticipation that it can be difficult to slow
down long enough to notice, let alone savor, its literary structure. The original readers would have understood
how to “hear” the story within the writing.
When the Gospel of Mark is viewed as narrative, the power of the story
is most beautifully discerned when one steps back to view the whole before
focusing in to move back and forth along the “verbal threads”[14]
that have been tightly interwoven into the storyline by the author.
Although it is outside the scope
of this paper to step back far enough to view Mark in its entirety, it is helpful
to examine our pericope embedded in the larger chiastic structure (6:30-8:10) within
which it is located in order to find the edges of our puzzle and catch clues for
deeper meaning. Chiasm, also referred to
as parallelism, is used “to symbolize the inverted sequence or crossover of
parallel words or ideas in a bicolon, sentence, or larger literary unit.”[15] As a chiasm, this larger literary structure
can be seen as:
A (With
compassion), Jesus feeds 5,000 Jews (with many crumbs to spare) in a desert in Jewish territory and walks on
water
B (Jesus)
heals those who come to him (in Jewish territory they were most likely Jews)
C (Jesus
becomes engaged in conflict with) Pharisees over eating food with defiled hands (which is a purity issue regarding
the clean and unclean)
D (Jesus) teaches his Disciples (regarding
Purity, as “he declared all foods
clean” (7:19b) and states “it is from within, from the human heart, that evil intentions come … they defile
a person.” (7:23))
C’ (Without
compassion, Jesus enters into Gentile territory and becomes engaged in conflict with a Gentile
woman regarding an unclean spirit after which
he steps across cultural boundaries to heal without touch from a distance)
B’ (Jesus
continues deeper and farther into) Gentile territory (and heals a man by touch and words in Gentile
territory he was most likely a Gentile)
A’ (With
compassion), Jesus feeds 4,000 Gentiles (with many crumbs to spare) in a desert in Gentile territory[16]
As C’ – our pericope is not the central focus of this
chiasm, yet it is directly influenced by its position within it. The
edges of the chiasm are the miracles of multiplication. As Jesus moves from Jewish territory to
Gentile territory, he provides with such abundance there is plenty of food to
spare. The center of the chiasm and the
focal point is the teaching session with the disciples regarding purity at
which time “he declared all foods clean.” (7:23) What a tremendous change of
traditional thought!
The reader
waits with anticipation to see the impact of this change. As we focus in on our pericope, we note the author’s
use of chiasmus to highlight the central focus of his message:
A (Jesus arrives in Tyre region and seeks seclusion)
B The woman approaches (Jesus)
C (The woman begs for healing)
D (A Jesus
responds with exclusion)
E (B The
woman speaks)
D’ (A’ Jesus
responds with inclusion)
C’ (The woman receives healing)
B’ The woman returns home and (finds
healing)
Finally, we zoom in more tightly to analyze the dialogue in
Mark 7:27-29 within its chiastic context to see a desperate mother become the
catalyst for radical inclusion.
A.
A: Jesus Responds with Exclusion
With the anguished cries of her
demon-possessed daughter ringing in her ears, the Gentile Syrophoenician woman
heard about Jesus, the powerful Jewish healer from a foreign land. She shattered boundaries as she walked boldly
into the house where Jesus had secluded himself after his difficult
confrontation with Jewish officials and the disappointing teaching session with
his disciples. She dared to shatter
those boundaries because a desperate mother with a broken heart will do
anything to alleviate the suffering of her child. The woman fell down at his feet and begged
for her daughter’s life. Jesus refused
to help her because of her status as an outsider of the Jewish community as he
said, “Let the children be fed first,
for it is not fair to take the children’s food and throw it to the dogs.” (7:27)
As Jesus speaks, one might
characterize his attitude as exclusionary and his behavior as
uncompassionate. One might wonder why
Jesus acts so uncharacteristically callous toward this mother and her daughter
by calling them dogs. The simple answer
may be that this verbal exchange serves the story being told and the people it
is being told to. While the exchange of
thoughts does serve the story very well, the more complicated answer is that
the underlying cultural conflicts provide tension in a way that makes it
difficult for Jesus to see clearly the desperation of the mother who lies
prostrate before him. The author has
given the reader a stated reason: 1) the mother is a Gentile. He also gives at least three other clues for
the reader with her identification as: 2) a Syrophoenician, 3) a woman, and
with the location of the meeting as: 4) the region of Tyre.
Jesus symbolically infers the
first cultural conflict between Jews and Gentiles when he refers to the Jews as
children, and the Gentiles as dogs. Jesus used the word kuna,rion or kynarion which is rendered in the text as “dog”, but in a
diminutive sense meaning “little dog.”[18] Although this may seem to mitigate the insensitivity
of the remark, it does not for “sayings in the Hebrew Bible portray them as
contemptible scavengers who lick human blood, and the term is a metaphor for Israel’s
enemies.”[19] When Jesus refers to throwing food to the unclean
dogs, he is obviously referring to these types of scavenger dogs.
The second conflict may be the
deeply embedded bias born of historical conflicts between Phoenicians and
Jews. The text refers to the woman’s familial
background for she is a “Gentile, of Syrophoenician origin.” (7:26) Mark often
uses a type of literary device which helps the reader remember key details
called a “two-step progression … the first step gives a generality, while the
second step, the repetition, gives more specific detail and usually contains a
crucial element.”[20] Apparently it was crucially important to the
author to identify the woman as a Phoenician for the reference would have had
historical meaning for readers.
The third cultural conflict is
based on gender which is an issue of both purity and shame-honor. Many cultures throughout history have systematically
subordinated women simply because of the natural process of menstruation which
renders them unclean.[21] However, there is no evidence in this
episode that the women had any personal female issues that would render her
unclean. The woman approached Jesus apparently
without male support. Although we do not
know whether the woman followed her own cultural protocol, in a shame-honor
culture, “daring to approach a strange man in behalf of her family, was an
unconventional and, evidently to Jesus, unacceptable act … [so that] the
request itself – coming from a woman – was shameful, drawing both Jesus’
refusal and his disdain.”[22]
The fourth cultural conflict is
found in the identification of social status.
There are two different ways of the imagining the woman’s social status,
for one will never know her status definitively. The woman is from the region of Tyre. Therefore, this woman “may be from one of the
peripheral villages of Tyre,
where people’s lives were not as easy as the lives of those in urban cities.”[23] With this in mind, the first view, “and by
far the most pervasive among late-twentieth-century feminists, understands the
Syrophoenician woman to be poor, needy, and of lesser status than Jesus.”[24]
On the other hand, the woman is
from the region of Tyre, which
was “a rich city.”[25] She
is labeled as a ~Ellhni,j or HellÄ“nÃs,
which is translated “Gentile” by the NRSV and equally often
translated “Greek” in other versions. “HellÄ“nÃs
in Mk. 7:26 is ambiguous; it might simply mean Gentile or it could be a
cultural term” [Greek].[26] It may be that “Greek” is a more accurate
translation in this instance for the “knowledge of Greek language and culture
point to a member of the upper class.”[27]
B.
B: The Woman Speaks
Although one cannot be certain
about the Syrophoenician woman’s social class, certainly the desperate mother shows
a depth of experiential wisdom as she refuses to take no for an answer. In the only words she speaks, the woman turns
the words of Jesus around and teaches with reason and logic: “Sir, even the dogs under the table eat the
children’s crumbs.” (7:28) With her
provocative reply, she sounds more like Jesus than Jesus does at this
point. For Jesus was continually in the
midst of challenging and reinterpreting traditional Jewish teachings in order
to bring forth new meaning with which to change attitudes and behavior.
From the chiastic structure, it
can be seen that the Syrophoenician woman’s reply is the central point of the
pericope. As she speaks, one can hear
the humility with which she responds to her humiliation. She calls to Jesus using the title of ku,rioj or kyrios which is translated “Sir” by the NRSV but is more often translated “Lord.” The word can serve as either a humble address
or an address to a divine figure (pagan, royal, or otherwise) however it should
be noted that “Kyrios is not a major
Christological figure in Mark.”[28]
The Syrophoenician woman speaks in a way of witty
wisdom. Yet in order to hear the wisdom in the woman’s words Jesus
had to listen to her with an open mind, even if his heart stayed closed. The woman asks Jesus to see the dogs from
another point of view as she gave him a visual picture of dogs that wait under
the tables of Gentile children to share their crumbs.[29] In the Jewish purity system, dogs are
unclean animals.[30] In the Jewish culture, dogs are not welcome under the table. As a result of the Jewish purity system,
Gentiles were not welcome at the table. Therefore, in order for Jesus to change his
mind and respond with radical inclusion, he had to cross cultural boundaries imprinted
upon his psyche in order to set a table that was truly open to all.
C.
A’: Jesus Responds with Inclusion
Jesus responded at just the right
moment as he said, “For saying that, you
may go – the demon has left your daughter.” (7:29) With these words and the
transformation that has taken place within Jesus, he brings the hope of
inclusion, not just to a mother and her daughter but to the whole world. In a powerful act of healing, Jesus casts the
demon from the woman’s daughter at a distance.
The mother is desperate no longer for she returns home from her journey
to find the promise fulfilled and her daughter no longer possessed by an
unclean spirit.
In contrast to Matthew’s account
of the Canaanite woman in which he credits the healing of the daughter to the
mother’s faith, Mark’s story of the Syrophoenician woman is silent on the issue
of faith for Jesus heals on the strength of the woman’s lo,goj or logos which is rendered as
“saying” and means reasoning “as mental activity; it has the basic sense
‘to reckon’ or ‘to explain.’”[31] The woman truly did become a teacher to the Teacher.[32] In her desperation as a mother, the woman who
shattered all the boundaries, with her action and her speech, became a catalyst
for radical inclusion.
Perhaps one could label the
woman’s action and her speech as faith. Although faith is not a key theme in the
Gospel of Mark and therefore lacks development[33]
Mark’s Jesus, on three occasions (2:5, 5:34, 10:52), attributes healing to the pi,stij or pistis of either the one being
healed or the faith of the one bringing someone to be healed. Pistis is
translated as faith which means “trust in or reliance on God.”[34] It seems unlikely that an author with such a
gift for literary detail would fail to verbally recognize the faith of the
woman if that is indeed the reason Jesus changed his mind. Perhaps even if there were seedlings of faith
that resulted, Jesus healed the woman’s daughter, not because of “her faith
alone or [even] her reasoning alone, but because of her speaking up and
speaking out – because of her action”[35]
in persistently refusing to take no for an answer.
When the Syrophoenician woman
refused to take no for an answer she shattered the cultural boundaries
separating her from Jesus. Using passive
resistance, this interesting and surprisingly well-developed character in
Mark’s narrative became a catalyst for change.
In her exchange of words with Jesus, she illustrates the modern feminist
theological hermeneutic of the trickster figure as she “embodies ambiguity and
chaos, and who reminds the established orders that such forces of indeterminacy
are inescapably present in their midst.”[36] Yet the very definition of trickster locates
her at the edge of authority.[37] Regardless of the woman’s social status,
Jesus is the one who is in power for he is the one standing, and she lies
begging at his feet. For this reason,
one should remember that Jesus Christ is the main character of the gospel
narrative and “the focus must return to Jesus, because without his
transformation the woman’s situation would have remained unchanged, her bold
protests against injustice in vain.”[38]
III.
Theological
Summary/Application: Radical Inclusion
When Jesus made the physical journey from Jewish
territory into Gentile territory he walked a spiritual path from exclusion to inclusion. Jesus was ready to cross cultural boundaries
in order to meet a mother who spoke up because she had nothing but desperation
to give in exchange for the gift of healing.
Radical inclusion means one must be ready to cross boundaries, ready to listen,
ready to change, ready to accept, and ready to give to those who speak out of
their desperation. Jesus “breaks through
the boundaries of insider-outsider [as he] challenges Christians who operate rigidly
within [all] boundaries.”[39] Christians today, especially those in power, must
rise to the challenge in order to follow the example of Jesus Christ[40] breaking
through boundaries (physical and spiritual) so the power of the gospel can
explode in radical inclusion.
[1] John R. Donahue, The
HarperCollins Bible Commentary, James Luther Mays, ed. et al (New York: HarperCollins
Publishers, 2006), 901.
[2] Donahue, Commentary,
901.
[3] Mary Ann Tolbert, The Women’s Bible Commentary.
Expanded edition. eds. Newsom, Carol A. and Sharon H. Ringe (Louisville:
Westminster John Knox Press, 1998), 351.
[4] Everett Ferguson, Backgrounds of Early Christianity (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans,
2003), 593 & 602.
[5] Ferguson,
602.
[6] Gerd Theissen, The
Gospels in Context: Social and Political History in the Synoptic Tradition,
trans. Linda M. Mahone (Edinburgh: T & T Clark Ltd, 1992), 68.
[7] Theissen, 68.
[8] Theissen, 66-67.
[9] Marcus J. Borg, Meeting
Jesus again for the First Time: The Historical Jesus and the Heart of
Contemporary Faith (New York: HarperCollins Publishers, 1994), 50.
[10] Paul J. Achtemeier, et al eds., The HarperCollins Bible Dictionary (New York: HarperCollins, 1985
& 1996), 902 .
[11] Achtemeier, 902.
[12] Borg, 55.
[13] Tolbert, 351.
[14] David M. Rhoads, “Jesus and the Syrophoenician Woman
in Mark: A Narrative-Critical Study,” Journal
of the American Academy of Religion 62 Sum (1994):
363. This article later appeared as
Chapter 4 of Rhoads, “Jesus and the Syrophoenician Woman” in Reading Mark, Engaging the Gospel (Minneapolis: Fortress
Press, 2004) from which I take my understanding of Mark as narrative.
[15] Richard N. Soulen and R. Kendall Soulen, Handbook of Biblical Criticism (Louisville: Westminster
John Knox Press, 2001), 32.
[16] Rhoads,
348. Although I am using Rhoads chiasm,
chiastic structures are subjective and can be seen those who know what to look
and listen for. I changed and adapted
this structure for the purpose of the exegesis in this paper. My additions/changes are in parentheses and
my emphasis is in bold.
[17] Sharon H. Ringe, “A Gentile Woman’s Story, Revisited:
Rereading Mark 7:24-31” in A Feminist
Companion to Mark, ed. Amy-Jill Levine & Marianne Blickenstaff (Sheffield, Eng: Sheffield Academic Press, 2001), 82. My adaptation of Ringe’s structure is for the
purpose of exegesis in this paper. Additions are in parentheses and my emphasis
on central ABA’
mine is in bold.
[18] John R. Donahue and Daniel J. Harrington, The
Gospel of Mark. Sacra Pagina Series Vol. 2 (Collegeville: The Liturgical
Press, 2002), 234.
[19] Ringe, 89.
[20] Rhoads, 74.
[21] Ranjini Wickramaratne Rebera, “The Syrophoenician
Woman: A South Asian Feminist Perspective” in A Feminist Companion to Mark, ed. Amy-Jill Levine & Marianne
Blickenstaff (Sheffield, Eng: Sheffield
Academic Press, 2001), 102.
[22] Tolbert, 56.
[23] Hisako Kinukawa, “De-colonizing Ourselves as Readers:
The Story of the Syro-Phoenician Woman as a Text” in Distant Voices Drawing Near (Collegeville,
MN: Liturgical Press, 2004), 139.
[24] Jane E. Hicks, “Moral Agency at the Borders: Rereading
the Story of the Syrophoenician Woman” Word
& World Vol. 23, No. 1 Winter( 2003), 81.
[25] Theissen, 72.
[26] Gerhard
Friedrich and Gerhard Kittel, eds., TDNT:
Theological Dictionary of the New
Testament. (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1995, c1985), S. 228.
[27] Theissen, 70.
[28] Donahue, Mark, 234.
[29] Sabine Van Den Eynde, “When a Teacher Becomes a
Student: The Challenge of the Syrophoenician Woman (Mark 7:26-31)” Theology 103 no 814 July-Aug (2000), 277.
[30] Donahue, Mark, 234.
[32] Eynde, 274-279. See article for full discussion on
this interpretation.
[33] Achtemeier, 327.
[34] Achtemeier, 327.
[35] Elizabeth Struthers Malbon, “Fallible Followers: women
and men in the Gospel of Mark,” Semeia no
28 (1983), 37.
[36] Claudia V. Camp, “Feminist Theological Hermeneutics:
Canon and Christian Identity,” in The
Theological Interpretation of Scripture: Classic and Contemporary Readings, ed. Stephen
Fowl (Oxford, UK: Blackwell Publishing Ltd, 1997), 64.
[37] Camp, 64.
[38] Surekha Nelavala, “Smart Syrophoenician woman: a Dalit
Feminist reading of Mark 7:24-31,” Expository
Times 188 no 2 (2006), 64. As a Dalit woman and self-proclaimed
liberationist, Surekha Nelavala understands and articulates the role of the
“trickster” well as she brings her own experience into dialog with the text.
[39] Nelavala, 67.
[40] I am indebted to Hisako Kinukawa, “De-colonizing
Ourselves” for educating me on the need for de-colonizing the text by
recognizing oppression from both imperialism and patriarchy. I was challenged to realize that often white
middle-class women (as I am) analyze patriarchy in the text due to their own
oppressive life experiences, but neglect the study of imperialism because their
life experience does not give them insight.
For example, I may be living a life that is enhanced as an indirect
result of oppression. I found it helpful
to explore my own status as one who is a “cultural colonizer” and what impact
that has on my study of Scripture. This
requires being able to “discern whom we are oppressing and by whom we are
oppressed,” 133. If I am able, I may be teachable enough to become radically
inclusive of people who are different from me.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Achtemeier, Paul J. et al eds. The HarperCollins Bible Dictionary. New York: HarperCollins,
1985 & 1996.
Amjad-Ali, Christine. “Breaking Barriers to Establish the
New Community: The Syrophoenician
Woman.” In Affirming Difference,
Celebrating Wholeness.
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of Asia, Women’s Concerns, 1995: 136-138
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Borg, Marcus J. Meeting
Jesus Again for the First Time: The Historical Jesus & The
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Brown, Raymond E. Introduction to the New Testament. New York: Doubleday,
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Burkhill,
T Alec. “Historical Development of the Story of the Syrophoenician Woman, Mark 7:24-31.” Novum Testamentum 9, no. 3 (1967): 161-177.
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Mays et al. New York: HarperCollins, 1998 & 2000.
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-- --
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3rd Edition, 2007.
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Agency at the Borders: Rereading the Story of the Syrophoenician
Woman.”
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Kinukawa,
Hisako. “De-colonizing Ourselves as Readers: The Story of the Syro-
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of Antoinette Clark Wire,
edited by Holly Hearon. Collegeville, MN:
Liturgical Press, 2004: 131-144.
Malbon,
Elizabeth Struthers. “Fallible Followers: Women and Men in the Gospel of
Mark.” Semeia 28 (1983): 29-48.
Nelavala,
Surekha. “Smart Syrophoenician woman: a Dalit feminist reading of Mark
7:24-31.” Expository
Times 188, no. 2 (2006): 64-69.
Rebera, Ranjini
Wickramaratne. “The Syrophoenician Woman: A South Asian Feminist
Perspective.” In A Feminist
Companion to Mark, edited by Amy-Jill Levine and Marianne Blickenstaff. Sheffield, Eng: Sheffield
Academic Press, 2001.
Ringe,
Sharon H. “A Gentile Woman’s Story, Revisited: Rereading Mark 7:24-31.” In A
Feminist
Companion to Mark, edited by Amy-Jill Levine and Marianne Blickenstaff. Sheffield, Eng: Sheffield Academic Press, 2001.
Rhoads,
David M. “Jesus and the Syrophoenician Woman in Mark: A Narrative-Critical
Study.” Journal of the American
Academy of Religion
62 Sum (1994) 343-375
-- -- -- Reading Mark, Engaging the Gospel.
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Fortress Press, 2004.
Skinner,
Matthew L. “‘She departed to her house’: another dimension of the
Syrophoenician mother’s faith in
Mark 7:24-30.” Word & World 26, no. 1 Winter
(2008): 14-21.
Soulen,
Richard N. and R. Kendall Soulen. Handbook
of Biblical Criticism. Louisville:
Westminster John Knox Press, 2001.
Theissen,
Gerd. The Gospels in Context: Social and
Political History in the Synoptic
Tradition. Translated
by Linda M. Mahoney. Edinburgh:
T & T Clark Ltd, 1992.
Tolbert,
Mary Ann. “Mark.” In The Women’s Bible Commentary. Expanded edition,
edited by Carol A. Newsom and Sharon
H. Ringe. Louisville: Westminster John
Knox Press, 1998. 350-362.
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