Yuri Kuchinsky

Greetings, all,

Jesus' encounter with the Canaanite woman is found in the gospels of Matthew and Mark. And, according to all the standard English translations of these verses (Mt 15:21/Mk 7:24), Jesus actually crosses over into the Gentile territory before the woman approaches him, begging that he would heal her daughter.

But was this really the original version of this story? Well, it looks like now there's some good evidence that our canonical Matthew and Mark had been edited at this point, and that, in the earliest version of this story, Jesus didn't actually cross over into Gentile territory. Instead, the woman came out to meet him while he was still in Galilee!

The evidence that I will produce in this article comes from the ancient Aramaic versions of Mt (both the Curetonian and the Sinaitic), as well as from the Magdalene Gospel. Once again, it looks like there's a unique agreement between these very unusual biblical texts, that almost nobody in today's academic establishment seems to be interested in.

And yet, still and all, the way this verse looks in the Magdalene Gospel is rather odd, because of the unusual geographical indications as found in it. But soon, these rather unusual geographical particulars in the Magdalene text will be clarified, and it seems like this will cast some new light on the early history of both Matthew and Mark.

So here is this passage as it's now found in our canonical Mt. I'm giving it now in a very literal English translation, that follows very closely upon the canonical Greek text,

(Mt 15:21) And Jesus, having come away from there, withdrew to the district of Tyre and Sidon;
(22) and, behold, a woman, a Canaanite, from that region having come out, cried out, saying...

And here's the Greek text of this passage,

(Mt 15:21) kai exelqwn ekeiqen o IhsouV, anecwrhsen eiV ta merh Turou kai SidwnoV;
(22) kai, idou, gunh Cananaia, apo twn oriwn ekeinwn exelqousa, ekrazen legousa...

There's no difference here between the Alexandrian and Byzantine versions except for the last two words, the Byzantine version reading /ekraugasen autw legousa/, but this variant doesn't seem to have any big significance. Otherwise, there are no variants at all listed for this passage in Aland's Greek Synopsis, which, normally, should indicate that the Greek textual tradition is pretty stable here. (But, as we will see further, this is actually not the case! It's just that Aland simply missed some quite important MS variants for this verse.)


THE GENERAL CONTEXT OF THIS PASSAGE

This whole section of Mt (Mt 14:22-16:12, paralleled by Mk 6:45-8:26) is lacking in Luke, so this is known as the "Great Omission" in Luke. Many commentators have argued in the past that this whole section was a late addition both to Mk and Mt. And it seems pretty clear why this section would have been added to Mt/Mk in the course of a later editing -- the big theme of this section is the opening of the movement to Gentiles. So this would provide a good reason why Mt/Mk added the Second Feeding of the Multitudes here; there are indications that this Second Feeding was expressly designed to symbolise the Gentile mission, as opposed to the First Feeding of the Jews (the symbolism of the numbers 12 and 7 is a case in point).

Thus, it shouldn't be surprising in the least that this miraculous healing of the Canaanite (Gentile) woman's daughter should be found right in this location in Mt/Mk.

But there's actually a bit of a continuity problem within this passage -- because, as can be seen above, v. 22 doesn't really follow upon v. 21 in a very smooth fashion. Indeed, if Jesus had already arrived into this Canaanite district, why is the woman portrayed as coming out of it, in order to meet him? I think the surmise should come naturally here that, in the original version of this passage, (1) either Jesus didn't yet enter this Gentile district, or (2) the woman didn't yet come out of it... And, as it turns out, indeed, in the Aramaic Matthew, the former option is what we now find.

So here's the Old Syriac Aramaic version of this passage, in Burkitt's 1904 translation,

(Mt 15:21 Aramaic) And Jesus came forth from thence, and went away _to the border of_ Tyre and Sidon,
(22) and lo, a certain woman, a Canaanite, came forth from those same borders, and was crying out and said...

So here we see that Jesus merely comes out "to the border of" Tyre and Sidon, as opposed to actually entering into this Gentile district. Thus, in the Aramaic text, the second part of this sequence is the same as in the Greek, but the first part is different, and happens to make a lot more sense overall.


DID JESUS, HIMSELF, AUTHORISE THE OPENING OF THE MOVEMENT TO THE GENTILES?

While in Mk and Lk this part is pretty clear, according to Mt, there's a bit of an ambiguity there. After all, it's only in Mt that we find the following rather surprising injunction, as delivered by Jesus to his chosen disciples,

(Matthew 10:5 RSV) These twelve Jesus sent out, charging them, "Go nowhere among the Gentiles, and enter no town of the Samaritans,
(6) but go rather to the lost sheep of the house of Israel.

So, assuming that this text is very early (and there's no reason to think that it isn't), this should tell us quite a lot about the original agenda of the First Evangelist. And considering all this, it should make plenty of sense that, in its original shape, Mt 15:21-22 may have featured Jesus preferring to stay out of the Gentile territory; he only went up to its border, where he meets this Canaanite woman.

Thus, it looks like, once again, the Old Syriac Aramaic Matthew is apparently preserving for us the more original text of Matthew's gospel!

(The force of Mt 10:5 was apparently muted somewhat by Mt 28:19, part of the Great Commissioning at the very end of the gospel. But to me this seems like a later addition, that was probably made at about the same time as the changes in Mt 15:21 were being made.)


NOTE ON THE SYNOPTIC RELATIONSHIPS

Myself, I'm no longer a believer either in the mainstream 2 Source Theory, or in Markan priority. And it seems like, for an average NT scholar today, it's mostly a matter of belief that these things are true; after all, very few have really examined these matters objectively for themselves...

As the situation stands now, a typical mainstream gospel commentary happens to be based on an uncritical acceptance of Markan priority. So one usually finds the compositional history of Matthew being seen from this perspective by the authors of these commentaries. But, from my own point of view (based on the work of Loisy), both Mk and Mt had been heavily re-edited some time in the second century -- to produce the canonical versions that we now see before us. And yet, to a large extent, the Aramaic versions of these gospels seem to have escaped this final re-editing.

I will not be going into the analysis of the Aramaic version of Mark 7:24 (parallel to Mt 15:21) at this time, although there's quite a bit of interesting stuff there as well. I will only note that, in the Aramaic version of this Markan passage, precisely the same language is being used as in Mt in regard to Jesus' movements.

Based on my observation, very often, the Aramaic versions of Mk and Mt actually read a lot closer together, compared to how the Greek versions read. Yet again, this should indicate that the Aramaic gospels are a lot closer to the original gospel texts, compared to what we now find in the Greek.


OPINIONS OF SOME MAINSTREAM COMMENTARIES

Recent commentators generally find that both the Markan and the Matthean versions of this story have some serious problems with continuity. In particular, as Gundry's Commentary on Mark notes, some scholars have suggested that this story was originally located elsewhere in Mk, and then was moved into this section where we find it now. The reason for such a hypothesis is that there seem to be some problems with the characterisation of this woman as a Syro-Phoenician -- Why is she being identified thus expressly if Jesus already finds himself within the Syro-Phoenician territory, in any case? (But, for my part, I see this seeming inconsistency as merely the remnants of the work on this passage as done by a late editor.)

Also, in the past, scholars have already been debating the very same question that is now raised in this article -- Is Jesus portrayed in this story as actually entering the Gentile territory? Again, according to Gundry (Commentary on Matthew), this part is quite ambiguous in Mk, while quite clear in Mt. And yet, according to Davies & Allison (Commentary on Matthew), the situation is precisely the reverse with these two passages in Mt and Mk! So Davies & Allison say that the same thing is quite clear in Mk, while somewhat ambiguous in Mt...

Indeed, I'm glad to say, Davies & Allison did actually manage to pick up on the inconsistency in Mt between v. 21 and v. 22 that I'm addressing in this article (while Gundry happened to miss it). And, in regard to Mk, I suppose that Gundry was simply blinded by his belief that Mk is supposed to be the earliest gospel... And so, accordingly, he may have simply read into Mk that there's something of an ambiguity there (since the earliest gospel is supposed to be more Jewish?). However this may be, such circular reasoning as this wouldn't be at all uncommon in our mainstream Synoptic literature.

In any case, this confusion on the part of the scholars seems to indicate that there's indeed a problem with interpreting these stories as we find them in our canonical Greek Mk and Mt. And yet, it looks like none of the commentators that I've read so far are even aware of this important Aramaic variant that I've now identified. No wonder, because neither is it mentioned in Aland's Synopsis, on which most NT scholars would rely, even if they wished to look into the textual background of any given gospel passage.


MAGDALENE GOSPEL VERSION

And now, let us look at what the Magdalene Gospel has for this passage.

(MG 52:1) "Then Jesus went towards Syria, and towards Gades.
(2) And there came a heathen woman of that country and besought Jesus that he would chase a demon out of her daughter."

So what we see here is that, in the Magdalene Gospel, as well as in the Aramaic Mt, Jesus does not actually enter the Gentile territory. Rather, the woman is coming out of the Gentile territory, and entreats him to help her daughter.


SYRIA AND GADES?

But there also seems to be a bit of a problem here in the Magdalene Gospel with interpreting these geographical particulars, "Syria and Gades". While the "Syria" part seems quite clear overall, what might this "Gades" be all about?

In her commentary, Margery Goates, the editor of the Magdalene Gospel, admits that she was quite puzzled by this rather enigmatic designation. One of her suggestions is that "Gades" might represent "the land of Gad", but how would that be relevant to anything?

Well, I've now looked into this problem, and it seems like the answer here wasn't really all that difficult to find -- all I had to do was simply look carefully at the map of ancient Israel, as well as into the Aramaic text of Matthew. But I will save this further analysis for the second part of this article, that I will post soon.

Meanwhile, does anyone have any questions or comments about the first part?

Best wishes,

Yuri.

Robert Gundry, _Mark: a commentary on his apology for the cross_, Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 1993.

Robert Gundry, _Matthew: a commentary on his handbook for a mixed church under persecution_, Grand Rapids, Mich.: W.B. Eerdmans, 1994.

W. D. Davies, and Dale C. Allison, _The Gospel According to Saint Matthew_, Edinburgh: T & T Clark, 1991.

offa

Offa;
Galilee was a location that had lots of caves and if you took a mistep you would perish below. Read Josephus, he tells about Herod evacuating the residents of these caves. Herod was made governor of this same Galilee. This location is Qumran! Josephus was never about the Sea of Galilee. He was a petty leader of rouges in Qumran. The Jews never had a "say" in Galilee, let alone Syria. You are barking up the wrong tree. The Jewish world of Scripture was very small. Syria and Damascus were sites within 20 miles of Jerusalem. The river Jordan and the Tigris and the Euphrates were little wady's near to Jerusalem. You have been fished in.

Geoff Hudson

Yuri, I find this interesting. You are probably correct about later editors wanting to have Jesus making contact with Gentiles.

But never mind about going into Gentile territory. Why do the gospel editors keep Jesus travelling to and from Galilee quicker than the speed of light? I would suggest that the reason is to deflect attention away from where the real action was going on, namely Judea. Also, there may be an original story that was never included in Luke, because the writer of Luke had to limit his account to fit the space of a scroll, or he simply chose not to include it.

Yes I think you are correct. Jesus (imo John) did prefer to stay out of Gentile territory. He preferred to stay in the land of Judea that he knew like the back of his hand, where he could easily escape from his enemies. The woman was indeed a lost sheep of the House of Israel. She could have been a poor Rechabite type regarded as an Israelite ‘dog’ by the more puritanical types such as Essenes. She lived, not in the region of Tyre and Sidon, but in the barren area where Sodom and Gomorah once were on the borders of the Dead Sea. As Rechabite, she rejected temple sacrifices and was regarded as unproselytized, and unclean. The gospel editors simply changed the existing story to suit their purposes. The story may have read thus:

‘Leaving that cave, John withdrew to the region of Sodom and Gommorah. A Rechabite woman from that vicinity came to him, crying out, "Master, Son of Zechariah, have mercy on me! My daughter is suffering terribly from demon-possession." The woman came and knelt before him. "Master, help me!" she said. John prayed for her in the Spirit. So his disciples came to him and urged him, "Send her away, for she keeps crying out after us." He answered, "I was sent to the lost sheep of Israel. It is right to take the children's bread and give it to their dogs." "Yes, Master," she said, "the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from their masters' table." Then John answered, "Woman, you have the Spirit! Your request is granted." And her daughter was cleansed from that very hour.

John left there and went to the Sea of Ashphaltitis. Then he went up on a mountainside and sat down. Great crowds came to him, bringing the lame, the blind, the crippled, the mute and many others, and laid them at his feet; and he cleansed them. The people were amazed when they saw the mute and the crippled made pure. And they praised the Spirit of God.’

All in my scheme Yuri. Thankyou.

Geoff

Geoff Hudson

Yuri, my text should read:

'The Spirit was sent to the lost sheep of the house of Israel', not 'I was'.

Geoff

Yuri Kuchinsky

Offa,

From what I can understand, these seem like mostly guesses and surmises. Where is there any hard evidence of any sort for what you say? Or perhaps you're writing in some sort of a secret code, according to your mentor Babs Thiering?

So let's come back to Thiering then. Please tell me, How could it have been possible for the NT to have been all written in a secret code, but then for this code to get completely lost? And when exactly was it lost? Please help us to clarify these mysteries for us.

Best,

Yuri.

Yuri Kuchinsky

Thank you, Geoff.

<strong> Well, that's a little too many maybes for my taste...

<strong> Well, I now actually have some hard textual evidence that, in the original version of this story, the disciples asked Jesus _to help_ the woman, rather than to sent her away...

But as for the rest of your post, again, I would like to repeat the request that I've already made in the other thread.

Since you seem to be proposing a highly elaborate theory all of your own in regard to the history of NT composition, perhaps you won't mind telling us how and when you came to acquire this theory? What previous scholarship might you be basing it on? What books and authors have you found useful so far in your historical quest? These things might help to clarify your theory for us.

All the best,

Yuri.

Geoff Hudson

Yuri,

You know that Thiering can't explain her own theories, and you also know that no-one else can. Her site Qumran Origins where she rules the roost is mostly gibberish with a pathetic following hanging on to her petticoats. She will not entertain alternative views that don't agree with hers. I can only feel sorry for her. Its a pity she can't release herself from the ideas in which she is entrenched.

Geoff

Geoff Hudson

[QUOTE]Originally posted by Yuri Kuchinsky:
<strong>

Well, I now actually have some hard textual evidence that, in the original version of this story, the disciples asked Jesus _to help_ the woman, rather than to sent her away...


Yuri.</strong>[/QUOTE

Yuri,

That does make more sense and puts the disciples in a better light. By having the disciples reject the woman, an editor denigrates the disciples and enhances Jesus (imo) John. Thankyou. I would be pleased to have your reference.

As for my own theories, I will try to explain them as I go along on this site. So far I have been kicked off the Qumran Origins and the Jesus Mysteries sites. I do post to Orion without rocking the boat too much. May be here, I will find a little more tolerance and mutual exchange of ideas.

Geoff

Yuri Kuchinsky

[quote]Originally posted by Geoff Hudson:
<strong>See below, Geoff. You're quite right, it does seem like a late Matthean editor wanted to denigrate the disciples.

<strong> That's quite an impressive track record!

<strong> AFAIK, here nobody would kick you out just because you have unpopular opinions. But as to "mutual exchange of ideas", we'll have to see about it, won't we?

In any case, here's that info about the disciples actually asking Jesus to help the woman, rather than to sent her away. I will just post some stuff from my webpage,

Yuri Kuchinsky ~ the Magdalene Gospel
<a href="http://www.trends.ca/~yuku/bbl/mg.htm" target="_blank">http://www.trends.ca/~yuku/bbl/mg.htm</a>

It comes in the form of two separate posts from June 2000. Originally they were posted to TC-List, where everybody was duly stumped by both my questions and answers...

Regards,

Yuri.

==========

From: Yuri Kuchinsky
Date: Fri Jun 23, 2000 10:34am
Subject: Canaanite woman in Mt pericope

<a href="http://groups.yahoo.com/group/loisy/messages/497" target="_blank">http://groups.yahoo.com/group/loisy/messages/497</a>

Dear friends,

The incident with the Canaanite woman in Mt is a bit of a puzzle, because the internal logic of this passage is quite problematic.

Young's Literal Translation (YLT)

Matthew 15
21 And Jesus having come forth thence,
withdrew to the parts of Tyre and Sidon,
22 and lo, a woman, a Canaanitess, from
those borders having come forth, did call to
him, saying, `Deal kindly with me, Sir -- Son
of David; my daughter is miserably
demonized.'
23 And he did not answer her a word; and his
disciples having come to him, were asking
him, saying -- `Let her away, because she
crieth after us;'
24 and he answering said, `I was not sent
except to the lost sheep of the house of Israel.'

At first, Jesus does not answer a word in reply to the woman's entreaties. He's unwilling to help her because she's Canaanite, it seems. Then the disciples, also not being all that friendly that day, apparently, want to see her sent away, "Send her away.." But why does Jesus reply "I was sent only to the lost sheep of Israel"? Obviously, his reply does not correspond logically to what the disciples asked him to do.

For his reply to be logically congruous, the disciples should have in fact asked Jesus to _help the woman_, rather than to send her away. It stands to reason that perhaps in the source of Mt this was what they said, but that later the text was changed for whatever reason.

The parallel in Mk 7:24-30 lacks this complication altogether, of course.

I already tried to look for some variant ms or patristic readings of this passage in Mt where the disciples would have tried to persuade Jesus to help the woman, but so far found none. Does anybody know of any such reading somewhere?

But now there's also the Magdalene Gospel. This is what it has in MG 52:3-5,

(MG 52:3) And Jesus did not answer her a word.
(4) And his disciples begged him that he would drive the demon out of her, because she was crying after them, and beseeching them to intercede for her.
(5) and Jesus answered them, and said that he was sent to the Jews only.

The larger context of this passage in the Magdalene Gospel is a long sequence following Mt along with Mk in good order. Is it possible that alone of all gospel witnesses now extant MG preserves the original shape of this story?

Best regards,

Yuri.

-------

From: Yuri Kuchinsky
Date: Wed Jun 28, 2000 4:00 pm
Subject: Re: Canaanite woman in Mt pericope

<a href="http://www.egroups.com/message/loisy/546" target="_blank">http://www.egroups.com/message/loisy/546</a>

Dear friends,

In my previous posts on this subject, I drew attention to the variant reading in the Magdalene Gospel (MG) parallel to the canonical Mt 15:23,

(canonical Mt 15:23) "Jesus did not answer a word. So his disciples came to him and urged him, "Send her away, for she keeps crying out after us."

(MG 52:3) And Jesus did not answer her a word.
(4) And his disciples begged him that he would drive the demon out of her, because she was crying after them, and beseeching them to intercede for her.

The important difference here is that in MG the disciples ask Jesus to help the woman, rather than to send her away.

I also said that I already tried to look for some parallels to this divergent MG reading, but found none. Following my question if any other such parallels were known, none of TC-List members were able to suggest any, so I thought that this MG reading is unique, and unparalleled anywhere else.

But now, I'm pleased to report that I have found quite a few such parallels myself. They are all from medieval Europe, and mostly in Latin.

They are listed by G. Quispel in his TATIAN AND THE GOSPEL OF THOMAS, Brill, 1975. He cites the whole seven of them (besides MG), and thinks they are all Diatessaronic. One is Dutch from the Liege Diatessaron, and one from ninth-century Old Saxon _Heliand_. Here's the Latin parallel from the VITA JESU CHRISTI by Ludolph of Saxony, for example,

"et discipuli eius .. accedentes rogabant eum pro ea" (vol. II, 321a)

I suppose it can be concluded on the basis of this information that an unusual and possibly quite primitive Latin DT existed in medieval Western Europe that was quite popular, and that influenced many commentaries by various medieval scholars. It also seems like MG is somehow connected to that unusual Western European Latin DT. Yet so far I'm not aware of any Eastern witnesses to this divergent reading.

Also, this information seems to provide support to the idea that this rather unusual divergent reading of Mt 15:23 goes back to antiquity, and is pre-canonical. Indeed, the fact that this reading is so widely attested in Western Europe, in itself, suggests that it goes back to an old source.

Also, such wide attestation indicates clearly that the author of MG did not make this reading up independently.

Also G. Quispel includes great many other quotes from MG in his book, and this indicates clearly that he thought very highly of this Middle English text as an important Diatessaronic witness.

Best wishes,

Yuri.

Yuri Kuchinsky -=O=- <a href="http://www.trends.ca/~yuku" target="_blank">http://www.trends.ca/~yuku</a>

"One of the greatest pains to human nature is the pain of a new idea"
--Walter Bagehot (1826-1877)

Boro Nut

At this late date it's impossible to know what he did do with those kids.

Boro Nut