Matthew's Bias

Leaving that place, Jesus withdrew to the region of Tyre and Sidon. A Canaanite woman from that vicinity came to him, crying out, “Lord, Son of David, have mercy on me! - Matthew 15:21-22

It’s commonly agreed amongst both conservative and liberal bible scholars that when Matthew was putting to gather his gospel he had access to the book of Mark. Interestingly, Mark refers to this incident as Jesus coming in contact with a woman who was “a Greek, born in Syrian Phoenicia” (Mark 7:26). So Matthew intentionally swapped out these ethnic & geographical identifiers for the term “Canaanite,” which is the only time it comes up in the entire New Testament. And on top of that, “Canaanite” was anachronistic - it was not used commonly in the first century at all. It referred to a people group that had existed hundreds of years beforehand - They were the people whom Israel had displaced when they entered the Promised Land.

Since Matthew focused his gospel on the royal Messiah (as opposed, to say, Luke who focused on marginalized people), it seems likely that Matthew was trying to point out how all nations (like even those dreaded Canaanites!) eventually found their way to worship Jesus. But along the way, by using this woman (and not even naming her!) as a theological prop, he reduces her to one of the conquered, colonized peoples of the past. As Sarah Bessey recently popularized this saying on Instagram, “People should never be the collateral damage from your theology.”

What if God allowed this piece of ethnic bias in the scriptures because it was so obviously inappropriate? Instead of defending it, we’d see with clarity that this is not how we should speak of people - reducing them to how they look or where they are from. Perhaps God’s hoping that we’d notice this going on in Matthew and then turn the spotlight on ourselves…

So how about you? What group of people are you tempted to dehumanize, use as the butt of a joke, or ‘preach’ about in a negative light?

Talk with Jesus about these things.