James the Brother of Jesus and the Dead Sea Scrolls II (59 page)

The rest of this encounter we have already largely analyzed. In Matthew 15:27 the woman, in uttering the celebrated ‘
even the little dogs eat of the crumbs which fall from their masters
’
table
’, incorporates the ‘
falling
’ usage just employed in ‘
she fell at his feet
’ – which is to say nothing of its evocation of the omnipresent ‘
lord
’ or ‘
master
’ motif from Column Nine of the Community Rule, Gospel parables probably not unrelated to it, and the Talmudic story about Nakdimon’s ‘
master
’
s water ci
s
terns
’ – perhaps coincidental, perhaps not. For its part, Mark 7:28’s version of the unnamed woman’s proverbial retort to Jesus is then framed – somewhat differently from Matthew 15:27’s above, no doubt because, in the odd mindset of its authors or redactors, the
falling
/
fell
usage had already been employed two lines previously in her ‘
falling at his feet
’ – in terms of the equally celebrated: ‘
and she answered
,
saying to him
, “
Yea Lord
,
but even the little dogs under the table eat of the children
’
s crumbs”’.

Not only is there no ‘
falling
’ allusion here at all (because Mark had just used it in the previous sentence), but ‘
the crumbs
’ now migrate from the ‘
masters
’
table
’ to ‘
the little dogs eating under the table
’ and now they are ‘
the children
’
s
’. Again there is ‘
the dogs
’ allusion here, but the ‘
little
’ from the ‘
little children
’ of Gospel narrative generally and those in the Rabbinic
Parable
about Rabbi Akiba’s ‘
Torah
study
’ (to say nothing of the Syrophoenician woman’s ‘
little daughter
’ earlier)
has migrated to the
‘
little dogs
’!

Of course, the ‘
under the table
’ theme too, just as the ‘
coming
’ one, will now migrate to Luke’s version of the ‘
dogs
’ (now normal size and not ‘little’) ‘
coming
’, not to ‘
eat the crumbs
’, but to lick the ‘
Poor Man Lazarus
’
sores
’ – ‘
under the table
’. Again, it is worth keeping in mind that, just as Luke has no Canaanite/Greek Syrophoenician woman ‘
dogs
’ episode, Mark and Matthew have no ‘
dogs licking Lazarus
’
sores
’ episode – and John has
no ‘
dogs
’ episode at all!

Casting out Mary Magdalene
’
s Seven Demons
and
Casting Down the Toilet Bowl
Again

Moreover, these circuitous machinations do not end here. In other accounts, the woman out of whose daughter Jesus casts ‘
an unclean spirit
’ or ‘
demon
’, as we have already suggested to some degree, will transmogrify into ‘
Mary Magdalene out of whom he
(Jesus)
cast seven demons
’ (Luke 8:2 and Mark 16:9). Regarding this last and taking into account the persistent ‘
Tyre
’ allusions in Mark and Matthew, it is not completely unwarranted to identify yet another mutation in this circle of mater
i
als in the parallel represented by the portrait of Simon
Magus
’ ‘
Queen
’, called – like
the Queen of Adiabene
– ‘
Helen
’ in all early Church sources who is perhaps not totally unrelated to this
Northern Syrian
or
Arabian Queen
who is depicted in clearly hostile early Church sources as having, significantly, been picked up by Simon
in a brothel in Tyre
. Perhaps we can dismiss a certain amount of hyperbole here too.

The perspicacious reader will quickly recognize as well that the ‘
crumbs that fall from their masters
’
table
’ of Matthew 15:27 now also migrate over to Luke 16:20. It is instructive too to recall that, in Luke 16:20–21’s version of these events, ‘
the crumbs
’ are rather those that now ‘f
all from the Rich man
’
s table
’ to ‘
a certain Poor Man named Lazarus
’ – ‘
the Rich Man
’ replacing Matthew 15:27’s ‘
their masters
’, as we saw, though the ‘
falling
’ in Matthew has nothing to do with anyone ‘
kissing
’ or ‘
licking
’ Jesus’ ‘
feet
’.
However, now it is
Lazarus
, as noted, who ‘
wants to be
satisfied
’ or ‘
filled
from the crumbs which fell from the Rich Man
’
s table
’ and whose sores ‘
even the dogs came and licked
’, not the ‘
children should first be filled
’ of Mark 7:27’s further variation of it.

To go back to Matthew and Mark, so convinced is Jesus by the unnamed ‘
Canaanite woman
’’s clever riposte – as if dis
a
greements over
purity
issues of this kind could simply be solved by lighthearted and casual rhetorical give-and-take or one-upmanship – that he proceeds ‘
to cast unclean spirits
’
out of Gentiles
too in areas
outside of Palestine
proper (that is, in ‘
Tyre and Sidon
’ and later even ‘
the Decapolis
’). The Pauline
Gentile Mission
implicit in this depiction is well served as is ideolog
i
cally-speaking, where legal requirements are concerned,
the child-like simplicity of these
‘
little
’
people
, since that is really what is at stake in these episodes and this debate. Nor is this to say anything about the debate and resolution of the
unclean
foods issue that precedes and introduces it in both Gospels, now transformed into the patently trivializing and dissimulating one of ‘
possession by unclean spirits
’ or ‘
demons’.
This is continually true of the
modus operandi
of the Gospels and probably just about every reference to ‘
unclean spirits
’ or ‘
demons
’ should be seen in this context.

In this connection, too, one should pay particular attention to Paul’s reference to ‘
the table
’ in the Temple in the same breath as ‘
the table of demons
’ in 1 Corinthians 10:21, implying an interconnection of sorts if one could actually understand, through all the dissimulation here, what was actually being said.
Not only does this come in continuation of his wrestling in 10:18–20 with the question of ‘
things sacrificed to idols
’ (‘
what then do I say, that an idol is anything or that which is sacrificed to an idol is anything
?’), it precedes his second evocation of his ‘
all things lawful being lawful for me
’ pronouncement in 10:23, concluding in 10:25 with: ‘
Eat everything that is sold in the marketplace
,
in no way making inquiry on account of conscience’
.

For its part Luke 8:2, lacking the Syrophoenician woman’s daughter episode, attaches these ‘
unclean
’ or ‘
Evil spirits
’, as we just mentioned, to its introduction of Mary Magdalene, ‘
out of whom seven demons had gone
’, and here we have the same conundrum – as in the case of the ‘
toilet bowl
’ situation – only in Mark, anyhow, now reversed. As should be readily apparent, this last in Luke now combines Mark 7:19’s ‘
going out
’, as in his ‘
going out down the toilet bowl
’, with Matthew 15:22’s ‘
my daughter is miserably possessed by a demon
’.

There is also just a suggestion in both of these descriptions – for whatever it’s worth – of the language of Luke’s ‘
Seven sons of Sceva
’ episode in Acts 19:13–18, portrayed as
going around
(the
Diaspora
presumably)
exorcizing
‘
Evil spirits
’. Not only are they themselves referred to by the ubiquitous ‘
some
’, but so is the sub-class in Acts 19:13 to which they seem to have appertained, namely, ‘
some of the Jews wandering around exorcizing Evil spirits
’! It too, though, is clearly another nonsense episode paralleling Paul’s encounter with ‘
Elymas Magus
’ (Simon
Magus
?) in Acts 13:8 in
Cyprus
earlier.

In the encounter with the clearly pseudonymous ‘
Seven sons of Sceva
’ (himself characterized in 19:14 as ‘
a Jew
’ and ‘
a High Priest
’!), though the locale is uncertain, it would appear to be
Asia
once again – the ubiquitous ‘
Jews from Asia
’ who make trouble for Paul
in the Temple
, ‘
stirring up
the multitude
’ who ‘
laid hands on
’ Paul in Acts 21:27 thereafter? Neverth
e
less, it does appear to have just an element of truth underlying it, that is (aside from the telltale ‘
some
’ attached to yet another use of ‘
doin
g’ in the phraseology, ‘
who were doing this
’,
viz.
, ‘
Jews wandering around exorcizing Evil spirits in the Name of the Lord Jesus
’,
i.e.
, ‘
the Lord Saviour
’), if one could substitute the words ‘
going around teaching the James position on table fellowship
’, ‘
bodily purity
’, or ‘
dietary regulations
’ for the words, ‘
exorcizing Evil spirits
’. Furthermore, it does draw on the overlap to the unsophisticated mind between the number ‘
Seven
’ –
Sheva
‘
(also meaning ‘
oath
’ in Hebrew) – and ‘
Sceva
’ in Greek transliteration, as certainly no ‘
High Priest
’ was ever named
Sceva
in Hebrew!

Be these things as they may, earlier in Luke 8:2–3 Mary Magdalene is part of a group also referred to by the ‘
some
’ usage again (in this case, ‘
some women
’), all portrayed as having
been cured
by Jesus ‘
of Evil spirits
’ – this last the equivalent to the ‘
unclean spirit
’
besetting the Syrophoenician woman
’
s daughter
in Mark 7:25 above. These included ‘
Susanna
’ and ‘
Joanna the wife of Chuza
,
a steward of Herod
’. This last is reinforced by the episode in Acts 13:1, where Luke portrays at least one
Herodian
among ‘
the prophets and teachers of the Church at Antioch
’. That being said, the implication of the first notice, a
n
yhow, is that Luke, therefore, is picturing Jesus as
being willing to
‘
cure
’
even Herodians.
2
Furthermore, though Mary Magd
a
lene and Joanna will reappear later in Luke’s depiction of events at ‘
the empty tomb
’, ‘
Susanna
’ is never heard from again e
i
ther in Luke or anywhere else for that matter (unless it be in the picture of her original biblical prototype).