restricted to the Jews. We can hardly believe that, had he not said so actually, had it not been clearly known that he had said so, and that as a matter of fact his activities were confined to his own people, such a saying as this would ever have been reported, least of all by Mark.”84 I agree. For Jesus the children are the Jews, the Gentiles are the dogs. And it is unfair to give the children's food to the dogs! The point is not changed by Jesus subsequently relenting. He is won over by the woman’s reply: a fact that is expressed. He, of all people, could not resist a pleading woman replying in parables. This is Jesus’ second--and only other--foray into Gentile territory in Mark: this time to Tyre. It is then noteworthy that he did not want anyone to know he was in the house. If he did not want to be found he did not want to perform miracles. To come at last to the particular problems in Mark .-. () Jesus had crossed the sea of Galilee (Mark .ff.) and was on the other side, in the Decapolis, an area of about ten cities, then part of the Roman province of Syria. The population was predominantly Gentile.85 This appears to be Jesus’ first foray into Gentile territory. But there is something far wrong with the geography. It is not just that for Mark (5.1) the place is the territory of the Gerasenes, for Matthew. of the Gadarenes. Gerasa (modern Jerash) is more than thirty miles from the sea, Gadara about twenty eight. More importantly when Jesus “stepped out of the boat, immediately a man out of the tombs with an unclean spirit met him” (Mark.). The redactors 84 The Synoptic Gospels 1 (New York, 1968), p. 167. 85 See, e.g. V.P. Hamilton, ‘Decapolis’ in The International Standard Bible Encyclopedia, 1, ed. Geoffrey W. Bromileyet al. (Grand Rapids, Mich., 1979), pp. 906ff. For Tyre see, e.g., M. Liverani, ‘Tyre’ inThe International Standard Bible Encyclopedia, 4 (1988), pp. 932ff. VII
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