Chapter 16 Host and Guests: Some Features of the Eschatological Banquet in Rabbinic Parables and Gospels

In: The Power of Parables
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Reuven Kiperwasser
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In this article, I examine several rather late rabbinic parables (Midr. Ps. 4:11 and 25:9) and aim to show that their exegetical context is secondary to an ancient prototype that pre-existed their current exegetical context. I suggest a possible original context for this type of parable (“Dogs and Guests”) and propose that these parables go back to eschatological speculations of the first centuries, shared by the parables in the Gospels. I aim to explore the contours of the hypothetical prototype of a parable.1 Besides typical Traditionsgeschichte inquiry, this article also aims to shed light on the genesis of the literary form known as the parable.

1 Methodological Remarks

In the study of ancient texts, there are two basic trajectories: diachronic and synchronic. One uses extant sources to posit the necessity of discovering the missing origins of the text; the other deliberately avoids the assumption that, in addition to the existing story, there were once additional sources, attributing self-sufficiency to the extant sources in seeking to understand their transformation. These trends are not mutually exclusive.2 Even a reader who prefers to view every parable as a unique realization of metaphors and motifs3 cannot be completely uninterested in the parable’s previous life, particularly taking into account that such metaphors and motifs probably once served a variety of theological discourses. In a multi-voiced chorus of sources, however, the assumption that there had once been a now-absent additional participant makes sense only when it can properly explain the roughness of the literary integrity of the ancient text.

In my article entitled “A Bizarre Invitation,” I discussed a specific subset of rabbinic “king parables,”4 namely parables of a king who invites commoners to a banquet but with secret strings attached. This article claimed that rabbinic parables originated in folk-rhetorical contexts, which were then adapted to serve as exegetical hermeneutic tools based on a particular local exegetical interest.5 This contribution continues my previous attempt to read the rabbinic royal banquet parables in comparison with New Testament parables, including one from Matthew. The plots of these rabbinic parables were shaped by the realities of daily life in the Mediterranean home, its everyday customs, and the relations between hosts and guests, which were typical of symposia. The prototype of the parables can be isolated from one particular story in the Synoptic Gospels, which appears in both Matt 15:21–28 and Mark 7:24–29. In this story, whose plot invites analysis and reconstruction of a common nucleus, the narrator alludes to a hypothetical prototype of the Dogs and Guests parable. I wish to reconstruct the proto-parable that preceded its existing literary metamorphosis and, thus, to reflect on the evolution of the parable as a literary form. My approach avoids the assumption that all details in the parable serve either rhetorical or exegetical goals. As I have proposed in previous articles,6 sometimes these details are present because they became over time, as the parable journeyed through subsequent stages of transmission, a significant motif.7 My modest contribution to the study of parables is in correcting the tendency to consider the parable as a hyper-meaningful text. Some of the parable’s details, I suggest, are not intentional but accidental. Or, more precisely, their intention belongs to some previous stage of their literary metamorphosis.

Parables, as figurative narrative texts, were part of the toolkit of the oral memory cultures of early Christianity and rabbinic Judaism.8 Moving from one stage of transmission to another, they often migrated to a new literary context, while retaining elements that were relevant in the old context but alien to the new one. Thus, dealing with parable genres in the New Testament, Ruben Zimmermann views parables as “media of collective memory” and “forms of re-use” that “codetermine the memory process productively and constructively.”9 The parables “influenced the collective memory of early Christianity and thus became definitive and identity-giving media of memory.”10 As they are memorized, parables both preserve and create tradition.11 Each parable text is “a form of literary memory of the social roots of the Jesus movement.”12 Zimmermann, therefore, is not interested in discovering the authentic core of any particular parable, but rather in exploring the variation of parable forms as these have been deposited in Christian memory.13

David Stern, describing the rich plots of the king parable traditions in rabbinic literature, noticed two opposite impressions that a careful reader would receive: “On the one hand, the vast majority of meshalim [parables] resemble one another. … On the other hand, as the reader will also notice, nearly every mashal … is also a singular composition, appearing as though it had been created specifically for the verse it explicates.”14 Stern came to similar conclusions—albeit in much broader strokes—about the rabbinic parables, concluding that “the actual history of any given mashal is impossible to trace.”15 Taking into consideration these methodological restrictions, I nevertheless will try to trace, if not the exact history of a particular parable-tradition,16 then at least the history of a particular unity of the parable genre, the parable of the strange royal banquet and its eschatological reflections.

2 Host, Dogs, and Guests in Midrash on Psalms

The group of texts I discuss is constructed from passages found in Midrash on Psalms, a Galilean Midrash, which we have received in its late version, but whose textual history is still unexplored.18

This parable is exegetically connected to the verse in Ps 4:8 which is usually translated as: “You have put more joy in my heart than they have when their grain and wine abound.” The verse presents a certain opposition between the poor but joyful believer and certain other figures who possess much grain and wine—the midrashic interpretation is proposing here that the contrast is between poor but joyful Israel and rich gentiles. Israel is happy because, if gentiles who are poor in commandments to fulfil are so ridiculously rich, the future rewards of Israel will be proportionally enormous. Then comes the parable. It does not represent an opposition between those who are satiated in this world and those rewarded in the Hereafter, however, but rather further explains the difference between these two groups: Jews and gentiles are different kinds of guests.

The king, as happens quite often in the sub-genre of king parables, is amusing himself.19 He receives his guests at an appointed time,20 which is an important motif both in rabbinic parables and in Matt 22. They come well-disciplined, presumably dressed in their best clothes.21 However, they discover when they arrive that the banquet hall is closed, and the host places them at its gates. Here we need to take into consideration the typical structure of the Roman house and the choreography of the gathering of commensals. As typical in those days, the banquet consists of two stages. At first, the guests, arriving a little before or exactly at the appointed time, mingle in the yard which is close to the banquet hall and called a peristylium.22 There they consume various kinds of appetizers, drink some wine, chat, and amuse themselves.23

Meanwhile, in the banquet hall, called the triclinium, the reclining sofas will be prepared, and the real meal will begin its way from the culina to the storage rooms at the entrance to the triclinium. Soon, when the food in the peristylium is consumed and all the guests are inside the house, the gate will be closed, and no one else will be allowed to enter.24 Only then will the door of the triclinium be opened, and guests will be able to recline according to the previously established order. However, in the plot of our obscure story, the triclinium, which ought to be awaiting our guests, is already occupied. Who is inside? The doors open, and the previous group of guests begin to leave the hall. They are dogs. Dogs are friendly animals in rabbinic narratives,25 though their appearance is a bit unexpected here. In their teeth, they still hold the heads of cattle and fowl, which indicates that the bodies of these animals have already been eaten. Some anxious human guest, it would seem, might wonder why his meal was fed to the dogs and why he was called to watch the animal-guests disperse after their meal. However, pious, and good-natured guests are not offended. They are sure that if the dogs were fed so well, they should expect something even more attractive than what was offered to the previous guests. The guest who arrived close to the appointed time at the triclinium of the king and who, instead of receiving the promised meal, was forced to watch the host’s satiated dogs, should not feel deceived and dissatisfied. The meal is ready, and by looking upon the dogs’ food he can get an idea of the menu awaiting him.26

This brings us to the transferred meaning, that is, to the nimshal:27 if the dogs are the “nations of the world,” what about the miserable Israelites, who have been placed at the threshold of the banquet hall of history to see how well-fed these wicked Others are? Why are they expected to be happy just because tremendous rewards await them in the hereafter? This parable is without a doubt eschatological. The parable strongly conveys the idea of selection: the narrator wishes to distinguish between the true and false participants of the eschaton, or between the participants who deserve it and the ones who are only nourished out of pity. In her thought-provoking book about the portraits of canine and feminine in ancient Greek culture, Christiana Franco relates:

It is thus in the arena of food that one of the most important aspects of the symbiosis between humans and dogs plays out. This division of foodstuffs naturally gives scope for representations of various sorts, according to the different judgments that each social context and each individual brings to it. The dog can figure at different times as a welcome guest and a mark of luxury at the table, like an annoying parasite, as simply an eater of refuse, or as a beloved pet for which leftovers are saved. But the dog figures as a real and true dining companion, the animal with which people divide their food and often share even the time and place of its consumption. Still, this fellowship does not create a situation of equality: the parts that belong to the dog are mostly predetermined—bones, gristle, fat unwanted by people—and constitute the waste products of human eating. As such, the banquet is the space that both unites men and dogs and distinguishes them, by fixing a definite hierarchy.28

The fixation of the definite hierarchy in the abovementioned parable went through a rhetorical distortion. The dogs were fed with food belonging to a high hierarchical level, and only then was the proper hierarchy restored. Thus, the host in this midrash is intentionally radical in the selection between dogs and humans. The space of the banquet hall will simultaneously unite and distinguish men and dogs. Similarly, the eschaton will both distinguish and reunite the groups at different hierarchical levels, Jews and gentiles, in the new divine order.29

Elsewhere in this same midrashic compilation, the following mashal is found, which most likely derives from the same eschatological context:

There are two mutually complementary parables here. In the first, the king first wants to engage in the selection of guests from among the townspeople and invite only merchants. The wise counsellor says that the merchants are not enough, because they will not eat all the food.31 Then the king concludes that he must also invite artisans, who do not deserve to be fed but are necessary; otherwise, the food will go to waste. No mention of the “nations of the world” is recorded here. The collision is between the two contingents, one more righteous, the other not without sins. However, the merciful host, who was stricter at first, finally decides to feed them all. Why is this? Only because the food is quite enough for both groups? The answer is in the second parable, which offers a much clearer justification for the selection.

Now let us turn to eschatological banquets in gospel parables. The key parable of this sort is a great royal banquet parable in Matt 22:1–14:32

This parable belongs to a group of Matthean parables considering eschatological questions, sometimes with a strong apocalyptic dualism as well as with imperatives (Matt 24:52; 25:13: “Keep awake!”) and harsh concluding sentences (e.g., “there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth”; see Matt 13:42, 50; 22:13; 24:51).33 The description of this rather disturbing royal banquet is imbued with the idea of selection between those who are recognized as elect in this world but will be expelled, and those who are considered outcasts in this world but will become insiders. The king in Matthew’s parable is waiting for guests, but they do not come (which can be considered a crime of disobedience against a royal order), and the frazzled king finds comfort in the company of the newly elected guests.

The overtones of the parable from Matt 22 are audible in both parables in the preceding selection of texts from Midrash on Psalms, but in the second parable they are much more pronounced (see above). In our second parable, the king is waiting for guests, but they are in no hurry to come. They were invited to a morning banquet but came in the evening. The king, however, not at all like the one in Matt 22, is as happy as a child to see his tardy guests. Finally, someone will eat his food, which otherwise would go to the dogs.

In both rabbinic parables, there is fear that strict principles for selecting the elect intended for the eschatological era will lead to God simply remaining alone or with very few companions. But this cannot be, because God, in his mercy, is ready to invite cast-outs to his banquet instead of waiting another several thousand years until enough fitting guests are found for the Hereafter. To say that dogs will eat the food actually means that no one from the expected groups will make it to the Eschaton.

The following parable from Matt 25:1–13 shows the selecting of participants for the eschatological feast and the dialoguing with other, more radical approaches to selection, as in Matt 22:1–14.34

The parable tells a story about a wedding, but focusses on only one specific aspect of the wedding celebration: the virgins who are awaiting the arrival of the groom. From the parable’s perspective, the virgins are clearly in the foreground; their readiness to welcome the groom is the main focus of the narration.35 The polarizing description of the virgins in the introduction constrains the dramatic development of the parable from the start. The end turns out to be what the reader knew or at least suspected from the beginning: the wise are rewarded and the foolish are punished.36 Five clever girls are invited in; five foolish girls are left behind the closed door, frustrated and miserable. Thus, in the parable of the Wise and Foolish Virgins cited above, the group of incompetent guests remains outside, punished and deprived of the opportunity to see the groom, and in the parable of the Royal Feast from Matt 22 cited earlier, negligent guests are beaten and banished. In the New Testament parables, the replacement of one group by another, or the selection of a particular group, is radical and irreversible. One will be alienated, the other will be welcomed. The host needs to make decisions quickly; time is running out, the eschaton is near. The rabbinic parables differ in this respect. The host will not exchange the groups of respectable people for the outcasts, as in Matt 22, and will not cast out the foolish, preferring the wise, as in the second parable cited above. Instead, he will wait patiently for the elect contingent. He has plenty of patience and time. The dogs mentioned in both rabbinic parables are in no way a competing contingent for the right to be a guest. The dogs will not be nourished in the same manner as the guests. They will, however, get something from the royal table, as shown in the first parable we read.

3 Host, Guests, and Dogs in the Gospels

Now let us turn to the canine motif, which is lacking in the Jesus parables above. Dogs appear frequently in the rhetoric of the Gospels, and they are quite often mentioned in the context of food distribution. Thus in the parable:

The parallel in the Gospel of Thomas reads as follows:

The contextual reading of this passage evokes multiple hypotheses, while the exact setting remains unclear. It could possibly be interpreted as advising the reader not to be meekly charitable against all reason.37 The dog is a typical household animal, as is the pig, and both are to be fed by its responsible owner, just like other inhabitants of his household.38 Hierarchy, however, is necessary. The owner will not feed the dog with “holy,” that is, consecrated food, which should be eaten in the state of ritual purity.39 Maintaining this condition is not a simple task for a human being, let alone for a dog who finds pleasure playing on a dunghill. In other sayings, the dog is also mentioned in regard to food, and is portrayed as less good-natured, perhaps, but still virtually harmless. Thus, in a tradition attested in Gos. Thom. 106 (102), there is a saying attributed to Jesus: “Cursed are they, the Pharisees, because they are like a dog which has lain in the cattle manger, but will neither eat the food there nor allow the oxen to eat it.” A dog occupies a place on the cattle manger, thus preventing food from being distributed to the farm’s other animal inhabitants. However, it is mostly a demonstration of egoistic behaviour, so that the attempt to steal the food belongs to the ox and the sheep.

Another example may be offered by the parable of the Rich Man and Lazarus, which depicts a shocking scene in which the smartly dressed host is busy with a banquet of people like him, whereas the suffering Lazarus is lying at the rich man’s gate.40 Describing Lazarus’s pitiful condition, the narrator informs us that he is “longing to eat what fell from the rich man’s table,” namely the remains that are usually the food of dogs. Moreover, the narrator finds it necessary to add that “even the dogs would come and lick his sores.” This parable has stimulated numerous interpretations. I would like to mention a recent one by Justin Strong,41 which is very sensitive to the spatial structure of the parable and the role of dogs. According to Strong, the dramatic collision of the parable is similar to its spatial tension. The host is in his triclinium, and he does not even notice the suffering Lazarus at the gate, namely, beyond the threshold of the area of hospitality. The space between these two is “occupied by the dogs, liminal creatures that transgress the boundary of animal and humankind, the household and the pariahs.”42 Non-human inhabitants of the house show mercy that should actually be shown by the host. The licking of the dogs, which is, according to Strong, an attempt to cure Lazarus’s skin disease, serves to dramatically highlight the inability of the host to accept a suffering guest. He may open his home to people of his kind, or even to the dogs whose services he knows how to use; but he is unable to open his home to the unknown.

In all these examples, the dog represents a group that deserves to be fed by the owner, though not without some restrictions. The first two examples hinted that food must be of the type that this group deserves. It seems that “dogs” may be opposed to those who eat consecrated food. Nevertheless, dogs are not necessarily gentiles.

The motif of sharing the guest’s meal with dogs does appear in the Gospels, however, in a dialogue between Jesus and a gentile woman:43

The setting of the story is quite different in the two gospels. In Mark, Jesus is seeking privacy in a house in the region of Tyre, and a woman had heard he was there and went to see him. She is described as a gentile of Syro-Phoenician origin (or Canaanite in Matthew).44 In Matthew, the story is set outdoors in the same geographic region, and some of Jesus’s disciples accompany him. They portray the woman as shouting after them. The woman wanted her daughter to be cured by Jesus, who refuses with a rather strange rhetorical argument in which I see the remnant of a parabolical text.45 A host, so Jesus says, will not feed his dogs with food made for his householders.46 The wise gentile woman replies that a good host feeds his dogs with crumbs from his children’s food.47 I assume that the dialogue between Jesus and the woman relies on a parable about the master, his children, the meal, and the hungry dogs, which was widely used in the time of Jesus. In this hypothetical parable, the master of the house prepared a meal, intending to feed his household. The master should feed the children/householders both out of love and as a practical obligation. However, as one of the participants in the hypothetical parable would propose, the owner is also attached to his dogs, both emotionally and out of practical considerations (they guard his herds). Both dogs and children are waiting for their share at the entrance to the dining room. What should the master do? The wise master will feed the guests by putting food on trays and sending the servants to distribute it. However, the dogs which, according to custom, are already loitering under the feet of the guests, as shown in pictorial depictions of Roman banquets,48 will be fed from food remnants that the guests and the master will throw to them under the table.

The nimshal (transferred meaning) of this parable would not have been the magical powers of Jesus to heal demoniacs, but rather the kingdom of heaven. The context in which this parable appears here is secondary. Initially, in its primary context which is now lost, it claimed that the kingdom of heaven would be inherited mainly by Israel, but some crumbs would also fall to the peoples of the nations, in accordance with the benevolence of the host and the guests. This implied meaning in the story of the gentile woman develops the hypothetical ancient model of an eschatological feast awaited by humans and dogs, or in other words, by the chosen group and a marginal one, both of which will be rewarded. The same parable is arranged differently in the rabbinic examples. According to both of them, the sharing with the “Others” is merely by chance. According to the first rabbinic parable, the “Others” get their share before Israel begins eating. According to the other rabbinic parable, the “Others” receive their eschatological portion only if Israel does not come to the feast, which is, in general, impossible because the Lord will patiently wait until almost the end of time for the necessary quorum to gather in his dining room.

Thus, the starting point of both the Jewish and the Christian parables is that the host needs his guests, and he must accept them without any conditions, opening his house to the unknown, and treating them as equals. Thus, the host must always, to a certain extent, rely on the guest’s good-will, hoping that the guest will limit himself to this role without attempting to seize power or doing something inappropriate in his dining room. The high status of the host in our parables seems to protect him from threats from his subordinates, but at the same time limits the unconditional nature of royal hospitality. Therefore, selection of the guests is necessary. It is only when the king reclines at a feast with a selected contingent that he can feel like a true master and provide an almost unconditional hospitality. The guest selection in the Jewish parables differs from that found in the Christian ones. In the former, the host is ready to be flexible in his principles of selection, so that as many participants as possible can join in the meal. In the latter, by contrast, a significant group of potential guests is ultimately found outside the banquet hall, and the usual group of commensals will be disgraced. But these differences relate directly to the elect contingent of the participants, namely to the members of the religious community, whether Jews or Christians.49 What is an unelected contingent? I suggest that they are gentiles in the case of Jewish eschatology, heathens for Christian eschatology.50 Notably, both Jewish and Christian parables (or at least one of them, incorporated in the late story) acknowledge the master’s condescension towards the un-elected contingent. The inhabitants of the master’s yard, his dogs, will receive their share, which—leftovers though they are—still come from the royal table.

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1

Two different drafts of this article were read on two occasions: 1) International Parable Seminar: “The Parable in Early Christian and Rabbinic Sources: Form, Content and Theological Significance” at the Schechter Institute in Jerusalem in May 2018; and 2) International Conference: “The Power of Parables: Narrating Religion in Late Antiquity” at Utrecht University in June 2019. I am grateful to all the participants for their insightful questions and comments. I wish to express special thanks to Ruben Zimmermann and Justin Strong, whose comments were incorporated into my argumentation in this article. The responsibility for what is written remains entirely mine.

2

There is no need to prefer one over another; see and compare: Eric Ottenheijm and Marcel Poorthuis, “Parables in Changing Contexts: a Preliminary Status Questions,” in Parables in Changing Context: Essays on the Study of Parables in Christianity, Judaism, Islam, and Buddhism, ed. Eric Ottenheijm and Marcel Poorthuis, JCP 35 (Leiden: Brill, 2020), 5–6.

3

See Ottenheijm and Poorthuis, “Parables in Changing Contexts,” 6.

4

Still there is a place to mention a pioneering work of Ignaz Ziegler, Die Königsgleichnisse des Midrasch beleuchtet durch die römische Kaiserzeit (Breslau: Schottländer, 1903). The theme has been discussed in more recent works; see Yonah Frenkel, Darkhei ha’aggadah vehamidrash, 2 vols. (Givatayim: Yad Latalmud, 1991), 1:323–393; and David Stern, Parables in Midrash: Narrative and Exegesis in Rabbinic Literature (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1991), 19–24. The work of Ziegler was revised and taken further by Alan Appelbaum, The Rabbis’ King-Parables: Midrash from the Third-Century Roman Empire, JC 7 (Piscataway, NJ: Gorgias, 2010).

5

See Reuven Kiperwasser, “A Bizarre Invitation to the King’s Banquet: The Metamorphosis of a Parable Tradition and the Transformation of an Eschatological Idea,” Prooftexts 33 (2014): 147–181.

6

See Kiperwasser, “A Bizarre Invitation,” 147–181. See also Reuven Kiperwasser, “Facing Omnipotence and Shaping the Skeptical Topos,” in Expressions of Skeptical Topoi in (Late) Antique Judaism, ed. Reuven Kiperwasser and Geoffrey Herman, STIS 12 (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2021), 101–123.

7

See Kiperwasser, “A Bizarre Invitation,” 169–170.

8

Regarding New Testament parables, see, for example, Ruben Zimmermann, Puzzling the Parables of Jesus: Methods and Interpretations (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2015), 83–93. Regarding rabbinic parables, see Stern, Parables in Midrash, 34–37.

9

See Zimmermann, Puzzling the Parables, 88–89.

10

Zimmermann, Puzzling the Parables, 80.

11

Zimmermann, Puzzling the Parables, 90.

12

Zimmermann, Puzzling the Parables, 93 and 90.

13

Zimmermann, Puzzling the Parables, 80.

14

See Stern, Parables in Midrash, 35.

15

See Stern, Parables in Midrash, 36.

16

The exact history is, of course, not impossible, but nonetheless rather difficult to trace.

17

The text is according to MS Cambridge, University Library. I also used Or. 786. Parma, Biblioteca Palatina, 2552 [698] and Jerusalem, National Library of Israel, ~4 5767. For the published text, see Salomon Buber, Midrasch Tehillim (Wilna, 1891), 47–48. The translation is based on Braude, though revised and adapted. See William G. Braude, The Midrash on Psalms (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1959), 75–76. The text was analyzed briefly by Fraenkel, Darkei ha’aggadah, 323–324.

18

This fascinating and undervalued rabbinic work still awaits its scholarly due. For a survey of the research, see Günter Stemberger, Einleitung in Talmud und Midrasch, 9th ed. (Munich: Beck, 2011), 358; for a proposition regarding the relatively ancient character of this work, see Chaim Milikowsky, “Vayyiqra Rabba Chapter 30: Its Transmissional History, its Publication History and the Presentation of a New Edition (to sections 1 and 2),” Bar-Ilan 30/31 (2006): 316–318.

19

See Stern, Parables in Midrash, 19–24.

20

For the importance of appointed time in the culture of the Mediterranean banquet, see Kiperwasser, “A Bizarre Invitation,” 151–152, 164–165.

21

Kiperwasser, “A Bizarre Invitation,” 151–152.

22

This specific word does not appear in rabbinic literature. In rabbinic sources, the triclinia is often juxtaposed to the prozdor, or prosodus, from the Greek πρόθυρον, as it was suggested by Krauss (Talmudische Archäologie, I, 362, n. 642, designating the porch or portico, the space situated before an entrance; see Eric Ottenheijm, “Prepare Yourself: Spatial Rhetoric in Rabbinic and Synoptic Meal Parables,” in A Handbook to Early Christian Meals in the Greco-Roman World, ed. Soham Al-Suadi and Peter-Ben Smit (London: Bloomsbury T&T Clark, 2019), 79n21.

23

For a description of a typical feast, see t. Ber. 4, 8 (Lieberman, I, 20). For a translation of this text, see Jacob Neusner and Richard S. Sarason, The Tosefta: Zeraim, trans. Alan J. Avery-Peck (New York: Ktav, 1986), 21. In his commentary to this passage, Lieberman emphasizes that this description is not halakhic at all, but purely a portrayal of local Mediterranean custom similar to that which was accepted among Romans as well (Tosefta ki-fshuta, 62).

24

See, for example, t. Ber. 4:9 (Lieberman, I, 20). See Gil Klein, “Torah in Triclinia: The Rabbinic Banquet and the Significance of Architecture,” JQR 102 (2012): 325–370. See also Ottenheijm, “Prepare Yourself,” 79–80.

25

See Joshua Schwartz, “Dogs in Jewish Society in the Second Temple Period and in the Time of the Mishnah and Talmud,” JJS 55 (2004): 246–277; on dogs in the Bible and the ancient world, see Justin David Strong, “From Pets to Physicians: Dogs in the Biblical World,” BAR 45 (2019): 46–50.

26

Another entirely possible reading, proposed to me by Eric Ottenheijm, would be: the dogs show what was served before the main meal in the peristylium, as appetiser, and consequently the main meal served in triclinium is something even better. For another example of watching and deducing what still awaits the guest waiting for the meal, see t. Ber. 4:14.

27

The Hebrew word nimshal is notoriously difficult to translate into other languages; see Stern, Parables in Midrash, 13, who prefers not to translate it, rather explaining it as an “application accompanying the narrative.” I am basing my use of this term on the understanding of the hermeneutical process as a transfer of meaning; see Zimmermann, Puzzling the Parables, 14.

28

See Cristiana Franco, Shameless: The Canine and the Feminine in Ancient Greece, trans. Matthew Fox (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2014), 24.

29

This may not be mentioned explicitly, but due to the fact that the dogs are outside and not in triclinia, perhaps it is hinted that the gentiles are in the same way not supposed to enter the world to come at all, since they already obtained their reward in this life. For the eschatological process displayed in terms of spatial movement represented in the well-known m. Avot 4:16, see Ottenheijm, “Prepare Yourself,” 79–84.

30

See Buber, Midrasch Tehillim, 213. The text is based on MS Cambridge, University Library. The present translation takes into consideration Braude, Midrash on Psalms, 352–353. The second part of this passage, the parable of Jose bar Hanina, was briefly analyzed by Appelbaum, The Rabbis’ King-Parables, 186–187.

31

This motif could be compared with the desire to leave the merchants outside the eschatological banquet hall in the parable in Gos. Thom. 64, which is parallel to Matt 22 discussed below.

32

For the analysis of this parable together with its New Testament and rabbinic parallels, see Kiperwasser, “A Bizarre Invitation,” 160–164.

33

See Zimmermann, Puzzling the Parables, 262–263.

34

Translation from Zimmermann, Puzzling the Parables, 265 (see also his commentary on 266–269). See also Moisés Mayordomo, “Kluge Mädchen kommen überall hin (Von den zehn Jungfrauen) Matt 25,1–13,” in Kompendium der Gleichnisse Jesu, ed. Ruben Zimmermann et al., 2nd ed. (Gütersloh: Gütersloher Verlagshaus, 2015), 488–503. And see also Peter J. Tomson, “Parables, Fiction, and Midrash: the Ten Maidens and the Bridegroom (Matt 25:1–13),” in Parables in Changing Contexts: Essays on the Study of Parables in Christianity, Judaism, Islam, and Buddhism, ed. Eric Ottenheijm and Marcel Poorthuis, JCP 35 (Leiden: Brill, 2020), 226–235.

35

See Zimmermann, Puzzling the Parables, 265.

36

All virgins fall asleep on the place of their “duty,” but the wise have prepared themselves better.

37

See a summary of all approaches, followed by new commentary remarks, in William D. Davies and Dale C. Allison, Matthew: A Shorter Commentary (London: T&T Clark, 2004), 106–107. For more detail, see William D. Davies and Dale C. Allison, A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on the Gospel According to Saint Matthew, vol. 1, Introduction and Commentary on Matthew IVII (London: Bloomsbury, 1988), 674–685.

38

Pace Davies and Alisson, A Critical and Exegetical Commentary, 675, who think that dogs here are wild street dogs, which are dangerous and unwelcome. However, in light of rabbinic parables and with a view to the symmetry between the two parts of this parable, we have to assume that both are domestic animals.

39

Thus, this part of the parable does have a halakhic background (see m. Tem. 6:5), which was noticed by Davies and Allison (A Critical and Exegetical Commentary, 675), but there is no halakhic rationale in the part about the pearls and swine, unless one supposes that it is a rather allegorical way of saying that words of Torah are not to be carried to an impure place. See Davies and Allison, A Critical and Exegetical Commentary, 676.

40

See Mathew R. Hauge, The Biblical Tour of Hell, LNTS 584 (London: Bloomsbury T&T Clark, 2013); Outi Lehtipuu, The Afterlife Imagery in Luke’s Story of the Rich Man and Lazarus, NovTSup 123 (Leiden: Brill, 2007).

41

Justin David Strong, “Lazarus and the Dogs: The Diagnosis and Treatment,” NTS 64 (2018): 178–193.

42

Strong, “Lazarus and the Dogs,” 193.

43

See the long and very detailed commentary in Davies and Allison, A Critical and Exegetical Commentary, 541–560.

44

For a concise summary of the multiple discussions on the metamorphosis of Syro-Phoenician into Canaanite, see Davies and Allison, A Critical and Exegetical Commentary, 547. The connection between Canaanites and Phoenicians is frequently alluded to in ancient Jewish literature. However, here in Matthew this term is used in a broader literary sense to emphasize the pagan background of the woman; see Katell Berthelot, “Where May Canaanites Be Found? Canaanites, Phoenicians, and Others in Jewish Texts from the Hellenistic and Roman Period,” in The Gift of the Land and the Fate of the Canaanites in Jewish Thought, ed. Katell Berthelot, Joseph E. David, and Marc Hirshman (New York: Oxford University Press, 2014), 253–274, esp. 264.

45

When I first started working on this paper, I was proposing a completely new reading, but then discovered that I was not the first to ask whether Jesus, in his response to the gentile woman, was taking up a traditional maxim or proverb. Scholars compared this New Testament tradition with Targum Neofiti on Exod 22:30. This verse forbids the eating of flesh in the field torn by beasts, and the Targum adds that “you shall throw it to the gentile stranger, who is comparable to the dog.” See Martin McNamara and Robert Hayward, The Aramaic Bible, vol. 2, Targum Neofiti 1: Exodus (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1994), 98. It has been suggested that behind this figure of speech in the Targum lies an isolated saying whose basic meaning is something like “charity begins at home;” see Roger Le Déaut, “Targumic Literature and NT Interpretation,” BTB 4 (1974): 243–289.

46

Marcus states that Jesus’s saying could not be anything but an insult; see Joel Marcus, Mark 1–8: A New Translation with Introduction and Commentary, AB 27 (New York: Doubleday, 2000), 468. Robert Guelich does see the passage as an indication of Israel’s prominence in God’s plan which is partially expressed in Jesus’s reluctance; see Robert A. Guelich, Mark 1–8:26, WBC 34A (Dallas: Word, 1989), 386. Some feminist and postcolonial approaches to the text understand Jesus to be “healed” by the woman; see Jim Perkison, “A Canaanitic Word in the Logos of Christ; or The Difference the Syro-Phoenician Woman Makes to Jesus,” Semeia 75 (1996): 61, and David Joy, Mark and Its Subalterns: A Hermeneutical Paradigm for a Postcolonial Context (London: Equinox, 2008), 159. See also David Rhodes, “Jesus and the Syrophoenician Woman in Mark: A Narrative-Critical Study,” JAAR 62 (1994): 343–376.

47

Reflecting on the experience of powerlessness in colonial contexts, Nelavala views the woman’s cunning as a strategy of survival; see Surekha Nelavala, “Smart Syrophoenician Woman: A Dalit Feminist Reading of Mark 7:24-31,” ExpTim 118 (2006): 68.

48

Catherine Johns, Dogs: History, Myth, Art (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2008), 48–52.

49

Although not explicitly stated, the guests who will not participate are apparently Jews.

50

It could be accepted as support for the theory about the sectarian context of Matthew. See on this: Anders Runesson, “Rethinking Early Jewish-Christian Relations: Matthean Community History as Pharisaic intra-Group Conflict,” JBL 127 (2008): 95–132.

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The Power of Parables

Essays on the Comparative Study of Jewish and Christian Parables

Series:  Jewish and Christian Perspectives Series, Volume: 39

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