Pet Puppy Argument - The Lion's Den - Ex-Christian.Net

Recently, Astreja said that Jesus was not acting righteously when he called a Canaanite woman a dog.??In defense of the gospels (Matthew 15 and Mark 7), JayL/greco, now banned, said this:

greco8088, on 21 October 2012 - 02:27 PM, said:

Spectrox, on 21 October 2012 - 06:02 AM, said:

Astreja, on 21 October 2012 - 03:15 AM, said:

Calling a foreign woman a dog is not righteous.
Excellent post as usual Astreja. Do you have a reference for the dog bit (!) I must have missed that one. Mind you there's so much shite to wade through in the Bible.

Oh, she must be referring to the time when Jesus called a Canaanite woman as 'dog'. But it is a poor translation. The more accurate translation is 'pet puppie'. So he called her a puppie.

I reply not to feed the troll but in case anyone is faced with a similar attempt by fundy apologists to make Jesus out to be complimenting the Canaanite woman.

This "pet puppy" argument fails on a number of fronts.

1. linguistic.??The Greek for "to the dogs" is "kusi."??That word appears when Jesus is quoted elsewhere as saying, do not take what is holy and throw it to the dogs.??Here, the form for "to the dogs" is "kunariois."??The ending -arion is diminutive (cf. the name of the son of Julius Caesar and Cleopatra, "Caesarion," i.e. Little Caesar), so that "kunarion" does mean little dog or puppy (compare Plato's Euthydemus 298d, where it refers to a dog's offspring).??The extra signification "pet," however, is added by a gratuitous assumption.??Ancient people often had dogs in their household, especially if they lived in the country, where the dogs would warn against the approach of strangers (I noticed this in Morocco in our own time).??The notion that these young dogs are "pet puppies" as modern middle class people think of their pets is not a necessary implication of the text.

2. logical.??The children are of higher status than the dogs, no matter the age of the dogs.??Jesus is downgrading the Canaanite woman in comparison to Jews, however you slice the "young dog" part.??Since humans are made in the image of God and animals are not, Jesus' metaphor clearly marks the Canaanite woman as of low status.??But she is really in the image of God, according to Christian and Jewish teaching.

3.??historical/social.??I have not researched this, but I do not believe that observant Jews of Jesus' day kept "pets" as we do today, as humanified members of the family.??The laws of kashrut forbid doing work on the Sabbath.??A family pet requires work and attention every day of the week.??That is why Orthodox Jewish friends of mine do not keep pets - it's too difficult to manage the problems that pets create for shabbos.??I don't think, therefore, that Jesus means "pet."??It's up to the Christian apologist to prove this.

I actually think that it's obvious that Jesus' point is theological, and I don't really think that we should apply modern PC notions to 1st century idioms.??The prejudice against non-Jews that Jesus encodes in his speech is that which was taught by his religion.??On the other hand, the pet puppy argument has no foundation.

edited to add:??I think Jay's/greco's use of this argument is evidence that he at least at one time was a fundy.??Fundamentalist preachers love to draw out inferences w/ emotive connotations from parts of an ancient word's range of meaning, even when the evidence does not support the inference.

Source: http://www.ex-christian.net/topic/54182-pet-puppy-argument/

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