From: Carl W. Conrad (cwconrad@artsci.wustl.edu)
Date: Sun Dec 07 1997 - 08:38:26 EST
At 7:13 AM -0600 12/7/97, Jonathan Robie wrote:
>At 07:06 AM 12/7/97 -0600, Carl William Conrad wrote:
>
>>I don't really think it's a chiasm; if it were, then B' should refer to
>>the pigs and A' to the dogs again.
>
>That's precisely the claim they are making, and that's precisely the claim
>that I don't understand. They say that A' *does* refer to the dogs again.
But does B' refer to the pigs? Yes, I guess it does, since they would be
the ones to trample the pearls underfoot. So I guess it is a chiasmus.
>>It should probably be realized that this saying may originally have been
>>using "dogs" to mean "Gentiles"--just as in the story of the
>>Syro-Phoenician Woman (children's food to dogs, even the dogs under the
>>table get the crumbs--all in the Marcan context of lots of crumbs left
>>over after the miraculous feedings of multitudes).
>
>What would the swine symbolize if the dogs are Gentiles?
It may very well mean the same thing, if we could view this as an instance
of Semitic poetic style of parallel formulations of the same idea; at any
rate, the pig IS an unclean animal from the Jewish viewpoint-and both the
dogs and the pigs must be understood metaphorically to refer to kinds of
people.
Carl W. Conrad
Department of Classics/Washington University
One Brookings Drive/St. Louis, MO, USA 63130/(314) 935-4018
Home: 7222 Colgate Ave./St. Louis, MO 63130/(314) 726-5649
cwconrad@artsci.wustl.edu OR cconrad@yancey.main.nc.us
WWW: http://www.artsci.wustl.edu/~cwconrad/
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