Pet Puppy Argument

[♦ ficino ♦]

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:

 

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.

[centauri]

...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.

This is good to remember, the "pet" designation is an embellishment by apologists.

The apologist Glenn Miller used this "pet puppy" argument in his apologetics and it's an attempt to soften and rationalize the behavior of Jesus.

 

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.

Jesus killed a fig tree out of spite, so calling a woman a dog (large or small) is in keeping with his unstable behavior.

Jesus refused to help her until she begged like a dog.

 

Way back in Gen 9 Canaanites were cursed to be lower than others, like dogs.

Then in Deut 20 God gives orders to exterminate the Canaanites.

Since Jesus is supposed to be God, then his hatred of Canaanites leaves no wiggle room for apologists to claim he wasn't insulting the woman.

She's probably lucky he didn't strike her dead on the spot.

[LivingLife]

This?

[JoeCoastie]

The more I learn the more I realize that if Jesus were real then he'd have been a nutty, unbearable, Jim Jones type of guy. Funny how so many people put on him on the list of those "List 3 people from history you'd like to meet" icebreakers. Hanging out with anybody who thinks he's god wouldn't be very fun.

[TwistedHiss]

A very simple argument: But even if Jesus was calling her a pet puppy - he was calling her a pet puppy! How patronizing and insulting! That's nice. Jesus thinks you're his little...erhmmm...pet?

 

What do we do with pet puppies? Rub their nose in shit when they poopoo on the carpet?

 

*Bzzzt!* Wrong answer, thanks for playing!

[Akheia]

Wait, weren't the Jews originally Canaanites? If so, that really puts an interesting spin on why the Jews hated on Canaanites so damn much.

[mymistake]

Wait, weren't the Jews originally Canaanites? If so, that really puts an interesting spin on why the Jews hated on Canaanites so damn much.

 

It was a lot like Red States and Blue States hating each other. Only it was religion instead of political parties and back then everything was on a smaller scale because most people got around by walking and didn't usually migrate much. If you go through the listing of the kings of Judah mentioned in the Bible the writers decide if a king was good or bad merely based on which religion he supported. No doubt the other religions had their own story of the kings of Judah and the good and bad ones are reversed but that version of the propaganda was burned as heresy. IIRC every king of Israel after Solomon is reported by the Bible to be evil so that is a good indicator of who wasn't the source.

[Akheia]

Princess Noreena was from Guilder, the country that lay just across Florin Channel. (In Guilder, they put it differently; for them, Florin was the country on the other side of the Channel of Guilder.) In any case, the two countries had stayed alive over the centuries mainly by warring on each other. There had been the Olive War, the Tuna Fish Discrepancy, which almost bankrupted both nations, the Roman Rift, which did send them both into insolvency, only to be followed by the Discord of the Emeralds, in which they both got rich again, chiefly by banding together for a brief period and robbing everybody within sailing distance.

---- William Goldman, The Princess Bride

 

Reminded me of this.

[duderonomy]

Maybe it wasn't about the Canaanites. Maybe Jesus just didn't find her all that good looking.

 

OK, really, even as a fundie I wouldn't have accepted the 'pet puppy' argument.

 

It's good to see someone (ficino) using what I call the "Strong's Concordance Defense", AKA the "In the Original Greek it could also mean..." argument other than Christians.

[MultifariousBirdLady]

Ficino, it's actually worse than that. I asked my ancient Greek prof about the diminutive ending on "dog" and what it might mean without mentioning the biblical context. He said that ending itself can be insulting, as in when someone says, "Why, you little _______!"

Add that to the very negative precedents we have of other cases where people are compared to dogs (in both the Bible and in Greek literature) and I think it's clearly an insult, perhaps almost up there with "little bitch."

[3DollarBill]

Hey I've got a "pet puppy argument" of sorts too...

 

Say you have a completely violent and incorrigible dog, a big breed, and therefore dangerous. Do you:

a.) Put it down as compassionately as possible, understanding that it doesn't know what its doing.

OR

b.) Chain it up in the basement and torture it to death over the course of many years.

 

Oh, you put it down without torturing it? That makes you more moral than god...end of fucking story...and no amount of apologetic nonsense regarding the connotations of the various words for dog in dead ancient languages is EVER going to change that.

 

Apologetics is like the little Dutch boy with his finger plugging the hole in the dam...sure, with enough effort you can justify some of the minor issues with christianity. Doesn't validate it, though, so it just amuses me to see them try. If I were trying to argue with this "greco" character I would just concede the point immediately...so what if jesus didn't actually insult the woman in that story? Doesn't change the fact there's little evidence he even existed. Doesn't change the fact that in other stories he loses his temper and acts like a spoiled brat. Doesn't change the fact that he clearly believes...and intents to uphold...ancient jewish laws we know to be irrational today. And it sure as hell doesn't change the fact that the whole system of belief is a moral disaster.

[♦ ficino ♦]

Ficino, it's actually worse than that. I asked my ancient Greek prof about the diminutive ending on "dog" and what it might mean without mentioning the biblical context. He said that ending itself can be insulting, as in when someone says, "Why, you little _______!"

Add that to the very negative precedents we have of other cases where people are compared to dogs (in both the Bible and in Greek literature) and I think it's clearly an insult, perhaps almost up there with "little bitch."

 

Hey MFBL, this is very interesting. If you think of it, can you ask him for a source or reference for a pejorative sense of "-arion"? A lot of the time, it doesn't imply an insult, as when "paidarion" means either a little child or a slave boy, but neither is an insult, or when "mikron oinarion" means "a little bit of wine" (in Plutarch's Life of Cato). I'd profit by knowing of some examples where that ending conveys an insult.

 

Ευχaριστώ!

 

BTW it's so cool that you're studying Greek. Tell us more, if you care to!

[Akheia]

This whole thing brings home and makes even more clear to me--while not being as expert in Greek as either of you really, Ficino or MFBL--that much of the Bible really is context that has been long-lost by our day. It's amazing how someone can try to base an entire life on something nobody even understands anymore. Pastors wisely avoid all that complicated stuff.

[♦ ficino ♦]

In my experience, many of these "in the original Greek it really means X" apologetic moves are bogus. Thumbelina is/was fond of such. As you point out, it is a complicated task to fix the range of a word's meaning, esp. through time, and then to get it right in a particular context, when we often can never reconnstruct that context completely. At least Catholics and Orthodox have an ancient interpretive tradition as a guide, but Protestant fundies don't even have that unless they do a lot of hard digging. Same goes for the OT, prob. an even worse problem.

[MultifariousBirdLady]

Oh my gosh, I am in no way any kind of expert in ancient Greek.

 

The class I took was twelve years ago, just a basic first year class. I'd run into that verse and heard the "puppy" interpretation in the first years after my deconversion, though - several years before taking the course - and like you, I thought that answer seemed fishy. I just happened to run into it again while in the class so I figured it would be a good time to ask. I had taken other oddball questions to him before, like a story I found in Aesop that said, "Zeus was snowing."

 

I'll say more in a bit.

[MultifariousBirdLady]

Χaῖρε, Ficino!

 

I'm sorry to disappoint you since as you probably gathered from my previous post, I can't ask my prof. There are some very good search tools online, especially at www.perseus.tufts.edu, so it might be possible to dig something up there. I haven't figured out a way to just search for the ending, but maybe there is.

 

Looking for κῠνάριον, though, I found Plato's Euthydemus, section 298d which uses the term (translated here as "whelp") in a derogatory way -- alongside "gudgeons" and "porkers". A reference in Xenophon's Cyropaedia (8.4.20) is more of a straight reference to "whelp" but it's also another case where it's not something people want to be compared to, unlike what the apologists say.

 

Maybe I'm not remembering the details correctly, but I am sure that my prof said the diminutive ending on "dog" didn't soften it into some kind of affectionate term. He did say the context was important.

 

Even in English, while "little" on its own isn't derogatory, adding it to a statement like "What a nasty little jerk," doesn't soften the other words... in that context, it makes it sound like the person is small / insignificant as well as a "nasty jerk."

[MultifariousBirdLady]

I found some more...

 

See just over halfway down the page of this link here for a description of how the -aριον ending, when added to γυνή (woman), results in a "contemptuous noun" referring to "weak, idle, silly people." This is in 2 Timothy 3:6-7.

 

A search for γυνaικάριον in Tufts' Perseus word search turns up Marcus Aurelius's Meditations 5.11:

About what am I now employing my own soul? On every occasion I must ask myself this question, and inquire, what have I now in this part of me which they call the ruling principle? And whose soul have I now? That of a child, or of a young man, or of a feeble woman, or of a tyrant, or of a domestic animal, or of a wild beast?

In the Greek, there is no other word added to γυνaικάριον in this phrase to indicate "feeble." The -aριον ending does that.

[MultifariousBirdLady]

P.S. Ficino, someday I would love to take up the classes again and become fluent. If you're currently studying it, enjoy!

[♦ ficino ♦]

Hey mfbl, thanks for the references. I had not paid much attention to words ending in -arion before. I've done some more searching in the Thesaurus Linguae Graecae (= TLG). If you have access to a university library you can get it, incl. offsite via their computer system, since it would probably be among the on-line databases. You can search for Greek words or phrases or even endings alone.

 

I'm not going to spend a huge amount of time on this, but I do see that many instances of words in -arion do imply "little" in a pejorative, diminishing sense. So I think the "pet puppy" argument is even worse than I said in the OP!

 

BTW the Christian commentator in your link to the 2 Timothy passage can't be right to apply gunaikarion to both men and women. His argument by analogy from the diminuitives paidion and teknion is very bad, because "pais" can be both masculine or feminine, and "teknon" is always neuter. So creating neuter diminutives of those two words does not show anything about whether gunaikarion can apply to both sexes, being a dimunitive of γυνή, which is feminine. (I'm sure you know this.)

 

I did a word search on the TLG for γυνaικάριον. I didn't look up all the hits, but two right off the bat show clearly that this diminutive applies to women only. Athanasius, Oratio I, 22.5, against the Arians, talks of people (Arians, I guess) who come in to γυνaικάριa and say "feminized little words" (another diminutive, and more gender bias!!), εκτεθηλυμένa ρημάτιa to "them", feminine pronoun (aυτaις). (My Ex-chr font can't do any accents except acute.) So these "gunaikaria" are women. Then an exegesis falsely ascribed to St. John Chrysostom, de poenitentia (in PG it's volume 60, p. 684) expressly comments on Paul in 2 Tim. The writer says that Paul uses the dimunitive of women, instead of a form of the standard word γυνή. He goes on to talk about how such women behave.

 

So I think the Protestant commentator you found is doing exactly what we've been noticing, i.e. authoritatively promulgating false exegesis based on insufficient knowledge of or research into Greek.

 

Orthodox Jews are another example of a group that puts in huge care, philological acumen, and historical sense into interpreting texts, and they have a tradition to guide them. Protestant fundies give themselves permission to fly big textual airplanes with but little knowledge, and the passengers go along for the ride and think they're being given deep insights.

[MultifariousBirdLady]

Hey mfbl, thanks for the references. I had not paid much attention to words ending in -arion before. I've done some more searching in the Thesaurus Linguae Graecae (= TLG). If you have access to a university library you can get it, incl. offsite via their computer system, since it would probably be among the on-line databases. You can search for Greek words or phrases or even endings alone.

I'll check into this at the local university, but I doubt I'll be able to get access.

 

BTW the Christian commentator in your link to the 2 Timothy passage can't be right to apply gunaikarion to both men and women. His argument by analogy from the diminuitives paidion and teknion is very bad, because "pais" can be both masculine or feminine, and "teknon" is always neuter. So creating neuter diminutives of those two words does not show anything about whether gunaikarion can apply to both sexes, being a dimunitive of γυνή, which is feminine. (I'm sure you know this.)

I know that γυνή is feminine, yes, but when I found the site I was just looking for 'arion' references. I quoted what he said but didn't look into his gender comparison (my bad). What I thought was helpful was that it was a use of 'arion' with negative implications that was also in the Bible.

 

I did a word search on the TLG for γυνaικάριον. I didn't look up all the hits, but two right off the bat show clearly that this diminutive applies to women only. Athanasius, Oratio I, 22.5, against the Arians, talks of people (Arians, I guess) who come in to γυνaικάριa and say "feminized little words" (another diminutive, and more gender bias!!), εκτεθηλυμένa ρημάτιa to "them", feminine pronoun (aυτaις). (My Ex-chr font can't do any accents except acute.) So these "gunaikaria" are women. Then an exegesis falsely ascribed to St. John Chrysostom, de poenitentia (in PG it's volume 60, p. 684) expressly comments on Paul in 2 Tim. The writer says that Paul uses the dimunitive of women, instead of a form of the standard word γυνή. He goes on to talk about how such women behave.

Thanks for this. The quotes I found using the Perseus website showed that all the "gunaikaria" references they listed referred specifically to women, too.

 

BTW, directions for the Greek font I'm using can be found here: Evaraphaela

 

So I think the Protestant commentator you found is doing exactly what we've been noticing, i.e. authoritatively promulgating false exegesis based on insufficient knowledge of or research into Greek.

OK, thanks for pointing that out.

 

Orthodox Jews are another example of a group that puts in huge care, philological acumen, and historical sense into interpreting texts, and they have a tradition to guide them. Protestant fundies give themselves permission to fly big textual airplanes with but little knowledge, and the passengers go along for the ride and think they're being given deep insights.

I have seen what you're talking about amongst Orthodox Jews. I found going to some talks on the differences between Jewish and Christian interpretations of Hebrew scriptures to be very, very eye-opening. I recommend it to all ex-Christians (and Christians!) if the chance is offered.