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Marvin Harris gives us insight into this passage:
“The gospels also indicate that some of the disciples carried swords and were prepared to resist arrest. Just before being taken into custody, Jesus said, ‘He that hath no sword, let him sell his garment and buy one.’ This prompted the disciples to show him two swords—indicating that at least two of them were not only habitually armed but had kept their swords concealed under their clothes… like dagger men [a common type of assassin at the time].” (Cows, Pigs, Wars, and Witches, Marvin Harris, 188)
“In Jerusalem, assassinations by dagger men who concealed their weapons inside their garments now had become common. One of their most famous victims was the High Priest Jonathan. In the midst of all the bloodshed, military-messianic contenders appeared again and again.” (Cows, Pigs, Wars, and Witches, Marvin Harris, 169)
Matthew 10:5-6
These twelve Jesus sent out with the following instructions: “Go nowhere among the Gentiles, and enter no town of the Samaritans, but go rather to the lost sheep of the house of Israel.”
Matthew 15:24
He answered, “I was sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel.”
Mark 7:24-30
From there he set out and went away to the region of Tyre. He entered a house and did not want anyone to know he was there. Yet he could not escape notice, but a woman whose little daughter had an unclean spirit immediately heard about him, and she came and bowed down at his feet. Now the woman was a Gentile, of Syrophoenician origin. She begged him to cast the demon out of her daughter. He said to her, “Let the children be fed first, for it is not fair to take the children’s food and throw it to the dogs.”
But she answered him, “Sir, even the dogs under the table eat the children’s crumbs.”
Then he said to her, “For saying that, you may go—the demon has left your daughter.” So she went home, found the child lying on the bed, and the demon gone.
Jesus was unwilling to heal the Syrian Greek woman’s daughter until she admitted her (a dog’s) inferiority to the Jews (the children). Marvin Harris elaborates:
“The preserved evidence of Jesus’ reported actions and sayings provides no support for Paul’s attempt to scrap the distinction between Jew and non-Jew in the overseas communes. In the Gospel according to Mark, for example, a Syrian Greek woman falls at Jesus’ feet and begs him to drive out the devils from her daughter. Jesus refuses: ‘Let the children first be filled: for it is not meet to take the children’s bread and to cast it to the dogs.’ The Syrian Greek woman argues back, saying: ‘The dogs under the table eat the childrens’ crumbs,’ whereupon Jesus relents and cures the woman’s daughter. ‘Children’ here can only mean ‘children of Israel’ and ‘dogs’ can only mean non-Jews, especially enemies like the Syrian Greeks. Incidents and sayings of this sort were preserved in Mark and the other gospels for the same reason that the other vengeful and ethnocentric sayings and actions could not be entirely expunged. There were lively oral traditions upon which the gospels were based.” (Cows, Pigs, Wars, and Witches, Marvin Harris, 198-199)
Mark 5:9-13
Then Jesus asked him, ‘What is your name?’ He replied, ‘My name is Legion; for we are many.’ He begged him earnestly not to send them out of the country. Now there on the hillside a great herd of swine was feeding; and the unclean spirits begged him, ‘Send us into the swine; let us enter them.’ So he gave them permission. And the unclean spirits came out and entered the swine; and the herd, numbering about two thousand, rushed down the steep bank into the lake, and were drowned in the lake.
Luigi Cascioli explains this strange passage:
