Two gospels carry the story of a woman who asks Jesus to exorcise a demon from her daughter. Unfortunately for her, she isn’t from Israel. (She is “Canaanite” in one gospel, “Syrophoenician” in another.) Jesus takes this into account and replies, with one of his less flattering allegories, “It is not fair to take the children’s food and throw it to the dogs.” Pathetically, the woman answers, “Yet even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from their masters’ table,” after which Jesus relents and tosses her some crumbs by tossing out the demons.

Defenders of Jesus might say he was just piquantly driving home the fact that Gentiles can find salvation through faith. Indeed, that is the way the story plays out in Matthew, as Jesus exclaims, “Great is your faith!” But in Mark, the earlier telling of the story, there’s no mention of faith. What wins Jesus’s favor, it seems, is the woman’s acknowledging her inferior status by embracing her end of the master-dog metaphor; with the woman bowed before him, Jesus answers only, “For saying that, you may go—the demon has left your daughter.”