Robert Warrior, whose “Canaanites, Cowboys, and Indians” turned Hebrew Bible scholarship on its ear, argues that there might be something wrong with the Christian god, something requiring conversion and repentance. He notes that in the narrative, the “little bitch” does not become a follower of Jesus. She seeks him out because he has something she needs. She receives what she came for and walks away never to be mentioned again. She changes Jesus. Maybe she went back to her people and fought against the colonizing Romans in her own way with her own gods. The importance of her story is not whether she followed Jesus but that, without her, Jesus would have remained a narrow-minded bigot who viewed indigenous people as dogs.
The little bitch who taught Jesus a lesson was alone in the text. But in front of the text, she is not. She is Filipina. She is Palestinian. She is Mexican. She is Legion. She is transgressing borders. She is reclaiming what is hers. And she is fighting for her children’s lives, resisting empire, and surviving this pandemic her own way with her own gods.
*art, "The Canaanite Woman asks for healing for her daughter," Bazzi Rahib, Ilyas Basim Khuri (available at vanderbilt divinity library digital archives).
