Matthew, like most biographers, strives to identify the opinions and
prejudices of his hero with his own. Although he describes Jesus as
tolerant even to carelessness, he draws the line at the Gentile, and
represents Jesus as a bigoted Jew who regards his mission as addressed
exclusively to "the lost sheep of the house of Israel." When a woman of
Canaan begged Jesus to cure her daughter, he first refused to speak
to her, and then told her brutally that "It is not meet to take the
children's bread and cast it to the dogs." But when the woman said,
"Truth, Lord; yet the dogs eat of the crumbs which fall from their
master's table," she melted the Jew out of him and made Christ a
Christian. To the woman whom he had just called a dog he said, "O woman,
great is thy faith: be it unto thee even as thou wilt." This is somehow
one of the most touching stories in the gospel; perhaps because the
woman rebukes the prophet by a touch of his own finest quality. It is
certainly out of character; but as the sins of good men are always out
of character, it is not safe to reject the story as invented in the
interest of Matthew's determination that Jesus shall have nothing to do
with the Gentiles. At all events, there the story is; and it is by no
means the only instance in which Matthew reports Jesus, in spite of the
charm of his preaching, as extremely uncivil in private intercourse.