Mark 7 Footnotes

7:26 The woman was ethnically Syrophoenician, descended from the original inhabitants of the area. “Greek” did not indicate her ethnicity but rather the fact that she was a Hellenized pagan, a non-Jew. Matthew called the woman a Canaanite (which can merely mean a pagan in rabbinic literature) because of her ethnicity and to heighten the contrast of a woman from the traditional religious enemies of Israel approaching the Jewish Messiah for help. Because it is unlikely this woman spoke Aramaic, the story indicates that Jesus, like many Palestinian Jews, was able to converse in Greek.