Why did Jesus talk like that to the Canaanite woman? Why did he call her a dog?

When Jesus was portrayed in Mark 7:27 as referring to the Syro-Phoenician woman as a dog, this was intended as a highly offensive racist remark. Perhaps Jesus never really said this, but it was copied rather inexpertly into Matthew 15:26. Luke’s Gospel omits it because the parallel passage would be in what is now known as the ‘Missing Block’.

In the original, in Mark’s Gospel, Jesus said that the children (Jews) must first be fed, but this was replaced in Matthew’s version by Jesus saying he was sent only to help the Jews. Mark had created a metaphor that could be understood, but Matthew’s statement that “It is not meet to take the children's bread, and to cast it to dogs” lacks an explanation and seems even more offensive to modern minds.