scarcely imaginable that the saying was formulated with an eye to that problem, for the order it emphasizes—first the children, then the dogs; first the Jews, then the Gentiles—has nothing to do with the community problem of common meals. Here the situation was that everyone had the same rights and all sat at table together. Besides, one must ask: Would it not have been much simpler to tell a story about Jesus’ eating with “unclean” people in order to have a legitimating model for shared meals among