The story of a Gentile who was a “true Israelite” (7:24–30) is the first of three stories in Mark 7:24–8:9 in which Jesus extends his ministry to Gentile regions. Tyre lay thirty miles northwest of the Sea of Galilee along the Mediterranean and epitomized a long history of antagonism to Israel. The home of the infamous Jezebel of 1 Kings (16:31–32), as well as a staging ground for attacks on Israel during the Maccabean revolt (1 Maccabees 5:14–15), Tyre, in the words of the Jewish historian Josephus, was “a notoriously bitter enemy” of Israel (Against Apion 1.13). Mark does not specify why Jesus goes to Tyre, although he says that Jesus hopes to evade detection (7:24). It is not difficult to imagine that Jesus quit Galilee to escape the intrigues of the Pharisees (3:6; 7:1–23) and the ire…