I have read three books by Amy-Jill Levine in the last few months (link is to her Amazon page), but I here mention more than those three.
The Pharisees (edited with Joseph Sievers)
The Misunderstood Jews: The Church and the Scandal of the Jewish Jesus
Short Stories by Jesus (on the parables)
The Bible With and Without Jesus: How Jews and Christians Read the Same Stories Differently (with Marc Zvi Brettler)
The Jewish Annotated New Testament, with Marc Zvi Brettler
Her mission is to affirm what Christians are getting right, instruct Christians about the realities of what Christians call the “Old Testament,” and to correct Christians where they get things wrong. And we get plenty wrong.
No Christian pastor or professor can avoid her clear, precise, engaging, at times witty and at other times minatory books. Please read them because you need them.
Where to begin? With The Misunderstood Jew, a book both about Jesus and about Jewish-Christian relations. Open up that book to p. 229-231 to notice the schools, synagogues, seminaries, and churches where she has spoken. I consider her mission to be a gift from God to the church. She’s here to help us get it better and at times even get it right!
First, Amy-Jill Levine, who is part of an Orthodox synagogue, grew up surrounded by Roman Catholics and did a PhD in New Testament at Duke. We both did our PhD dissertations on Matthew; I’m a few years older but she finished her work before I did. She has taught NT, among other subjects (and students), her entire career, and is now a professor at Hartford International University for Religion and Peace and professor emerita of New Testament at Vanderbilt Divinity School. Yes, read that carefully: most of her career she was a Jewish NT professor at a Christian seminary. She mentions her students often. All to say this: she knows NT studies. Far better than I know rabbinic sources.
Second, her concern is anti-Judaism and anti-Semitism in the church, in NT scholarship, and in society. Her approach is clear and compelling, firm and at times fierce, never strident but unafraid at times of using “ridiculous” for what some of us say. She’s not playing nicey-nicey because the subject is far too serious. When she was a child another child informed her she was a Christ-killer. Children hearing such things is where we need to start with our admonishments, confessions, repentance, lament, and learning a new way.
Third, she exposes mistakes made by Christian readings of the New Testament. Here is one she exposes often, and one I have myself made too many times. She makes me go back and revise thoughts. We Christians make our claims about Jesus and our faith by posing them over against Judaism. We use Judaism as a foil to prove we are right. I believe some 25 years ago I read or hear Amy-Jill say this about how Jesus treated women. That is,
Jews treated women as inferior etc;
Jesus was ever so lovely and welcoming of women;
Jesus wins, we win!
But there is not one text in the Gospels where Jesus is criticized for his welcoming of women, and his opponents had plenty of opportunity to do so and didn’t seem to skip opportunities to criticize him. Amy-Jill exposes this logic over and over in The Misunderstood Jew. Here’s a word from her: “Jesus does not have to be unique in all cases in order to be profound.”
Fourth, Jesus was a Jew among Jews, and his vision of the kingdom was a vision of Judaism within Judaism. The Jewishness of Jesus has been a rally cry for many of us for decades but too often we tend to pose Jesus the Jew against Judaism at the very point where our Christian faith about him stands as a difference. Those differences, and there are some, did not make him unJewish. It made his vision a different form of Judaism. Jesus was not against the law or the temple or Israel. He read it differently than some, he pushed temple authorities at times, and his vision was for Israel.
Fifth, her mission to engage the church means she puts on the table all manner of Christian sources: Sunday School lessons, papal statements, academic books, liberation theology, the World Council of Churches sermons, etc.. She knows children are impacted by ridiculously unhistorical statements and stereotypes (esp of Pharisees!) so she has written some wonderful little children’s books. My daughter, Laura, has used them in her public school readings and teachings. One is called Who is My Neighbor? Yes, she takes Jesus’ teachings and parables and turns them into simpler children’s stories. She speaks to churches and schools and seminaries and in academic conferences. Every time I have heard her speak she has kept to her mission to engage the church over its (mis)understandings of Judaism.
Sixth, Amy-Jill wants to achieve mutual respect for one another both as humans and as communities of faith. Her angle is that we can differ at some profoundly important levels and still treat one another as Jesus would have it: the Golden Rule. She’s not searching for some religion behind the religions that unites us all, but for mutual respect and generous treatment of one another. I have known her for decades and I have never experienced anything other than respect, even if she can at times give you a smile that suggests, “Scot, you can do better.” Her newest book with Brettler, The Bible With and Without Jesus, exemplifies that very approach. They discuss creation, Adam and Eve, “you are a priest forever,” an “eye for an eye,” “drink my blood,” “a virgin will conceive,” Isaiah’s suffering servant, the sign of Jonah, the cry of dereliction, and the son of man. In each they sketch the NT use, then what that text meant in its context in the Tanakh, how Christians have interpreted it, and how various branches of Judaism have interpreted it, and then they conclude with notes of respect for one another’s readings of the text. The book is an education. Buy it, read it, and tell others about it. Then discuss it with one another. Which I plan to do this fall with my new DMin cohort.
Finally, and I could go on for many more observations, she calls attention to dangerous texts of the New Testament. For Jews, to read “your blood be upon our heads” or “synagogue of Satan” or “your father the devil” is to invite disrespect for Jews and Judaism, to open the door to various forms of anti-Judaism, and to court the horrors of anti-Semitism. She’s fiercely clear about these themes in the New Testament (yes, she knows what conservatives think about inspiration) and she must be heard. There are ways for Christians to talk and write and teach and preach about these texts in ways that are both self-critical and capable of turning the tide in a new direction. She exposes, yes, but she provides hope with her “Quo Vadis?,” concluding chapter in The Misunderstood Jew, where gives an A to Z list of how we can move forward together. Again, she’s not pretending to some kind of kumbaya campfire where we are one in all things. She knows we differ, but there’s a way to differ and a way not to. Her A to Z will be worth your careful reading and pondering and doing.
Amy-Jill Levine is a prophet sent by God to the church. She has called us to see and to hear with new eyes and ears, to repent and lament, and to get it better and get it right. Judaism is not the foil of Christianity; it is her mother.
Amy-Jill Levine: Prophet to the Church
Looks like some good sources to keep in mind if one were thinking of applying to Northern's DMin in NT Context and needed a place to start for their essay.
Hey Scot… I appreciate being introduced to her writing a couple of summers ago when joining the MANT. Reading her book challenged me to reconsider a number of aspects of Jesus’s parables (which the book was about). At least with her book on the parables I struggled with how she deconstructed the gospels, particularly in Luke (I believe), where she would question the framing Luke gave for a parable, stating, well, that’s not what the parable is about. Where does this leave me? Are the gospel writers then not trustworthy sources?
I’ve begun reading the Jewish Jesus book. But I read it cautiously. What I’m looking for is what function those negative portrayals of at least some of the Jewish religious leadership play in the gospels? What is the solution? If something is deconstructed, where is a reconstruction that leads us to better understanding and a more faithful discipleship?