A Jewish Scholar on What Christians miss when Reading the Bible | Dr. Amy-Jill Levine

What does it look like when a Jewish New Testament scholar sits down with a Christian host to talk about how two ancient traditions read the same texts — and reach such different conclusions? That's exactly the conversation host Jean Geran has with Dr. Amy-Jill Levine in this wide-ranging episode recorded in Madison, Wisconsin.

AJ Levine is University Professor of New Testament and Jewish Studies at Vanderbilt Divinity School, and one of the most respected voices in Jewish-Christian dialogue today. She recently joined us for our Questions of Faith event in Oshkosh and spent time in Wisconsin as a scholar in residence at First United Methodist Church in Madison.

WHAT YOU WILL LEARN

• How growing up Jewish in a Portuguese Roman Catholic neighborhood in Massachusetts led AJ to a lifetime of studying the New Testament
• Why the Torah is said to have "70 faces" — and what that means for how Jews and Christians approach interpretation differently
• What Jews and Christians share in terms of canon, prayer, and Scripture — and where they meaningfully diverge
• AJ's surprisingly practical take on salvation, Torah-observance, and whether Jews worry about getting into heaven
• Why Jesus used parables — and why he rarely explained them
• The difference between Jewish communal identity and Christian individualism, and what each tradition can learn from the other
• Baseball vs. football: a memorable analogy for understanding Jewish and Christian orientations toward time, memory, and the future
• The Hebrew concept of tzaddik (the righteous one) and what it means to bless the city you're in
• Whether shared stories can bridge religious and cultural divides — and AJ's honest, unsentimental answer
• Lament as relationship: what Tevye, the Psalms, and Job have in common, and why arguing with God keeps us in the conversation

GUEST
Amy-Jill Levine is University Professor of New Testament and Jewish Studies at Vanderbilt Divinity School and College of Arts and Science, and the author of numerous books including Short Stories by Jesus: The Enigmatic Parables of a Controversial Rabbi and The Misunderstood Jew: The Church and the Scandal of the Jewish Jesus.

Send us Fan Mail

CONNECT WITH US
Subscribe to The UpWords Podcast wherever you listen to podcasts and visit slbf.org/studio to learn more about our work at the intersection of faith, the academy, and the marketplace.

This episode was created by the SLBF STUDIO at Upper House.

Produced by Daniel Johnson and Dave Conour

Edited by Dave Conour