She is Jewish. She belongs to an Orthodox synagogue. She does not believe Jesus is the Messiah. And yet, Dr. Amy-Jill Levine became the first Jewish person in history to teach New Testament at the Vatican’s Pontifical Biblical Institute in Rome. She has met Pope Francis on three separate occasions. She has been elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. And she has spent her entire career uncovering the Jewish world that shaped everything Jesus said and did.
In this conversation, Dr. Levine takes us inside the vibrant world of Second Temple Judaism and shows us a Jesus most Christians have never been introduced to. She dismantles centuries of lazy theology that has turned the Pharisees into villains, stripped Jesus of his Jewish identity, and twisted his parables into Sunday school stories. What she reveals instead is a Jesus who intensified Torah rather than abolished it, a Jesus whose parables were never meant to comfort but to provoke, and a Prodigal Son story that has an ending most preachers have completely missed.
In this episode you will learn:
– Why a Jewish girl growing up in a Catholic neighborhood in Massachusetts dedicated her life to studying the New Testament
– What the “scandal” of the Jewish Jesus actually means and why the Church still struggles with it
– How Christian sermons accidentally make Judaism look bad to make Jesus look good
– Who the Pharisees really were and why everything you were taught about them is wrong
– What Jesus actually looks like when you place him fully back inside Second Temple Judaism
– Why Jesus did not come to abolish the Law and what he was actually doing with Torah
– How the Parable of the Good Samaritan and the Prodigal Son have been misread for centuries
– The stunning detail in the Prodigal Son that connects it to the lost sheep and lost coin and changes everything
– Why Jesus’ parables were designed to afflict the comfortable, not comfort the afflicted
– What a Jewish scholar who does not worship Jesus wants every Christian to understand about him
Guest: Dr. Amy-Jill Levine
Rabbi Stanley M. Kessler Distinguished Professor of New Testament and Jewish Studies, Hartford International University for Religion and Peace
University Professor of New Testament and Jewish Studies Emerita, Vanderbilt University
Books by Dr. Levine:
Author Page- https://www.amazon.com/stores/author/B001H9TWM0
The Misunderstood Jew: The Church and the Scandal of the Jewish Jesus- https://a.co/d/0a1WpgqR
Short Stories by Jesus: The Enigmatic Parables of a Controversial Rabbi- https://a.co/d/020Yyvux
Hartford International Faculty Page: https://www.hartfordinternational.edu/faculty/amy-jill-levine
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The Revelation Reset: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0D2MYRT27
