S8 E11: Parables And The Surplus Of Meaning

Amy-Jill Levine (“AJ”) is University Professor of New Testament and Jewish Studies and Mary Jane Werthan Professor of Jewish Studies at Vanderbilt. Her books include The Misunderstood Jew: The Church and the Scandal of the Jewish Jesus and Short Stories by Jesus; four children’s books (with Sandy Sasso); The Gospel of Luke (with Ben Witherington III); and The Jewish Annotated New Testament (co-edited with Marc Brettler).

In 2020 she published The Bible With and Without Jesus: How Jews and Christians Read the Same Stories Differently (with Marc Brettler); and Sermon on the Mount: A Beginner’s Guide to the Kingdom of Heaven.

She is the first Jew to teach New Testament at Rome’s Pontifical Biblical Institute. AJ describes herself as an unorthodox member of an Orthodox synagogue and a Yankee Jewish feminist who teaches New Testament in a Christian divinity school in the Buckle of the Bible Belt.

In this episode, I talk with AJ about how we interpret Jesus’s parables and why having a clear contextual understanding of Jesus’s stories is important both spiritually and creatively.