The often-provocative John Shelby Spong Lectureship is hosting a Lenten talk by Vanderbilt professor Amy-Jill Levine, titled Of Pearls and Prodigals: Hearing the Parables of Jesus as Jewish Stories, at St. Peter’s Episcopal Church in Morristown on March 18, 2017.
Family, friends and fans of John Shelby Spong have established the series to honor the retired bishop, a prolific author known for tackling tough spiritual issues head-on.
In that same vein, Levine “combines historical-critical rigor, literary-critical sensitivity, and a frequent dash of humor with a commitment to eliminating anti-Jewish, sexist, and homophobic theologies,” according to St. Peter’s.
Levine describes herself as a “Yankee Jewish feminist who teaches in a predominantly Christian divinity school in the buckle of the Bible Belt.”
Admission to the 10 am presentation is $20.
Here is more about Levine.
FROM ST. PETER’S EPISCOPAL CHURCH:
OF PEARLS AND PRODIGALS: HEARING THE PARABLES OF JESUS AS JEWISH STORIES.
Amy-Jill Levine is University Professor of New Testament and Jewish Studies, E. Rhodes and Leona B. Carpenter Professor of New Testament Studies, and Professor of Jewish Studies at Vanderbilt Divinity School and College of Arts and Sciences.
Holding the B.A. from Smith College, the M.A. and Ph.D. from Duke University, and honorary doctorates from Christian Theological Seminary, Drury University, the University of Richmond, the Episcopal Theological Seminary of the Southwest, and the University of South Carolina-Upstate, Professor Levine has been awarded grants from the Mellon Foundation, the National Endowment for the Humanities, and the American Council of Learned Societies.
She has held office in the Society of Biblical Literature, the Catholic Biblical Association, and the Association for Jewish Studies. Her books include The Misunderstood Jew: The Church and the Scandal of the Jewish Jesus (HarperOne), the edited collection, The Historical Jesus in Context (Princeton), and the 13-volume edited series, Feminist Companions to the New Testament and Early Christian Writings (Continuum).
With Marc Brettler of Brandeis University, she edited the Jewish Annotated New Testament (Oxford). She has written, with her Vanderbilt colleague Douglas Knight, The Meaning of the Bible: What The Jewish Scriptures and the Christian Old Testament Can Teach Us (HarperOne); with Warren Carter of Brite Divinity School, she published in 2013 The New Testament: Methods and Meanings (Abingdon).
Her most recent book is Short Stories by Jesus: the Enigmatic Parables of a Controversial Rabbi (HarperOne). She has recorded Introduction to the Old Testament, Great Figures of the Old Testament, and Great Figures of the New Testament for the Teaching Company.
In 2011, Professor Levine became Affiliated Professor at the Woolf Institute: Centre for the Study of Jewish-Christian Relations at Cambridge, UK.
A self-described “Yankee Jewish feminist who teaches in a predominantly Christian divinity school in the buckle of the Bible Belt,” Professor Levine combines historical-critical rigor, literary-critical sensitivity, and a frequent dash of humor with a commitment to eliminating anti-Jewish, sexist, and homophobic theologies.
