Amy-Jill Levine


Amy-Jill Levine is E. Rhodes and Leona B. Carpenter Professor of New Testament Studies at Vanderbilt University Divinity School, Department of Religious Studies, and Graduate Department of Religion.

Biography

Amy-Jill Levine was born in 1956. She completed her undergraduate work at Smith College, where she graduated Phi Beta Kappa and held honors in both religion and English. She earned her doctorate at Duke University.
She has held office in the Society of Biblical Literature, the Catholic Biblical Association, and the Association for Jewish Studies.
Her most recent publications include The Misunderstood Jew: The Church and the Scandal of the Jewish Jesus, the edited collection, The Historical Jesus in Context, and the 14-volume Feminist Companions to the New Testament and Early Christian Writings.
A self-described "Yankee Jewish feminist who teaches in a predominantly Protestant divinity school in the buckle of the Bible Belt," Levine "combines historical-critical rigor, literary-critical sensitivity, and a frequent dash of humor with a commitment to eliminating antisemitic, sexist, and homophobic theologies." She is a member of the Orthodox Jewish synagogue Sherith Israel. She accepts the Orthodox Jew tenet of the afterlife, but "is often quite unorthodox" overall.
Levine has produced lectures on the Old Testament and "Great Figures of the New Testament" for The Teaching Company.

Quotes

Per the introduction by Levine for The Historical Jesus in Context:
There is a consensus of sorts on a basic outline of Jesus' life. Most scholars agree that Jesus was baptized by John, debated with fellow Jews on how best to live according to God's will, engaged in healings and exorcisms, taught in parables, gathered male and female followers in Galilee, went to Jerusalem, and was crucified by Roman soldiers during the governorship of Pontius Pilate. But, to use the old cliché, the devil is in the details.

Selected publications