Amy-Jill Levine

Mary Jane Werthan Professor of Jewish Studies

Amy Jill Levine (AJ) is  University Professor of New Testament and Jewish Studies Emerita, Mary Jane Werthan Professor of Jewish Studies Emerita, and Professor of New Testament Studies Emerita, Vanderbilt (Jewish Studies and Divinity School). Since retiring from Vanderbilt, she is Rabbi Stanley M. Kessler Distinguished Professor of New Testament and Jewish Studies at Hartford International University for Religion and Peace.

Holding a B.A. from Smith College, M.A. and Ph.D. from Duke University, and honorary doctorates from the University of Richmond, the Episcopal Theological Seminary of the Southwest, the University of South Carolina-Upstate, Drury University, Christian Theological Seminary, and Franklin College, 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.  She served as Alexander Robertson Fellow (University of Glasgow), and the Catholic Biblical Association Scholar to the Philippines. At Vanderbilt, she chaired the faculty Senate.

Her publications include The Misunderstood Jew: The Church and the Scandal of the Jewish Jesus, Short Stories by Jesus: The Enigmatic Parables of a Controversial Rabbi; Jesus for Everyone, Not Just Christians, The New Testament, Methods and Meanings (with Warren Carter), six children’s books (with Sandy Sasso); The Gospel of Luke (with Ben Witherington III, the first biblical commentary by a Jew and an Evangelical); The Jewish Annotated New Testament (co-edited with Marc Brettler), The Bible With and Without Jesus: How Jews and Christians Read the Same Stories Differently (with Marc Brettler), The Pharisees (co-edited with Joseph Sievers), and thirteen edited volumes of the Feminist Companions to the New Testament and Early Christian Literature. Along with Introduction to the Old Testament and Great Figures of the New Testament for the Teaching Company, her adult education series for Abingdon Press includes Sermon on the Mount: A Beginner’s Guide to the Kingdom of Heaven; Light of the World: A Beginner’s Guide to Advent; Entering the Passion of Jesus: A Beginner’s Guide to Holy Week; The Kingdom of Heaven: 40 Devotionals; The Difficult Words of Jesus: A Beginner’s Guide to His Most Perplexing Teachings; Witness at the Cross: A Beginner’s Guide to Holy Friday;  Signs and Wonders: A Beginner’s Guide to The Miracles of Jesus; The Gospel of Mark: A Beginner’s Guide to the Good News; The Gospel of John: A Beginner’s Guide to The Way, The Truth, and the Life;, and A Child is Born: A Beginner’s Guide to Birth Stories   She is the editor of several volumes in the Wisdom Commentary series, and she is the New Testament editor of the new Oxford Biblical Commentary Series.

The first Jew to teach New Testament at Rome’s Pontifical Biblical Institute, an elected member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and of Academia Europaea, and the first winner of the Seelisberg Prize for Jewish-Christian Relations, AJ describes herself as an unorthodox member of an Orthodox synagogue and a Yankee Jewish feminist who works to counter biblical interpretations that exclude and oppress