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Jesus Through Jewish Eyes
Amy-Jill Levine, a professor of New Testament at Vanderbilt University, has teamed up with Marc Z. Brettler of Brandeis University and 34 other Jewish scholars to produce the The Jewish Annotated New Testament (Oxford University Press). Levine, who teaches students preparing for Christian ministry at Vanderbilt Divinity School, hopes The Jewish Annotated New Testament will help Christians understand the Jewish context of their faith and help Jews see that the Christian Scriptures are not only informative about Jewish history, but are also in many places "beautiful and profound." CT editor in chief David Neff recently talked with Levine about this first-of-its-kind study Bible.
Why publish The Jewish Annotated New Testament now?
The publication is certainly timely; as several friends, both Jews and Christians, have suggested to me: "It's about time!" For Jews, looking at the New Testament is a recovery of part of our own tradition. Indeed, the more I study the New Testament, the more I learn about early Judaism, and consequently the better Jew I become.
For Christians and Jews both, it's always helpful to know the common roots of church and synagogue, to understand what we share and how we came to separate. The annotations, which draw from contemporaneous Jewish sources as well as discuss later rabbinic views on the topics in question, provide this information.
In working with Christian congregations and clergy groups, I find an enormous interest in Jesus' Jewish context—how the parables would have sounded in Jewish ears and what the controversy stories suggest about early Jewish practice. I think that if Christians want to take the Incarnation seriously, they should also take seriously where and when and to whom it occurred. ...
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Keith Head
For the last 29 years I have worked for two men in their CPA firm, these men are Jews. I am a Christian, raised in the Church and surrounded by a Christian family both in my immediate family and extended family. It would be hard to list all the things I have learned from Jack and Neal. Jack is a survivor of Hitler's death camps and came to America after being liberated by American troops. He came here alone with nothing but the shirt on his back and later graduated with top honors from Emory University in Atlanta. He has taught me much more than accounting and has shown me grace by example. I have known employees and cleints to do him wrong and he would do something good to them in return. However Jack is not a Christian and he challenges my beliefs on occassion. Never the less he much better person than many Christians that I know. Neal is from Alabama and closer to my age, he is 67 and I'm 57. While Jack has been a father figure Neal has been my big brother. I hope they read your NT