Amy-Jill Levine, "Christian Privilege, Christian Fragility, and the Gospel of John," Oct. 14, 2018

Prof. Amy-Jill Levine delivered the Sixth Annual John Paul II Lecture in Christian-Jewish Relations at the Boston College Center for Christian-Jewish Learning. Her lecture was titled "Christian Privilege, Christian Fragility, and the Gospel of John: How American Race Relations Inform Jewish-Christian Dialogue." Despite the Roman Catholic Church’s condemnation of anti-Jewish and anti-Semitic statements, problems remain in Catholic biblical studies and homilies. Studies of American racism, especially after the events last year in Charlottesville, shed light not only on why prejudice remains but also on how to combat it. This talk sought to advance Jewish-Catholic relations by showing how and why dialogue is needed. Amy-Jill Levine is University Professor of New Testament and Jewish Studies and Mary Jane Werthan Professor of Jewish Studies at Vanderbilt Divinity School and College of Arts and Science; she is also Affiliated Professor, Woolf Institute: Centre for the Study of Jewish-Christian Relations, Cambridge University. Her books include The Misunderstood Jew: The Church and the Scandal of the Jewish Jesus; The Meaning of the Bible: What the Jewish Scriptures and the Christian Old Testament Can Teach Us (with D. Knight); The New Testament, Methods and Meanings (with W.Carter), The Gospel of Luke (with B. Witherington III), and Short Stories by Jesus: The Enigmatic Parables of a Controversial Rabbi. With Sandy Eisenberg Sasso, she co-authored the children’s books Who Counts? 100 Sheep, Ten Coins, and Two Sons and The Marvelous Mustard Seed. With Marc Z. Brettler, she co-edited the Jewish Annotated New Testament. Professor Levine is a self-described “Yankee Jewish feminist who teaches New Testament in Nashville, Tennessee, the buckle of the Bible Belt.” In spring 2019, she will be the first Jew to teach a course on the New Testament at the Pontifical Biblical Institute in Rome.