0:04

Hello and welcome to another

0:06

episode of the Enter the Bible

0:09

podcast where you can get answers or

0:11

at least reflections on everything you wanted

0:13

to know about the Bible. But were afraid to ask.

0:16

I'm Katie Langston.

0:17

And I'm Kathryn Schifferdecker. And

0:19

we are just privileged

0:21

to welcome a very special guest today

0:24

on the podcast. Professor

0:26

Amy Jill Levine is

0:28

the Rabbi, Stanley Kessler

0:30

distinguished Professor of New Testament

0:32

and Jewish Studies at Hartford International

0:35

University for Religion and Peace, and

0:38

was previously at

0:40

Vanderbilt University. She's the university professor

0:42

of New Testament and Jewish Studies

0:45

emerita, the Mary Jane

0:47

Worthen, professor of Jewish Studies emerita

0:49

and the professor of New Testament Studies

0:51

emerita at Vanderbilt University.

0:54

Thank you so much for taking the time

0:57

to be with us.

0:59

I'm delighted you invited me. It

1:01

floored me that people would be afraid

1:04

to ask a question about the Bible.

1:06

How bizarre.

1:07

That is. That's totally it is. It's totally

1:09

weird. But I think in

1:12

some, you know, Christian traditions

1:14

or cultures, there's sort of like this idea that

1:17

you you shouldn't be allowed

1:19

to ask questions or somehow

1:21

that that makes you unfaithful.

1:25

That's a great way to depopulate the church.

1:27

Thank you. Yes, correct. 1,000,000%.

1:30

Yes.

1:31

There are many I've heard

1:33

many stories from students and others

1:35

who were who asked questions

1:37

in Sunday school, and were told that they shouldn't.

1:40

So a very

1:42

non-Jewish approach.

1:44

I think that's correct.

1:46

Right.

1:47

Yeah, exactly.

1:48

Yeah.

1:49

So we we have a listener question

1:51

today that came in via our

1:54

website. Enter the Bible. Org And as usual

1:56

listeners, we encourage you

1:58

to ask your questions there.

2:00

So here's the question that

2:03

came in via that website. Who are

2:06

"the Jews" in John's

2:08

passion narrative? So those

2:10

for those unfamiliar in the Gospel of

2:13

John, we

2:15

have a number of references to the

2:17

Jews, particularly in

2:19

the passion narrative, and they seem to be the

2:21

antagonists of Jesus

2:24

calling for his crucifixion. So,

2:27

Professor Levine, how would you

2:29

begin to address that question? I know it's

2:31

a big topic.

2:32

Yeah, well, I would rephrase the question.

2:34

They don't seem to be the antagonist. They are the

2:36

antagonists, right? Yes.

2:39

So John uses the term Judaios,

2:41

Greek for Jew can also be translated Judean.

2:44

But it's basically the same thing, 69

2:46

or 70 times, depending upon the manuscript

2:48

that you look at. And I don't think

2:51

that as John is being read out loud to people,

2:53

since most people back then were illiterate, you're going to

2:55

hear the text performed or read out loud. I

2:57

don't think that Marcus is going to turn to Livy

2:59

and say, Do you think he's talking about all Jews now?

3:01

We're just some Jews? Yeah,

3:04

that's that's not the way people listen to things.

3:08

Every once in a while, John drops in a reference to Pharisees.

3:10

They eventually morph into the Ioudaioi anyway.

3:13

So I think just for John's rhetoric,

3:16

there are people who are following Jesus and

3:18

then there are these Judaioi and

3:20

they represent the folks who don't. And John's

3:22

very dualistic. You're either in the system or

3:24

you're out of the system, right? So

3:26

"the Jews" in John, although many

3:28

pastors or Bible study these

3:30

ones, oh, it's just the Jewish authorities

3:33

or it's just the Jewish leaders. I don't

3:35

think that's what John means. I don't think that

3:37

works in terms of how the literature functions.

3:39

And even if you say Jewish leaders or Jewish

3:41

authorities, it doesn't help much because

3:43

then you have to ask, well, in what sense are they

3:45

authoritative? If we're talking about

3:48

the chief priests, for example, the only thing

3:50

they have authority over is over the temple. They

3:52

don't tell people how to practice. They don't tell

3:54

people what to believe. They

3:56

are appointed by Rome. The only

3:58

reason Caiaphas who's the high priest has

4:00

his office is because Pontius Pilate lets him,

4:03

so to say, Jewish authorities

4:06

or Jewish leaders or just some Jews,

4:08

it tries to get around what appears

4:10

to be just anti-Jewish preaching,

4:13

but it doesn't work.

4:16

So I think it means the Jews.

4:18

Now, who were the Jews for, John?

4:20

They epitomized the nonbelievers.

4:23

Now we got a problem because we have a

4:25

really problematic text in

4:27

what's supposed to be a gospel of love.

4:29

Now what? And that's where

4:32

people like you all who teach

4:34

and preach have to be very careful

4:36

in terms of how do you proclaim this?

4:38

What do you say to your congregation? What

4:41

guidance do you provide in the order of worship

4:43

or on your website or

4:46

even in terms of how you do the liturgical

4:48

reading? Because in that reading,

4:50

because reading is still a performance,

4:53

you can read it with a lump in your

4:55

throat as if saying Jewish is hard to

4:57

get out under the circumstances or

4:59

express your own discomfort with it. Because

5:02

I think there are certain texts that people need

5:04

to wrestle with in the same

5:06

way that I, as a Jew, have texts in

5:08

my own tradition that I'm not really fond of.

5:11

Right? And then I take that idea of being

5:13

Israel means to wrestle with God at least traditionally.

5:16

And so I'm going to wrestle with this text because I think this

5:18

text runs counter to my idea

5:21

of a merciful and gracious God

5:23

into my idea of all people in the image and likeness

5:25

of God. And to my idea that you don't condemn

5:27

a bunch of people for believing something that

5:30

they find to be true to their heart.

5:34

Exactly. And the danger, of course, is now

5:37

the Romans are no more, right? We don't

5:39

have Romans running around today, but we do

5:41

have Jews. We have Jewish folks.

5:44

I mean, we do have Romans. Most of them most

5:46

of them are Catholic.

5:47

That's that's a good point. Right, Right, right. But

5:50

not the Roman Empire, right?

5:53

I've lived in Rome. I take that seriously. Yeah.

5:56

We tend not to think of, say, Roman pagans.

5:58

But if you're coming

6:00

out of a Lutheran environment, why don't you start talking about

6:02

the Romans? That just opens up a whole other problem.

6:05

We have some specifics, which we can

6:08

leave to one side here. Well,

6:10

what what? You know what?

6:12

What advice would you have for us? What would you,

6:14

you know, as a as a Jewish person,

6:17

what would you want from your

6:19

Christian neighbors to say

6:23

or, you

6:25

know, to teach about

6:28

the kind of blatant

6:30

anti Judaism in, say,

6:33

the gospel of John.

6:35

Well, part of it is how, how do you

6:37

distribute this Johannine material, this

6:39

John material to your congregations? I

6:41

would dearly love to see a massive revision

6:44

of the various lectionaries that are out there, because

6:46

I don't see any reason why John has to be read,

6:48

you know, during Holy Week. Why not do

6:50

the seven last words of Jesus, which

6:52

is traditional in Black churches? I think

6:54

that's a great idea. Plus, you get a little bit

6:56

of every gospel and lectionaries

6:59

don't read every word anyway. Then think

7:01

one can be a whole lot more selective about what's

7:03

read and what's not read. And there's stuff

7:05

that's better done proclaimed from the pulpit and there's

7:07

stuff that's better done in the classroom. I'm

7:11

not interested, although this

7:13

is debatable, I'm really less

7:15

interested in people who want to say Judean

7:17

rather than Jew. I think that's that's a distinction

7:19

without a difference. And once

7:21

you eliminate actual Jews from the New

7:24

Testament, to use the German technical

7:26

term, you have a New Testament, you have a

7:28

New Testament. There's been purified of Jews, like like,

7:30

let's get rid of all the Jews. I'm not I'm

7:32

not happy with that either, for a variety of reasons.

7:35

I'd rather people actually wrestle with the text

7:38

and wrestle with what I think John

7:40

is conveying, which is all these Judaio are

7:42

the same and then it's not good.

7:45

And then figure out how better to get

7:47

at this. In the Jewish tradition,

7:50

we have something called midrash, which is its

7:53

non legally binding storytelling

7:55

interpretation. And there are

7:57

a number of midrashim. -Im being the

7:59

Hebrew masculine plural. There are a number of midrashim

8:02

that take texts which are really, really problematic

8:05

and spin them in such a way that

8:07

and little children learn this so they know, Oh,

8:09

we don't go in this direction, we go in that direction.

8:12

Since we Jews read the entire Torah

8:15

in the Orthodox Synagogue every year from Genesis

8:17

to the end of Deuteronomy in Hebrew,

8:20

we're going to be reading a number of passages which are highly

8:22

problematic. So Moses

8:24

Song of the Sea, you know, the children

8:26

of Israel are going through the Red Sea and Pharaoh's

8:29

army, the chariot wheels get

8:31

stuck in the mud and the soldiers drown

8:33

and the angels are singing praises. And

8:35

the midrash says when

8:38

the the Israelites are escaping from

8:40

slavery and Pharaoh's soldiers

8:43

are drowning, that the

8:45

angels start singing praises to God and they go to find

8:47

God, right? And they can't find God, which is really awkward.

8:50

And eventually they find him sitting

8:52

in a corner, wrapped in a prayer shawl, anachronistic,

8:55

and God is weeping uncontrollably. And the

8:57

angels say, "But but the Israelites are escaping."

9:00

And God responds, "My children are

9:02

drowning. And you're singing praises."

9:04

And that's about the Egyptians. So

9:07

since little kids learn this right from the get go,

9:10

we're made aware like you don't

9:12

rejoice when even when your enemy

9:14

dies, right? There are passages

9:16

in the prophets that might take you there. But

9:18

the midrash says don't do that, that

9:20

everybody is in the image and likeness of God.

9:24

So don't think

9:26

that you're better than them and don't rejoice

9:28

when they die. This is

9:30

stuff you need to work on. So

9:32

I think just starting from children's

9:35

education in churches, recognizing

9:38

how this language has been extremely

9:40

harmful, recognizing that Jesus

9:42

is a Jew and all the Marys are Jews

9:45

and Peter and Paul, they're

9:47

all Jews, not Pontius Pilate, but you know, the rest

9:49

of them. They're Jews. And

9:51

to give a sense that if you start talking about Jews

9:53

as bad, then you're saying, well, Jesus is bad and Paul

9:55

is bad and Peter's bad and all the Marys

9:57

are bad and you really don't want to go there.

9:59

Yeah.

9:59

So it's not a

10:02

single fit that's going

10:04

to fix everything, but

10:06

it's a long term process

10:09

of revising what gets read in churches, revising

10:11

how stuff gets presented. Determining

10:14

what, if you're reading the lectionary, what Old Testament

10:16

to use the Christian term Old Testament text should

10:18

be put up next to this. What

10:20

should be read to the congregation and what need

10:22

not be read to the congregation.

10:25

That's a lot of work, but it's work

10:27

that I think in 2023 people

10:29

ought to be doing.

10:30

Yeah, agree with you. Because

10:32

of the yeah, the long, sad

10:34

history, shameful history of

10:37

Christian treatment of Jews through

10:39

the through the millennia.

10:40

And what's happening now in so

10:43

many educational settings and sermonic

10:45

settings is the

10:47

idea that, well, antisemitism has gone away.

10:50

I don't think so.

10:52

Or that all Jews are white and privileged,

10:54

which is not the case on on either

10:56

score or that

10:58

because there were other things that are more important, we can

11:00

ignore antisemitism. I don't think so.

11:03

And this is stuff that churches can actually do

11:06

because you're going to be reading the New Testament. So

11:08

it requires better New Testament knowledge,

11:11

better historical knowledge and

11:13

and ears that are more attuned to say,

11:15

how do I deal with this rather than just say,

11:17

Oh, you're overreacting, or it doesn't mean

11:19

all Jews, right, or it's not a problem

11:21

anymore. These various excuses, it just means

11:23

Jewish leaders or I'm sure some

11:26

of them were nice. Thank you.

11:28

Right.

11:30

Stop. Stop coming up with these

11:32

excuses, which is just the Christian version

11:34

of fragility. And to say, yeah, this

11:36

actually doesn't sound very good. What

11:39

I advise my students is, when

11:41

my children were little, I used to bring my kids to class

11:44

because they always had Passover off and they went

11:46

to the Jewish Day school here in Nashville. And

11:49

I would say to my students, you know, picture this kid

11:51

in the front pew and don't say anything

11:53

that would harm this kid or cause any member of

11:55

your congregation to harm this kid, which is

11:57

theatrical and manipulative, but it's really effective.

12:00

And if you picture me

12:02

back pew, because if I hear a bigoted

12:04

message coming out from the... you

12:07

bet I'm going to stand up in the back of the church

12:10

and the last thing you want is an angry, middle

12:12

aged woman, Jewish woman standing

12:14

in the back of your church making faces

12:16

at you.

12:17

You don't want that. So you don't want that. Yeah.

12:19

Let's be careful.

12:21

So you mentioned emphasizing

12:24

that Jesus is a Jew. The Marys are Jews.

12:26

Peter's a Jew. Paul's a Jew. Do

12:28

you see? Like, let's say you're

12:31

reading the John, the text

12:33

from John. Maybe in Holy

12:35

Week, maybe not. Is,

12:39

is that, do you think, an effective

12:41

strategy like do you do that from the pulpit

12:43

or is that best left to

12:45

a classroom? Do you like is

12:48

is it possible to preach John's

12:50

passion narrative, do you think, or is

12:52

it best left to

12:55

teaching.

12:56

Oh anything is possible, whether it's wise

12:58

or not is another question. Some

13:01

of this will depend upon how well educated

13:03

or how well prepared your congregation is.

13:05

What works in Church A does not necessarily work

13:07

in Church B, so

13:10

that's going to make a difference. How

13:14

many Jews you have in your church will make a

13:16

difference because there are a number of churches where you

13:18

might have intermarried couples or

13:21

Jewish converts. And

13:23

in cases like that, the congregation

13:25

and and the clergy tend to be much more

13:28

sensitive to these particular

13:30

concerns. If there's been an anti-Semitic

13:32

incident in your town, you tend to be

13:35

more concerned about that. So what

13:37

works in one church doesn't necessarily work

13:39

in another. Can this stuff be preached? Yeah,

13:41

but you have to be really, really careful.

13:43

Yeah.

13:44

Should it be? That depends upon

13:46

what you think your congregation needs to

13:48

hear or would do well to hear

13:50

or can bear to hear. No.

13:54

No church one size fits all. No congregation

13:56

is one size fits all.

13:59

No, no, that's true. You had mentioned earlier in the conversation,

14:01

you said at first that the, and

14:04

I'm not sure I heard you right. So that's why I'm asking,

14:06

that the Pharisees in John's gospel

14:08

kind of morph into this category

14:11

of the Jews is that is

14:13

that what you said?

14:15

That's what I said.

14:16

Okay, So why is it with that?

14:18

What? What's that change about? Do you

14:20

have any theories?

14:21

Yeah, I think it's

14:24

a process that begins with the other gospels,

14:26

and John simply brings it home. Uh,

14:29

Mark is pretty good about keeping groups separate.

14:31

Matthew is the one who brings together Pharisees

14:33

and Sadducees. And you can see that Pharisees

14:36

and Sadducees both come to John the Baptist. That's not

14:38

in Mark. So the idea

14:40

that Pharisees and Sadducees would agree on anything

14:42

is already a bit a bit weird. Uh,

14:46

and Luke, Luke gives you a kind of nicer Pharisees,

14:49

certainly in Acts. But

14:51

by the time you get to John, John has no references

14:53

to Sadducees. And

14:56

even when you get stories that start

14:58

talking about Pharisees, by the end of the story

15:00

and John doesn't know when to end a text anyway, they just

15:02

go on forever.

15:03

That's that's true.

15:06

It's not like the synoptics where you can be done.

15:08

Exactly.

15:10

So when you start when John starts

15:12

with Pharisees, eventually they just become Jews.

15:15

Okay. And I think that's deliberate.

15:17

I think the same thing is happening in in

15:19

Matthew where you get Pharisees

15:21

and Sadducees. But at the end, I think

15:23

Matthew strategically uses the term

15:25

Ioudaioi with

15:27

this totally nutty story

15:30

about, you know, bribing

15:32

the guards to say what happened

15:34

to the body. "Oh, we fell asleep" like

15:36

some Roman guard is going to say, "Oh yeah, we fell

15:38

asleep," which is already just

15:41

nuts. And then and then

15:43

while we were asleep, the disciples came and stole the

15:45

body. Well, how would they know that if they were asleep?

15:47

The whole story is completely ridiculous.

15:49

And Matthew says in this story is told among

15:51

the Ioudaioi until this day. And

15:53

I think that's Matthew's way of saying, you know, they're all

15:55

kind of coming together. It's all the people,

15:57

the Greek is , all the people say,

16:00

you know, crucify him, crucify him, his blood,

16:02

be on us and on our kids. So

16:04

Matthew has begun that process of consolidating

16:07

all the Jews who are not Jesus

16:09

followers as quote unquote, the

16:11

Jews. And John John picks

16:13

that up and continues it.

16:15

Oh, that's really helpful. Historical

16:17

context. So the Gospels are written obviously after

16:20

the events that they record sometime

16:22

in some cases many, many, many years after.

16:26

And so the the

16:29

early church, which starts, you

16:31

know, all the early believers are Jews,

16:34

early Christian believers are Jews. And then it

16:36

starts to, of course, expand to the Gentiles

16:38

with Paul's missions. So

16:41

the gospel writers

16:43

are writing in a context, am

16:45

I right, that that

16:48

the antagonists

16:50

of the early church, at least some

16:52

of the antagonists, are Jews?

16:56

And is that influencing

16:58

the I mean the people

17:01

out of whom they came. Right? Is that

17:03

influencing this depiction of

17:05

the Jews in the Gospels?

17:08

It has to be. Yeah. Because anytime

17:10

you write a text, you're influenced by your

17:12

external environment. So those

17:15

of us who write books were influenced by what

17:17

we read and whom we read and what we saw

17:19

in the movies or heard on the radio. Now,

17:22

whether John is reflecting what's

17:25

actually going on on the ground or whether John

17:27

is trying to manipulate what's going on around.

17:30

And I think John is more in the manipulative

17:32

phase because from what we know externally,

17:36

Jews who are believers in Jesus and Jews

17:38

who are not or on the whole getting along pretty well.

17:40

Okay.

17:41

So how do you make

17:43

people choose up sides rather

17:45

than stay on the fence or say, I want to be

17:47

here, I want to be here. So

17:50

John is saying, listen, if you hang out with those Ioudaioi it

17:53

would be bad for you because they're really children of the devil

17:55

and they're really out to get you. And the whole group

17:57

of them wanted to do away with Jesus. And

17:59

you might be thinking not so much. So

18:02

there are places in John where things

18:04

kind of slip, where

18:07

maybe things aren't so bad. My

18:09

friend Adele Reinhardt, who's a really good Johannine

18:11

scholar whose work I would commend everybody.

18:14

Um, pointed this out to me because I hadn't noticed it

18:17

in John chapter 11, which is the raising of

18:19

Lazarus. There's this little note

18:21

that says the Jews came to comfort

18:23

Mary and Martha. Whoa.

18:25

Yeah, yeah. You know, we're bringing over, like, you

18:27

know, a chicken or something. So it was

18:32

like this little slip saying, well, you know, maybe

18:34

these fuses believers and the non

18:36

Jesus believing Jews, maybe actually

18:38

things on the ground don't look that bad.

18:41

Um.

18:42

And what happens when you get church leaders

18:45

is they're trying to do the separation

18:47

where stuff on the ground looks, looks actually pretty

18:49

good. The best example of that and you have

18:51

to move up a couple of centuries is John Chrysostom

18:55

writing in Antioch saying, Oh, the synagogue

18:57

is a brothel and it's terrible.

18:59

And why is he saying that? Because Gentiles

19:02

in his congregation, these Gentile Christians,

19:04

are saying, let's go to the synagogue, right? They feed

19:06

you, they're not telling you you have to be celibate.

19:09

They got the Hebrew. That is the real deal.

19:12

And what the leaders are trying to do is engage

19:14

in this separation even when people on the ground

19:16

may not be.

19:17

That's that's helpful. That's really helpful

19:19

to get some of that historical context. So

19:22

choose sides or yeah, yeah,

19:25

that that makes sense.

19:27

It's like parents saying to their kids, you can't play

19:29

with so-and-so because and because so-and-so

19:31

is a Jew or so-and-so was a Christian

19:34

believer or whatever. Yeah, I

19:36

want to play with them.

19:37

Yeah.

19:38

Exactly. Yeah.

19:40

And it feels important, you know? Um,

19:43

I know some of our audience are

19:46

church leaders and some of our audience are

19:48

lay folks, but it feels important to

19:50

to say, you know, let's not be

19:53

like the leaders of the past in

19:55

their failures in terms of

19:58

requiring this sort of side taking

20:00

or, you

20:02

know, the the sort of lies

20:07

and conspiracy theories and all the things

20:10

that exist, you know, surrounding anti-Semitism.

20:13

Let's not let's not do

20:15

that. Let's you know, it's up to us

20:17

to sort of break that cycle and

20:21

and to and

20:23

to say, no, that's not how we're going to be.

20:25

Right. Exactly. And Christians have

20:28

have a good track record on doing this on

20:30

a number of other subjects, questions

20:33

in your own community on say women's

20:35

ordination or denial

20:38

of of enslavement

20:40

language. So

20:43

if that stuff can be said,

20:45

we're not going to do that anymore or

20:47

we repent of this, then this

20:49

is another place where resisting readers

20:52

can come in and say, yeah, I don't think

20:54

this text is actually conveying

20:56

the spirit that I want to convey,

20:58

either to myself or to my family or to my

21:01

congregation. So

21:03

go wrestle with it, because that's what Israel means.

21:05

Go wrestle. Israel means wrestling.

21:08

I mean, not to get off on

21:10

a tangent or anything, but I preached

21:12

on 2 Peter recently,

21:14

which isn't the number one most

21:17

exciting text to preach on, let's

21:19

say. And

21:21

I noted in my sermon how

21:24

that it was problematic and that lots of commentators

21:26

have talked about how problematic it was. And I

21:28

referred back to that to that text

21:31

of, you know, of Israel

21:33

wrestling , you know, some

21:35

texts you have to wrestle a blessing from

21:37

some texts and some sometimes

21:40

it takes all night long and you

21:42

end up with a limp at the end. Right? It's

21:44

not clear cut. There's no simple,

21:47

you know, way to deal with it

21:49

except to acknowledge that it is

21:51

that it is difficult. And. And you

21:53

and you have to. You

21:57

go back to it and you you

22:00

fight with it, you know, and that that's a

22:02

faithful way of engaging scripture.

22:04

That's a faithful way of of

22:07

loving God and loving your neighbor.

22:10

I think, in fact, it's what the biblical

22:12

God expects from us. I mean, Job

22:14

is the one who does all the wrestling and in the end Job: Okay,

22:17

You're right.

22:18

That's right.

22:18

That's great.

22:19

Yeah, right, Exactly right.

22:20

Moses wrestles, Jeremiah wrestles. Abraham

22:23

wrestles. Anybody who's who's doing anything is

22:25

going to say, excuse me, this is not right.

22:28

That's right.

22:29

Yeah, yeah. And our

22:31

Jewish brothers and sisters historically have

22:33

done that a lot better than Christians have,

22:35

I think. We we had

22:38

another podcast where we were talking about humor in

22:40

the Bible and how often Christians

22:43

are overly pious and don't don't

22:45

want to do anything that might

22:48

feel disrespectful. But

22:50

there is there is a kind of

22:52

give and take that wrestling

22:54

that is really important. And and it's,

22:56

as you say, present, though, in the Bible itself

22:59

and certainly present in the tradition

23:01

of Jewish interpretation of Scripture. So

23:04

we have much to learn.

23:06

Yeah, we got a lot to learn.

23:08

You can just take it from Jesus. Jesus

23:10

doesn't go to the cross saying, "Oh, that sounds like

23:12

fun."

23:13

Right? That's.

23:14

That's not the plan for me. I don't want to do this.

23:16

This is not a good idea. Is there. Is

23:18

there an out here?

23:19

Right. Right. You stop. Right?

23:23

My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? Yeah.

23:26

Yeah. Which is a good lament song. Yeah, yeah.

23:28

Yeah, Psalm 22. Well,

23:31

to our listeners, I

23:33

should have said this in the introduction, but if

23:35

you want to learn more from

23:38

Professor Levine, she has written many books,

23:40

one in particular that, that

23:43

I would highly recommend is

23:45

the Jewish Annotated New Testament, which

23:47

is published by Oxford University

23:50

Press. It's going into its third edition.

23:52

Professor Levine is one of the general

23:54

editors and a contributor to

23:57

that, along with Professor Mark Brettler.

23:59

And it has just some really

24:02

interesting insights, as you've heard already

24:04

from this podcast, about how

24:07

understanding Jewish theology

24:10

a history tradition can

24:12

help one read the New Testament with new eyes.

24:15

So again, the Jewish Annotated

24:17

New Testament and

24:19

Professor Levine has many other books that

24:22

that talk about the

24:24

Jewishness of Jesus, of Paul, how

24:27

to read the New Testament

24:29

with with that context

24:31

in mind. So just

24:33

go go in search and you'll find much

24:36

to treasure there . So. So

24:39

thank you so much, Professor Levine, for being

24:41

with us for this podcast. We

24:43

really appreciate your insights.

24:45

Thank you for raising important topics.

24:46

All right. And to

24:49

our listeners, there's much

24:51

more to find on Enter the Bible.

24:53

Org. We encourage you to go there

24:55

and submit your own question. Those, those

24:58

blog posts and more podcasts and

25:00

lots of material at

25:02

Enter the Bible dot org. We'll

25:04

see you next time.