A Jewish Scholar on What Christians miss when Reading the Bible | Dr. Amy-Jill Levine

What does it look like when a Jewish New Testament scholar sits down with a Christian host to talk about how two ancient traditions read the same texts — and reach such different conclusions? That's exactly the conversation host Jean Geran has with Dr. Amy-Jill Levine in this wide-ranging episode recorded in Madison, Wisconsin.

AJ Levine is University Professor of New Testament and Jewish Studies at Vanderbilt Divinity School, and one of the most respected voices in Jewish-Christian dialogue today. She recently joined us for our Questions of Faith event in Oshkosh and spent time in Wisconsin as a scholar in residence at First United Methodist Church in Madison.

WHAT YOU WILL LEARN

· How growing up Jewish in a Portuguese Roman Catholic neighborhood in Massachusetts led AJ to a lifetime of studying the New Testament

· Why the Torah is said to have "70 faces" — and what that means for how Jews and Christians approach interpretation differently

· What Jews and Christians share in terms of canon, prayer, and Scripture — and where they meaningfully diverge

· AJ's surprisingly practical take on salvation, Torah-observance, and whether Jews worry about getting into heaven

· Why Jesus used parables — and why he rarely explained them

· The difference between Jewish communal identity and Christian individualism, and what each tradition can learn from the other

· Baseball vs. football: a memorable analogy for understanding Jewish and Christian orientations toward time, memory, and the future

· The Hebrew concept of tzaddik (the righteous one) and what it means to bless the city you're in

· Whether shared stories can bridge religious and cultural divides — and AJ's honest, unsentimental answer

· Lament as relationship: what Tevye, the Psalms, and Job have in common, and why arguing with God keeps us in the conversation