Levine, Amy-Jill 1956–

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Levine, Amy-Jill 1956–

PERSONAL:

Born 1956. Education: Smith College, B.A. (magna cum laude), 1978; Duke University, M.A., 1981, Ph.D., 1984.

ADDRESSES:

Office—Divinity School, Vanderbilt University, 411 21st Ave. S., Nashville, TN 37240-1121. E-mail—amy-jill.levine@vanderbilt.edu.

CAREER:

Swarthmore College, Swarthmore, PA, department chair and Sara Lawrence Lightfoot Associate Professor of Religion; Vanderbilt University Divinity School, Nashville, TN, E. Rhodes and Leona B. Carpenter Professor of New Testament Studies and Director of the Carpenter Program in Religion, Gender, and Sexuality. Has presented three lecture series for the Teaching Company Great Lecture Series.

MEMBER:

Society of Biblical Literature, Catholic Biblical Association, Association for Jewish Studies.

AWARDS, HONORS:

Grants from Mellon Foundation, National Endowment for the Humanities, and American Council of Learned Societies; honorary doctorate of ministry, University of Richmond; fellow, Committee for the Scientific Examination of Religion.

WRITINGS:

The Social and Ethnic Dimensions of Matthean Salvation History, E. Mellen Press (Lewiston, NY), 1988.

(Editor) "Women Like This": New Perspectives on Jewish Women in the Greco-Roman World, Scholars Press (Atlanta, GA), 1991.

The Misunderstood Jew: The Church and the Scandal of the Jewish Jesus, HarperSanFrancisco (San Francisco, CA), 2006.

(Editor, with Dale C. Allison, Jr., and John Dominic Crossan) The Historical Jesus in Context, Princeton University Press (Princeton, NJ), 2006.

(With others) Cambridge Companion to the Bible, 2nd edition, edited by Bruce Chilton, Cambridge University Press (New York, NY), 2007.

Editor, with others, of the "Feminist Companion to the New Testament and Early Chrisitan Writings" series, T & T Clark International (New York, NY), 2002—. Member of editorial board, Journal of Biblical Literature and Catholic Biblical Quarterly.

SIDELIGHTS:

Amy-Jill Levine is a religious scholar and the coeditor of a popular series of books on religion from a feminist perspective. Levine worked as the Sara Lawrence Lightfoot Associate Professor of Religion and chair of the department at Swarthmore College before accepting the position of E. Rhodes and Leona B. Carpenter Professor of New Testament Studies and Director of the Carpenter Program in Religion, Gender, and Sexuality at the Vanderbilt University Divinity School. With Marianne Blickenstaff and Maria Mayo Robbins, she has edited the "Feminist Companion to the New Testament and Early Chrisitan Writings" series on religion.

In 2006 Levine published The Misunderstood Jew: The Church and the Scandal of the Jewish Jesus. In it Levine delineates how Jesus, born and raised a Jew, taught Jewish teachings to a Jewish audience. She argues that a better understanding of Jesus' Judaic background can help lead to a fuller understanding of the Bible and Christianity. A contributor to Publishers Weekly concluded: "Written for the general public, this is an outstanding addition to the literature of interfaith dialogue." Wesley A. Mills, writing in the Library Journal, commented that "such insights are valuable and important for anyone seeking to grasp the New Testament." Reviewing the book in America, Daniel J. Harrington wrote that Levine's "positive proposals and sharp critiques deserve the attention of Christian biblical scholars, preachers, and theologians."