Dr. Amy-Jill Levine is the Rabbi Stanley M. Kessler Distinguished Professor of New Testament and Jewish Studies at Hartford International University for Religion and Peace and University Professor of New Testament and Jewish Studies Emerita at Vanderbilt University.
Dr. Levine has been awarded grants from the Mellon Foundation, the National Endowment for the Humanities, and the American Council of Learned Societies. In addition to receiving three audiences with Pope Francis (which she recalls for us here), in spring 2019 she was the first Jew to teach New Testament at Rome’s Pontifical Biblical Institute. In 2021, she was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
Her most recent books include The Bible with and Without Jesus, co-authored with Marc Z. Brettler, and The Pharisees, co-edited with Joseph Sievers, to which Pope Francis contributed an essay. With Marc Brettler, she co-edited The Jewish Annotated New Testament. She is also the editor of the 13-volume Feminist Companions to the New Testament and Early Christian Writings, and The Historical Jesus in Context. She has given close to 1,000 lectures on the Bible, Christian-Jewish relations, and religion, gender, and sexuality across the globe.
In this episode, we speak with Dr. Levine about her formative religious experiences and the development of her interest in Christianity and the New Testament, the impact of Nostra Aetate and the Second Vatican Council on Jewish-Christian relations, and various “blind spots and stumbling blocks” Christians might have about the representation of Jews and Judaism in the gospels. Along the way, Dr. Levine shares her thoughts on the rise of lectionary-based faith-sharing communities in the Catholic Church, explores why it is essential to preserve both the “logic and mystery” of Sacred Scripture, and explains why Jews and Christians are both “unfinished products” who can use their shared state as a means of dialogue and collaboration.
See also:
Faculty page at Hartford International University
The Pharisees, edited by Amy-Jill Levine and Joseph Sievers (Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2021)
Report on Dr. Levine’s lecture, “Reading the New Testament as Jews: History, Antisemitism, Respect,” Tomorrow’s American Catholic, March 19, 2026
