Quotes from Amy-Jill Levine

Church reminded me very much of going to shul. It was a bunch of men wearing long robes, speaking in a language I didn't understand.

I've got a good shepherd; you've got a sadistic dentist.

Reducing parables to a single meaning destroys their aesthetic as well as ethical potential.

Religion has been defined as designed to comfort the afflicted and to afflict the comfortable. We do well to think of the parables of Jesus as doing the afflicting. Therefore, if we hear a parable and think, 'I really like that' or, worse, fail to take any challenge, we are not listening well enough.

compassion can be felt in the gut; mercy needs to be enacted with the body.

Residual marcionism, the view that God had a personality transplant somewhere between the pages of Malachi and Matthew, is still alive and well in churches today; it is also still a heresy.

It's much safer, in many congregations, to assure the faithful how our souls are saved through divine grace rather than to suggest that our societies are saved through personal and corporate aid to the poor.

For far too long Jesus has been the wedge that drives Christians and Jews apart. I suggest that we can also see him as a bridge between us.

The covenant with Abraham has a both/and rather than an either/ or focus: it is both for Jews and for gentiles, for in Abraham, "all the families of the earth will be blessed" (Genesis 12:3).

M]embers of society with something of value to contribute neither seek nor want political office; only the bramble, which has nothing to offer, accepts the job, and he does so with a threat that he will destroy those who oppose him.

In Israel's Scriptures, God's concern is not restricted to insiders: it extends to strangers, to slaves, to women, and to any who are oppressed, for we are all children of God.

A critically aware, historically informed study of Jesus in his Jewish context does more than provide benefits to Christians and Jews alike; it aids in preventing the anti-Semitism that tends to arise when the history is not known. The concern to recover Jesus's Jewishness is these days particularly urgent.

By seeing Jesus as a Jew with regard to both belief and practice, Christians can develop a deeper appreciation for the teachings of the church.

The question of paying taxes is a valid one today, particularly for people living under occupation or under an unjust regime. It was a valid one in ancient Israel as well—how much does one go along with the emperor, and when must one resist?

Judas, too, is in the image and likeness of the divine. He is not a demon, although he may seem to us to be one. He is a human being. And we cannot afford to demonize human beings. Judas calls us to conscience.

Conversations across religions need not, and should not, end with all participants proclaiming an ultimate unity of belief. Such an exercise only waters down both traditions into a bland universalism that, in an attempt to be inoffensive, winds up offending everyone.

The new covenant that Jesus offers, in his body and blood, does not replace the old covenants with Abraham or Moses or David. It rather is a continuation of them.

When personal resentment overrides familial and cultural values, we all lose.

For there are eunuchs who have been so from birth, and there are eunuchs who have been made eunuchs by others, and there are eunuchs who have made themselves eunuchs for the sake of the kingdom of heaven.

When church becomes a club, parables become pedestrian.

For Luke, Isaiah's proclamation has new meaning: The "Lord" for Luke is Jesus of Nazareth, and the "way" to be prepared is not a literal highway in the desert, but the new movement that called itself not "Christian" but followers of "the Way" (see Acts 9:2).

You are the salt of the earth; but if salt has lost its taste, how can its saltiness be restored? It is no longer good for anything,

Conversion is a matter of the heart, not of the academy; polemics function more to "speak to the choir" and shore up internal unity rather than to facilitate understanding, let alone to show love of neighbor.

Christian missionaries who seek to bring Jews the "good news of Jesus" do not do so because they hate Jews; they do so because they love Jews. On the other hand, the message that Jews are not "complete" or "fulfilled" unless they accept Jesus as the Messiah is not likely to be received by most Jews with great warmth; it is tantamount to telling Christians that their religion is incomplete or erroneous without acceptance of the Qur'an. Thus,