Amy-Jill Levine (“AJ”) is University Professor of New Testament and Jewish Studies and Mary Jane Werthan Professor of Jewish Studies at Vanderbilt. Her books include The Misunderstood Jew: The Church and the Scandal of the Jewish Jesus and Short Stories by Jesus; four children’s books (with Sandy Sasso); The Gospel of Luke (with Ben Witherington III); and The Jewish Annotated New Testament (co-edited with Marc Brettler).

In 2020 she published The Bible With and Without Jesus: How Jews and Christians Read the Same Stories Differently (with Marc Brettler); and Sermon on the Mount: A Beginner’s Guide to the Kingdom of Heaven.

She is the first Jew to teach New Testament at Rome’s Pontifical Biblical Institute. AJ describes herself as an unorthodox member of an Orthodox synagogue and a Yankee Jewish feminist who teaches New Testament in a Christian divinity school in the Buckle of the Bible Belt.

In this episode, I talk with AJ about how we interpret Jesus’s parables and why having a clear contextual understanding of Jesus’s stories is important both spiritually and creatively.

Connect with Amy

Join our Creative Collective and gain access to additional content - including our question to AJ Levine “What would you say to encourage artists who are interested in scripture as a source of inspiration for their art?”

Music in this episode by C’est Lis

Leave us a review on iTunes! This will help others find us.

Follow us on Instagram

Send us a text

Support the show

Join the Makers and Mystics Creative Collective

Get Tickets to The Breath and The Clay 2026 featuring Malcolm Guite, Jon Guerra, and Jonathan Pageau! March 20-22 in Winston Salem, NC.