One of the most difficult tasks in reading a familiar parable is to read what’s really there and not read into it what we have heard about it in the past. In this task I have been greatly aided by the work of Amy-Jill Levine[1], a Jewish Feminist New Testament scholar who teaches at Vanderbilt and now in the summer at Hartford International University for Religion and Peace, formerly simply Hartford Seminary. I highly recommend her scholarship. It is readable and makes sense. She challenges us to understand the Jewish context in which Jesus, a Jew, told his stories. She is particularly helpful in removing our unconscious antisemitism from our reading of the Gospels. Everything I say today is influenced by her scholarship.
Read more