"What is a Jewish woman who doesn't believe Jesus is the Messiah doing lecturing on the New Testament?"
The Catholic Biblical Association emphasized that Jewish professor Amy-Jill Levine’s ‘standing with Rome is best recognized by the fact that she had three audiences with Pope Francis.’
(LifeSiteNews) — A Jewish New Testament scholar, newly elected as president of the Catholic Biblical Association (CBA), stated that one of her major aims is to confront supposedly anti-Jewish interpretations of Christian Scripture.
Professor Amy-Jill Levine will serve as the association’s president for the 2026-2027 year.
Announcing her election, the CBA noted that Levine was the first Jewish scholar to teach the New Testament at the Pontifical Biblical Institute in Rome in 2019 and that her “standing with Rome is best recognized by the fact that she had three audiences with Pope Francis.”
According to a National Catholic Reporter (NCR) article hailing her election, Levine has argued that many clergy members “continue to rely on commentaries acquired during their seminary education decades ago rather than newer research on the Jewish contexts of Jesus, the Pharisees and the Gospels.”
“I would like to get this better material into the hands of people who are speaking to people in the pews, into the hands of people in parochial schools who are teaching biblical studies to teenagers or to little kids, and mainstream it,” Levine told NCR. “It hasn’t been done.”
The NCR report explained:
Levine described herself as “a guest in this house.” Her approach to Jewish-Christian scholarship is not to challenge Catholic doctrines, she said, but to examine the historical and human setting in which Christianity emerged.
For Levine, that historical approach does not diminish Catholic faith. Instead, she said, it can deepen Catholic theology by taking “with abundance seriously the humanity of this person (Jesus Christ) whom the Church proclaims to be God.”
According to the CBA:
Levine has had a distinguished career in the academy and in Jewish-Christian relations. She is the author or co-author of more than 20 books, including The Misunderstood Jew: The Church and the Scandal of the Jewish Jesus (2006) – a Publishers Weekly Best Book, the co-author with Marc Brettler of The Bible With and Without Jesus: How Jews and Christians Read the Same Stories Differently (2020) which was widely acclaimed, and co-editor with Brettler of The Jewish Annotated New Testament (2011 and 2017). Among the many awards and honors she has received is her election as a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and her six honorary doctoral degrees.