Short Stories by Jesus
The Enigmatic Parables of a Controversial Rabbi

This was a frustrating book to read, and a hard book to review, but this is primarily because so much of it is very good, and what (in my view) falls short is inconsistent and hard to describe. But I'm going to try because, well, that is what book reviews do. First, the really good stuff. The major a......more

The first century audience listening to Jesus speak parables were Jewish and unaware that a religion distinct from their own would exist in the future based partly on the things that their speaker was saying. Their response to and understanding of the parables at that time was based on their existen......more

If this isn’t Levine’s best, it’s close. She writes from a practical, scholarly Jewish perspective, highlighting the world Jesus lived in. In this book she tackles the more controversial parables Jesus spoke, making an effort to put these stories back in their first-century Jewish setting. Levine app......more

Conventional interpretations have domesticated the parables of Jesus. Nowadays when the parable of the Good Samaritan is read in worship, eyes glaze and minds wander, anticipating the standard bashing of passersby while lifting up the heroic Samaritan outsider for listeners to emulate. It’s obvious.......more

A valuable and interesting approach to the parables which helps remove harmful glosses that have built up through bad historical/critical analysis and bad exegesis. This book fits very much into Amy Jill-Levine's modus operandi which is to remind Christians that Jesus was a Jew (at the first of the......more