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    Short Stories by Jesus: The Enigmatic Parables of a Controversial Rabbi
    Short Stories by Jesus: The Enigmatic Parables of a Controversial Rabbi
    Short Stories by Jesus: The Enigmatic Parables of a Controversial Rabbi
    Audiobook13 hours

    Short Stories by Jesus: The Enigmatic Parables of a Controversial Rabbi

    Written by Amy-Jill Levine

    Narrated by Donna Postel

    4/5

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    About this audiobook

    Jesus was a skilled storyteller and perceptive teacher who used parables from everyday life to effectively convey his message and meaning. Life in first-century Palestine was very different from our world today, and many traditional interpretations of Jesus' stories ignore this disparity and have often allowed anti-Semitism and misogyny to color their perspectives.

    In this wise, entertaining, and educational book, Amy-Jill Levine offers a fresh, timely reinterpretation of Jesus' narratives. In Short Stories by Jesus, she analyzes these "problems with parables," taking us back in time to understand how their original Jewish audience understood them. Levine reveals the parables' connections to first-century economic and agricultural life, social customs and morality, Jewish scriptures and Roman culture. With this revitalized understanding, she interprets these moving stories for a contemporary reader, showing how the parables are not just about Jesus, but are also about us-and when read rightly, still challenge and provoke us two thousand years later.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherTantor Media, Inc
    Release dateFeb 28, 2017
    ISBN9781515989509
    Short Stories by Jesus: The Enigmatic Parables of a Controversial Rabbi
    Author

    Amy-Jill Levine

    Amy-Jill Levine (“AJ”) is Rabbi Stanley M. Kessler Distinguished Professor of New Testament and Jewish Studies at Hartford International University for Religion and Peace and University Professor of New Testament and Jewish Studies Emerita, Mary Jane Werthan Professor of Jewish Studies Emerita, and Professor of New Testament Studies Emerita at Vanderbilt University. An internationally renowned scholar and teacher, she is the author of numerous books including The Difficult Words of Jesus: A Beginner's Guide to His Most Perplexing Teachings, Short Stories by Jesus: The Enigmatic Parables of a Controversial Rabbi, Entering the Passion of Jesus: A Beginner’s Guide to Holy Week, Light of the World: A Beginner’s Guide to Advent, Sermon on the Mount: A Beginner’s Guide to the Kingdom of Heaven, and Signs and Wonders: A Beginner’s Guide to the Miracles of Jesus. She is also the coeditor of the Jewish Annotated New Testament. AJ is the first Jew to teach New Testament at Rome’s Pontifical Biblical Institute. In 2021 she was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. AJ describes herself as an unorthodox member of an Orthodox synagogue and a Yankee Jewish feminist who until 2021 taught New Testament in a Christian divinity school in the buckle of the Bible Belt.

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    Reviews for Short Stories by Jesus

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    • 5/5
      My goodness this was a fantastic book! It clarified and challenged some of my presuppositions. I will definitely listen to it again. Also, the woman who narrated did a superb job. It was a joy to listen to.
    • 3/5
      I found this book challenging but also unsatisfying. Her language studies were impressive. Her warnings about using late rabbinic writing as not representative of Jesus's own culture were instructive. She decried stereotypies but then pointed out familiar characters that Jesus' listeners would have recognized (i.e. stereotypes). While rejecting the traditional and many non-traditional meaning Ms. Levine did not offer any clear alternative how Jesus' hearers would have understood them. I do not think I am any closer to understanding the meaning these stories had for their first century audience.
    • 4/5
      Helpful exploration of original audience interpretations and combatting stereotypical and harmful assumptions of a Jewish audience. Writing style is VERY conversational at times and distracted this reader from what was read for scholarly review.
    • 4/5
      Fair warning that this is not light reading - the writing is more academic in its approach. Dr. Levine is professor of Jewish Studies and professor of New Testament Studies at Vanderbilt Divinity School. She reframes some of the most well known parables of Jesus, exploring them not from a modern Christian perspective, but taking the vantage point of Jesus' Jewish audience in the first century, the original listeners for these parables. She is thorough in her exploration of the various ways we understand these parables today, but ends each chapter (every parable is its own chapter) with a socio-historical as well as linguistic perspective that offers some insight into the way Jesus' original audience might have heard and interpreted these stories. There is some wonderful insight for Bible study and sermons here, as well as a deeper understanding of cultural and historical settings in which Jesus lived and taught. It is a refreshing approach to hearing meanings for these parables that may have gotten lost as they have been claimed by a more Christian perspective over the years. Levine doesn't insist that her interpretations and understandings are the 'right' ones only offers the insight of a practicing Jewish scholar and historian; an insight that offers tonality, depth, and shading to the words of Jesus.
    • 5/5
      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 appreciates the depth of Jesus’s parables, and she digs deep in her analysis, but still seems content with an ambiguous meaning. She seldom insists on a single interpretation, yet often discards traditional Christian interpretations when they conflict with what she knows about first-century Palestine. In other words, she often finds the strongest meaning in the most straight-forward rendition, and that’s usually the most edgy interpretation, which fits well with what we know of Jesus-the-storyteller.The lost sheep is a repentant sinner? Naw, Luke got that wrong. The lost sheep is just a lost sheep, a financial setback like the parable of the lost coin. We should try to identify with the obsessive shepherd, not the wandering sheep. Jesus’s meaning may not be crystal clear, but if you’re not looking at the parable from a down-to-earth perspective instead of the Christian meaning that developed later, you’ll surely miss his point.I really loved this book. Here are the nine parables Levine illuminates: Lost Sheep, Lost Coin, Lost SonThe Good SamaritanThe Kingdom of Heaven Is like YeastThe Pearl of Great PriceThe Mustard SeedThe Pharisee and the Tax CollectorThe Laborers in the VineyardThe Widow and the JudgeThe Rich Man and Lazarus Harper One, © 2014, 313 pagesISBN: 978-0-06-156101-6