TOKENS PODCAST: S5E6
First time repeat interviewee on the podcast! And for good reason: we love breaking down false dichotomies… like a New Testament scholar who’s a practicing Jew. Great conversation with Prof. AJ Levine on “Christian Fragility,” things she suspects Christians often get wrong about Jesus’s life, commentary on the Sermon on the Mount, and ways we might fulfill our duty to be better listeners and learners.
ABOUT THE GUEST
Jewish Studies and Mary Jane Werthan Professor of Jewish Studies at Vanderbilt (Divinity and A&S); she is also Affiliated Professor, Woolf Institute: Centre for Jewish-Christian Relations, Cambridge.
Her books include The Misunderstood Jew: The Church and the Scandal of the Jewish Jesus (Publisher’s Weekly Best Books of 2007; audio books); Short Stories by Jesus: The Enigmatic Parables of a Controversial Rabbi (Catholic Book Club; translations: Spanish, Italian; audio books); The Meaning of the Bible: What the Jewish Scriptures and the Christian Old Testament Can Teach Us (with Douglas Knight); The New Testament, Methods and Meanings (with Warren Carter); and The Gospel of Luke (with Ben Witherington III (the first full-length biblical commentary co-authored by a Jew and an Evangelical).
Her children’s books (with Sandy Sasso) include Who Counts? 100 Sheep, 10 Coins and 2 Sons (2017 Junior Library Guild List; translations: Spanish, Korean); The Marvelous Mustard Seed (2018 Junior Library Guild List), and Who Is My Neighbor? With Marc Brettler she edited The Jewish Annotated New Testament; she also edited the 13-volume Feminist Companions to the New Testament and Early Christian Writings, and The Historical Jesus in Context (Princeton Readings in Religion; translation: Japanese); she is the New Testament editor of the new Oxford Biblical Commentary Series.
Her adult education programs and tapes include the Teaching Company Great Lectures: "Introduction to the Old Testament," "Great Figures of the Old Testament," and "Great Figures of the New Testament"; Abingdon adult education: Short Stories by Jesus Study Guide; Entering the Passion of Jesus: A Beginner’s Guide to Holy Week; and Light of the World: A Beginner’s Guide to Advent. She has given over 500 lectures on the Bible, Christian-Jewish relations, and Religion, Gender, and Sexuality across the globe.
Professor Levine has held grants from the Mellon Foundation, NEH, and ACLS, and she has held office in the Society of Biblical Literature, Catholic Biblical Association, and Association for Jewish Studies. She served as Alexander Robertson Fellow (University of Glasgow), and the Catholic Biblical Association Scholar to the Philippines. In Spring 2019 she was the first Jew to teach New Testament at Rome’s Pontifical Biblical Institute.
At Vanderbilt, she chaired the Faculty Senate (1997-98).
Holding the B.A. from Smith College, and the M.A. and Ph.D. from Duke University, she has honorary doctorates from the University of Richmond, the Episcopal Theological Seminary of the Southwest, the University of South Carolina-Upstate, Drury University, Christian Theological Seminary, and Franklin College. A self-described Yankee Jewish feminist, Professor Levine is a member of Congregation Sherith Israel, an Orthodox Synagogue in Nashville, although she is often quite unorthodox.
ABOUT TOKENS SHOW & LEE C. CAMP
Tokens began in 2008. Our philosophical and theological variety shows and events hosted throughout the Nashville area imagine a world governed by hospitality, graciousness and joy; life marked by beauty, wonder and truthfulness; and social conditions ordered by justice, mercy and peace-making. We exhibit tokens of such a world in music-making, song-singing, and conversations about things that matter. We have fun, and we make fun: of religion, politics, and marketing. And ourselves. You might think of us as something like musicians without borders; or as poets, philosophers, theologians and humorists transgressing borders.
Lee is an Alabamian by birth, a Tennessean by choice, and has sojourned joyfully in Indiana, Texas, and Nairobi. He likes to think of himself as a radical conservative, or an orthodox liberal; loves teaching college and seminary students at Lipscomb University; delights in flying sailplanes; finds dark chocolate covered almonds with turbinado sea salt to be one of the finest confections of the human species; and gives great thanks for his lovely wife Laura, his three sons, and an abundance of family and friends, here in Music City and beyond. Besides teaching full-time, he hosts Nashville’s Tokens Show, and has authored three books. Lee has an Undergrad Degree in computer science (Lipscomb University, 1989); M.A. in theology and M.Div. (Abilene Christian University, 1993); M.A. and Ph.D. both in Christian Ethics (University of Notre Dame, 1999).
JOIN TOKENS ON SOCIALS:
YOUTUBE
FACEBOOK
INSTAGRAM
JOIN LEE C. CAMP ON SOCIALS:
FACEBOOK
INSTAGRAM
LEE C. CAMP WEBSITE
TRANSCRIPT
Lee Camp: This is Tokens. I'm Lee C. Camp.
Today's guest is, if I'm remembering correctly, the first repeat interviewee we've had on the Tokens Podcast, which is fitting for at least two reasons:
One, seeing that Tokens Show loves breaking down false dichotomies, we remind you that Professor Amy Jill Levine specializes in the New Testament; and yet, she is a practicing Jew.
AJ Levine: Tokens should always have at least one Jewish person with you per week. Cause it gives you a good balance.
Lee Camp: Two, I always learn things, in any conversation with Professor Levine, that otherwise I would have likely overlooked. I find myself laughing one moment, and the next moment, challenged. Like the time I say to AJ that in the New Testament Jesus was pushing against many of the culturally presumed norms between men and women.
Is that a fair enough assessment?
AJ Levine: No, I think it's a wrong assessment. Now don't throw me off the show. Cause I really like you and I like talking with you.
Lee Camp: That's okay. Tell me more.
So today, another delightful and challenging episode with AJ Levine, with fresh perspectives on the sermon on the mount, the supposed tension between faith and works, and feminism in Christianity, all of which challenge us to be better learners and listeners.
AJ Levine: How do you listen and say, oh, maybe, maybe you're right. Let me see something through your eyes, or at least do my best to try. And instead of immediately going on the defensive listen, think. That may be helpful.
Lee Camp: All this, coming right up.
INTERVIEW
Lee Camp: Talking today to professor Amy Jill Levine university professor of New Testament and Jewish studies at Vanderbilt University. First talking about her recent book, Sermon on the Mount: A Beginner’s Guide to the Kingdom of Heaven. Welcome AJ, it’s great to be with you again.
AJ Levine: It is a pleasure to be with you.
Lee Camp: Always good to be with you. You're beginning to be a kind of a regular on Tokens Show and we're delighted to get to continue.
AJ Levine: Tokens should always have at least one Jewish person with you per week. Cause it gives you a good balance.
Lee Camp: That’s right. That's right. Well, I'm fascinated with your new book on the Sermon on the Mount. I was particularly taken by the ways in which you kind of come out, swinging at Martin Luther about that. So, tell us a little bit about why Martin Luther got such a prominent place at the beginning of your book?
AJ Levine: Oh dear. Well, you know, Martin Luther had some good things to say and some really problematic things to say, but if you look at the Sermon on the Mount as some sort of counsel of despair where you read it and think there's no way ever I can do any of that. And then you get so totally depressed at your inadequacies that you then throw yourself on the mercy of God.
I, you know, I don't think Jesus is spending three chapters trying to make us so depressed that will start worshiping it. You know, we can, there are plenty of other things that can depress us back in the first century and today. I just don't think that's a good reading. I think Jesus sets a really, really high bar because why not? We are created just a little bit lower than the angels. We are in the image and likeness of God. We have free will. Why set the bar low?
Lee Camp: Yeah. Yup. Yeah. So, as I recollect he's so concerned about declaring justification by grace, through faith, that he looks at the Sermon on the Mount, as he tends to do with the book of James, the epistle of James, and say that the function of the Sermon on the Mount is in fact to let you realize you can't possibly keep the law.
And so, as you said, just to kind of make us feel guilty, is that a fair description?
AJ Levine: Yeah. And the weird thing about that is that the New Testament tells us that the law can be kept. In fact, Paul tells us that because in Philippians, he says under the law blameless, or you look at the parents of John the Baptist, Elizabeth and Zechariah, they're doing it just the way they're supposed to do it.
Moreover, the law has mechanisms in there so that if you do mess up a little bit, there's atonement. If you get into a state of ritual impurity, which everybody is in at some time or another, you can regain your purity. So, what Luther winds up doing is constructing an incorrect view of early Judaism, and I think an incorrect view of the human condition.
Personally, I like the epistle of James. That line about faith without works is dead. Every, everybody should have a sampler with that, you walk out your door, faith without works is dead, and then go out and do something good.
Lee Camp: Do something about it. That's right. Yep. Talk to us a little bit about the Beatitudes. Do you see this as blessings? But fill that out for us a bit.
AJ Levine: Yeah, well, the Greek term is makarioi, so sometimes they're called makarisms, which doesn't help for them. It sounds like macaroons. They can have a sense of happy are you. Or even congratulations are you, but since there's a divine component to this, I think, blessed is not a bad term. They're not telling you that you need to go out and do something.
They're starting with you where you are.
Lee Camp: If you're unfamiliar, or if it's been a while since you've read the Sermon on the Mount, Matthew 5 begins with telling that Jesus had a large crowd assembled, and he goes up on a mountainside, sits down. His disciples come to Him, and He begins to teach them saying, and here’s the Beatitudes: “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted. Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the earth. Blessed are those who hunger and thirst after righteousness, for they will be filled. Blessed are the merciful, for they shall be shown mercy. Blessed are the pure in heart, for they will see God. Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called the sons of God. Blessed are those who are persecuted because of righteousness, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Blessed are you when people insult you, persecute you and falsely say all kinds of evil against you because of me. Rejoice and be glad, because great is your reward in heaven, for in the same way they persecuted the prophets who were before you.”
AJ Levine: People don't choose to mourn for example, but Jesus says blessed are those who mourn for they will be comforted. I think people who are peacemakers, I think they kind of naturally do that. And sometimes they get flack for it. When you interrupt a family argument by saying, can we just like eat the carrots and not argue, and then everybody's angry with you.
But you do it because that's just the way you are in the world. So, Jesus starts the Sermon on the Mount in a very helpful way. You don't have to do anything. But you get stuff or you are stuff, yours is the kingdom of heaven. And then he starts working on you. You've got all these wonderful blessings.
Now let's talk about how you can use those blessings to be a more ethical individual, to be a more faithful individual, to be a better family member, to be a better neighbor and to be a better human being in the world.
Lee Camp: Yeah. And the way your description of blessed are the poor in spirit, I think, is kind of a natural extension of what you just said about paying attention to what we have, and then the way to be a blessing in the world.
AJ Levine: Right. Or as my friend, Mike Glenn says, mind the gap, you know what you have, which means you should know what others do not have.
And then it opens you up to your privilege. It opens you up to the needs of others. It opens you up to what you might then contribute. But you have to have that awareness in the first place and blessed are you, if you have it.
Cause so many people don't.
Lee Camp: Yeah, blessed are those who mourn. I appreciate your commentary about the inability of folks to be able to be okay with mourning. Talk to us a bit about that.
AJ Levine: It happens in various ways. Some people think that they have to be on a timetable, you know, it’s a week already go back to work and stop crying and yeah. Go for this. This is why I very much appreciate the Jewish tradition where you have like these benchmarks: a week and then a month and then 11 months.
And then every year on the anniversary of the individual's death, you say a prayer with other Jews. You light a memorial candle. You name children after deceased relatives to keep that memory alive. So, the sense of mourning never goes away. But the ability to deal with it is helpful. When somebody dies the Jewish comment is may that person's name be for a blessing and may you be remembered for the good.
I think that's fabulous. And there are people who just can't mourn. People who don't have a sense of, I love this person enough to say, not only do I miss, you know, having coffee with so-and-so, but there's a hole in my heart that cannot be filled because this person is no longer here.
And some people don't even have the ability to do that.
Lee Camp: It has struck me in and maybe I first really started paying attention to this when, in grad school I read Elie Wiesel’s book Night and I was fascinated by the boldness of grief or the boldness of the mourning that one sees in a book like that. And then in time I began to pay a lot more attention to the Psalms, right.
Which as one of my professors once said, you know, at least half the Psalms are lament Psalms. And so that it's filled with grief and filled with lament and filled with mourning. But what little I know of relationships with those who practice Judaism today, it seems like your community has a much greater capacity, to be honest in that way.
And it seems like oftentimes Protestants feel this sort of obligation to be happy or to be cheerful as if being cheerful is a sort of mark of faithfulness, somehow. I, and I'm may be being unfair, but I don't know. What do you see from your perspective in that regard?
AJ Levine: Wow. Well, that's certainly not biblical. We do have Jesus wept in the gospel of John, but, you know, and I do think Jesus laughed. I think he had a fabulous sense of humor. So not only did we have what are technically called Psalms of lament of the community and Psalms of lament of the individual. Like my God, my God. Why have you forsaken me? Which Jesus cites in Matthew and Mark as he's dying. So yeah, we have an entire book called Lamentations. We know how to complain.
Lee Camp: Yeah.
AJ Levine: But the nice thing about even lamentations is at the end of the sum of the individual, the lament, there's always a, you know, but God, you need to pay attention to me and I'm feeling that absence now, but I can have the honesty to say here's how I feel, because I know that there's love and all those sums end with something like I will praise you in the streets.
So, God I'm being faithful. Remember your fidelity. And I trust that you will come through for me. We have in, in the Jewish community, the idea of thinking of God as a parent, we still back in the first century, even to today, we, we address God as our father. I mean, Jesus didn't invent that one.
But it's that loving relationship where you can be completely honest. And if you don't think your parent is doing what is best for your parent or what is best for you, you can say so because you know that the love can accommodate anything that you would say.
Lee Camp: And I'm jumping ahead a bit, but this relates to your conversation around Abba father.
AJ Levine: Right, which is not in the Sermon on the Mount, by the way, the, our father prayer does not say Abba father, it just says our father. We get Abba in Mark, in the Gethsemane scene. Abba father let this cup pass from me. And we get it twice in Paul. It's an Aramaic term.
I mean, all of these texts in the New Testament, they're written in Greek. But the Paul writing to a bunch of Greek speaking Gentiles, a bunch of Greek speaking pagans is using Aramaic. That probably goes back to Jesus. It's not an uncommon address for God. There was a German theologian named Joachim Jeremias who said, and this is back in the forties and fifties.
That Abba meant something like daddy or papa. And that Jews would have found the idea of calling God "Abba" blasphemous. Well, it turns out he was wrong. In fact, he eventually said, oh, no, it was a piece of inadmissible naivete, which actually sounded better in German. Um, uh, and so he retracted, but the idea of got out there.
So, from this, we get this idea in the culture that for Jews, God is distant and transcendent and angry and wrathful, that, you know, angry wrathful God of the Old Testament. And Jesus invents, the Abba daddy, God, who walks with you when he talks with you, and you can fill in the rest of that. And that's a blasphemy in terms of how Jews understood God then, and a blasphemy in terms of how Jews understood God now. The God that Jesus calls father is the same God that Jews called father. The one who created heaven and earth and the one to whom the lament Psalms are addressed. And the one who is our shepherd and leads us beside still waters. It's all the same God.
Lee Camp: I want to jump back to another beatitude you discussed at some length about blessed are the meek. And pointing us to the, this is not, this is not a sort of false humility.
AJ Levine: Well, false humility is just annoying. Um, cause, cause everybody knows.
Lee Camp: It is. Everybody can spot it.
AJ Levine: You know, take the compliment, say thank you and move on. Meek doesn't mean mousey or retiring. A meek individual in terms of Greek, the Greek term is praos, is somebody who has a fair amount of authority and is willing to literally to get down off the high horse and deal with people who need your help.
Later on, in the gospel of Matthew, the Sermon on the Mount is only in Matthew. We meet in Matthew chapter 15, this fabulous woman who's identified as a Canaanite, right? The indigenous population of the land of Israel. And she's got a demon possessed daughter and she comes up to Jesus and she says, you know, my daughter was severely possessed by a demon, you know, like do something and he's really tired.
Jesus gets tired. And he doesn't want to deal. And he ignores her and the disciples come out and they say, send her away. Well actually the Greeks says loose her, which may mean actually just do the exorcism. And he says to her, you know, I was sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel, which is like a server saying you're not at my table, right?
You take a number. Then eventually, because she is so determined. You know, she says to him, after he calls her dog, you know, even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from hands of the masters. And, and he really, he's taken by this. He gets down off his I'm tired, I'm privileged. I don't want to deal.
And he gives her what she needs. He performs the exorcism, that's being meek and it's being attentive to what pastors will sometimes call it the least and the last and the lost.
Lee Camp: I was also fascinated in your description of blessed are the meek. In which you, you point out the sort of importance of paying attention to relative contexts, so that, to tell someone who's already beaten down or marginalized to be meek, may be missing the point of what this is about.
AJ Levine: Well, anything that strips somebody who has already been stripped of any self-worth of even more self-worth I find to be unhealthy. When Jesus suggests one be a slave to others, which is really, really problematic language, you know, how were slaves hearing that. And maybe we should talk about freedom instead.
So, a message that might be extraordinarily helpful to a very well-placed privileged corporate executive officer might not be the correct message to give to the person who's barely hanging on to the job who's got food insecurity, right? Don't tell a person who's already down, you need to be brought lower.
Lee Camp: Yeah.
AJ Levine: I don't think that's healthy. I don't think that's what Jesus intended. I don't think that's what the Bible intends.
Lee Camp: Do you think as well, there's a increasingly common school of interpretation among a number of evangelicals and Protestants of thinking of the Sermon on the Mount, through the lens of practices of virtue, which I find helpful to the degree that virtue as one Catholic philosopher puts it. There is no virtue apart from prudence which is to say that all exercise of virtue must always be taking context and consequences and particularity into account. And I hear that's what you're doing here, right? It's that there's no, just sort of bald rule here, but it's a practice and the practice requires paying attention to context.
Always.
AJ Levine: Practice requires context. Practice also requires practice. Um, so that it becomes what musicians would call muscle memory, right? You know, so you keep thinking about it. In terms of prudence, I think it's very wise that Matthew situates this sermon right toward the beginning of the gospel.
I mean, Jesus calls his first followers in chapter four and then bingo. In chapter five, he gets up on a mountain. Get the instruction before you go out and do the work. And that's consistent through most of the texts you need to be. The technical term is catechized. You need to be educated in what Jesus wants you to do before you can go out and do it.
Listen a little bit. It's something I tell my students. This is great, you’re in Divinity school, this is fabulous. Take a class before you go out and save the world.
Lee Camp: Yeah.
AJ Levine: Learn that what you might want to save in greater Nashville might be different in terms of how you go about doing it.
Then if you want to save someone in, greater Calcutta or a greater Beijing or greater Paris.
Lee Camp: Yeah. Yes. Well said. Let's, let's talk then about the next set of passages, the six so-called antitheses which I think rightfully bothers you. So, tell us about that.
AJ Levine: I really hate that term or if people don't like the idea of hate, I mean, there are other things I hate more than the term antitheses. But I think it's misleading and it actually gets you back to that works righteousness thing.
Lee Camp: For sake of clarification here: the label "anti-theses," against which AJ is pushing here, often gets applied to the passages in the Sermon on the Mount where Jesus numerous times says: "you've heard it said," and then he quotes a passage from the Hebrew Bible or some conventional wisdom, and then he follows that with "but I say to you..." and gives his teaching.
AJ Levine: Right. Okay. And it sounds kind of antithetical, you know, you may have heard this, but I say. It's not an antithesis. These are not antitheses. Boy, that's hard to say, they are not antitheses. They are extensions. So, you have heard it said to people of old, do not murder or thou shalt not kill, but I say to you do not be angry with a brother or sister.
Okay. That's not an antithesis. An antithesis would be, you have heard, it said do not murder, but I say to you walk, load and take out as many as you can. That's an antithesis cause an antithesis is an opposite. No, but Jesus is not saying go kill. Right? Jesus is saying not only don't kill. Don't be angry because if you're not angry, you're less likely to kill.
And this is actually a Jewish formulation known as building the fence about the law. The expression comes from a rabbinic text called Pirkei Avot, ‘The Ethics of the Fathers’. So, I should note by the way the, in the first and second centuries we start finding collections of people's greatest hits, like the greatest sayings of Aesop get collected.
The Sermon on the Mount is Jesus' greatest hits. Cause I don't think he actually gave the Sermon on the Mount. The disciples’ heads would have exploded after, you know, just one chapter, let alone three. And a lot of those sayings are dispersed. And in Mark and especially in Luke and also in the epistle of James. And Pirkei Avot, ‘The Ethics of the Fathers’ is basically the greatest hits of the rabbis.
So here we have this build a fence about the law. You have a law that says don't murder. So, you build a fence to protect yourself from murdering, by saying, don't be angry. The law and other antithesis, you have heard it said don't commit adultery, but I say to you don't think about it. Because if you don't think about doing it, you got to plan, you got to get the hotel room, and what name do you register?
I mean, who has time for any of that? You know? So, Jesus says, look, don't even think about it because if you don't think about it, you're not going to do it. The law says don't take a false oath. Jesus says, don't take an oath at all. Cause then you don't have to worry about doing a false oath, but just let your yes be yes and your no be no. And then what do we do? We go into a courtroom and we swear on a Bible, the very text that says don't take an oath. I think that's just bizarre. And when it comes to something like you have heard it said an eye for an eye and a tooth for tooth. But I say to you, if somebody strikes you on the right cheek, turn to him, the other, that's not an opposite either.
First of all, Jews, aren't doing an eye for an eye. They figured you can't do it. And you never actually see it done in the scriptures of Israel. What you would call the Old Testament.
Lee Camp: You mean they're not literally taking an eye for an eye?
AJ Levine: No, and it wouldn't make any sense either. So, by the time we get to rabbinic Judaism on this, they spent a fair amount of time explaining that you can't take this law literally. It is rather a legal principle. Why? Because no two people have the same eyes and no people have the same blimps. I have dreadful eyesight, absolutely dreadful eyesight. So, if I took out your eye and you have 2020 vision, and I have like 2600, I have taken more from you than you could possibly take from me.
And as one rabbi wisely put it, if I put out your eye, but I'm blind, what difference would it make if you put out my eye? So, they determined that in a case of actual physical injury, losing an eye, losing a limb, there should be some sort of monetary compensation for pain and for medical expenses and for loss of work due to injury and for disfigurement and all that.
Lee Camp: Just to remind you again of the full text here, it's this: You have heard that it was said, “An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth." But I say to you, do not resist the one who is evil. But if anyone slaps you on the right cheek, turn to him the other also. And if anyone would sue you and take your tunic, let him have your cloak as well. And if anyone forces you to go one mile, go with him two miles.”
AJ Levine: What Jesus does is he changes the subject because there's a huge difference between losing an eye, and being given a backhanded slap of humiliation. So, he's using this law as a prompt to get him to talk about what do you do in a situation where a superior person, one of those folks who needs to learn meekness?
When a superior person treats you, the person is lower down on the social scale, as if you're subhuman. Gives you a backhanded slap, sues you for your coat when you've only got two garments to begin with, right? Compels you to walk a mile, that would be something a Roman soldier would do to a local, to a peasant.
And what do you do when you're put in that abusive situation? You can punch back, that's going to exacerbate the violence, or you can say fine. Treat me like I'm subhuman and adopt that role and feel like you've lost all of your dignity. You've lost that sense of being in the divine image.
So, Jesus says, let's find an alternative way. It’s what the biblical scholar, the late biblical scholar, Walter Wink called the third way. Not violence and not dehumanization, but confront the person with that person's own abusive action and say, I'm not going to stoop to that level. I'm going to try to bring you up to where you and the image and likeness of God ought to be.
Lee Camp: Yeah. Yeah. I love Wink’s take on that as well. And it's fascinating too, that again, paying attention to context and particularities here, what has often happened, I think, among people who are well-intentioned in trying to take the Sermon on the Mount seriously. They'll read something like turn the other cheek and they do turn it into accept humiliation, which yet as you're pointing us, rightfully I think, and Wink points us to, that's not at all what's going on there.
It's actually, as you said, giving us a third way to deal with this. And looking at the sorts of, it's been 20 years since I read Wink on this. But as I recollect, you know, he'll talk about how there were actually legal prescriptions for what you're going to do if you slap someone on the right hand, and you literally turn the other cheek. They're left with a fist or, or using the left hand.
And both of those culturally would be highly problematic and you end up being humiliated yourself as the aggressor there. And so, it's this fascinating creativity that Jesus seems to be pointing us to.
AJ Levine: It's the same type of work that we see or we saw and we continue to see in civil rights issues, right? Somebody. You're sitting at a lunch counter where you ought not to be because the law says you cannot be there. And somebody comes and starts abusing you by dumping ketchup over your head.
So, you can take out your fist and you can punch, or you can crawl out and say, okay, or you can hand the fellow some mustard and say, this would probably go well with it.
Lee Camp: Right. Yep. Let me back up just a second to the fence around murder and anger and your conversation about Jesus and hell. The extension about murder and anger, he says, be careful because anger, you could end up in hell. And as I recollect what you do there is you point to the fact that Jesus is not assuming Dante's Inferno.
AJ Levine: I've been writing about hell recently. So, I was wondering where that was going to go. I've got lots of students who are very interested in that. When we think about hell in the first century, there are a variety of views, but we don't have this sense of, you know, eternal torture like we have in Dante we're Judas is in the mouth of Satan who's gnawing on him in the pit of hell for all eternity.
Although actually, when you get to it, the people in Dante's hell are infinitely more interesting than the people in Dante’s heaven. They at least have good stories to tell. When we think of hell as, you know, the unquenchable fire and the word that does not die, a lot of this is not eternal pain, but in fact, oblivion. So, go back to the idea of saying, may his memory be for a blessing. The opposite of that is not so much may his memory be for curse, but may he be forgotten. This is not somebody worth recollecting. And if we do it's something we don't want to have anything to do with. So, I don't think people back then, first century Jews, were walking around with any sort of enormous fear of hell and therefore behaving in an inappropriate way, lest they be cast into these eternal flames and suffer eternal torture.
When Jesus tells parables about the unforgiving servant, the unforgiving slave and the king says, well, you know, give him to the torturers until he can pay the last penny of this insurmountable debt. I don't think that God is interested in torturing us for all eternity.
That's not the Jewish God, that's not the God of Jesus. And that's not a God of grace and kindness, oblivion maybe. And when we get down to it, we actually don't know.
Lee Camp: Yeah.
AJ Levine: That's, that's something for God to worry about.
Lee Camp: Right. Yeah. The reason I bring up the fence around adultery with Jesus saying don't lust. One of the elements of the Sermon on the Mount, which was huge in my childhood and this is often huge in very conservative Protestant worlds. It's an obsession with teaching our children not to lust.
You know, they’ll never say anything about loving your enemies, but so far as lust, just like this is, you know. And so, they would build such a great fence around lust that you're walking around as an adolescent in this constant fear of going to hell in normal sexual adolescent development, I think.
And even any thought about sexuality was nigh unto, you know, a slippery slope into that eternal torment.
AJ Levine: Yeah, I don't think that's a terribly healthy reading. It's not a good reading of the Sermon on the Mount and certainly not a good reading of adolescent psychology. But most adolescents are not lusting with the aim of committing adultery among other reasons, because they're not married and the object of their lust is not married.
So, you might get to do not for fornicate, right? But do not, oh, heavens go, go read Song of Songs.
Lee Camp: Yes. Yeah.
AJ Levine: And for all that, Protestants will look at it generally as, as the love song between Christ and the soul. And Catholics traditionally is a love song between Christ and the church. And Jews is the love song between God and Israel.
It's really a love song between a heterosexual couple who really have the hots for each other and appreciate how each of the other is wondrously made.
Lee Camp: I want to turn to kind of some contemporary, contemporary question about the Sermon on the Mount. So, for you as a Jew, watching Christians in the United States for whom the Sermon on the Mount purportedly is central to Christian faith and practice. Where do you see signs of hope in the narrow sense that you see Christians taking the Sermon on the Mount with some sort of seriousness?
And in what ways are you troubled to the contrary in perhaps a lack of seriousness about what Jesus teaches in the Sermon on the Mount?
AJ Levine: Well, it. To talk about Christians in general is impossible. Because Christians are as diverse as any other group. And a lot of Christians who do remarkably wonderful things might not be doing it because of the Sermon on the Mount. They might be doing it. Oh gosh. Because of the epistle of James that says faith without works is dead, or they might be doing it because Jesus says love God and love neighbor.
And that's where you start. Or, what is hateful to you, don't do to anybody else. That's the Sermon on the Mount. Right? And then you get commentary on it. What bothers me is the failure in part from some, but not all, actually to sit down and read the Sermon on the Mount. If you begin with Martin Luther and say the Sermon on the Mount is written to tell me that I'm incapable of doing this, then the Sermon on the Mount is a negative example, you can't do it.
And then why bother to pay attention to it, right? I can't climb Mount Everest. Nor do I want to, by the way, but I can't, I simply don't have the lung strength. I'm too old. I don't like cold and consequently I don't think about Mount Everest that much. I can't do the Sermon on the Mount. I'm just not going to read.
I'm going to read something else that makes me feel better. Maybe The Parable of the Sower, right? It bothers me that people don't know their own texts very well. It bothers me that Jews, some Jews don't know our own texts very well either, or that we can't read it in the original or that we don't sit down and study it.
But we just read it like we speed read through three chapters, you know, I can do that while I'm brushing my teeth. Why not sit with these words and try to figure out what they meant and look at how they've been understood over time for better or for worse? Cause some people have had some very good readings on them like Walter Wink, for example. And then say, well, what does this text mean to me?
And what does this text mean to my community today? And how do I learn from Jesus? One of the things I really like about the Sermon on the Mount is Jesus really doesn't like making a show about religiosity, right? You say, look at me what a great Christian I am. You know, I have a bigger cross than you do.
Cause see the one in the garage it's even bigger. Rather than just going out and doing what you're supposed to do. Cause that's what people are supposed to do. They're supposed to love other people. And if you love other people, you're supposed to go help them and you're supposed to let them help you rather than just say, oh no, no, I can do this all on my own.
You're part of the human community. And I don't find that happening. I find, in some cases, such a great concern, as you pointed out with heaven and hell and who’s saved and I’m saved and you’re not, rather than, gosh, you know, you don't know that till the final judgment. So, you might want to concentrate less on your own salvation and a little bit more on loving your neighbor.
Lee Camp: You're listening to Tokens: public theology, human flourishing, and the good life. We’re most grateful to have you joining us.
If you've not yet done so, subscribe today to the Tokens podcast on Apple, Spotify, Stitcher, Castbox, or wherever you get your favorite podcasts.
We do love hearing from you, and are always pleased to hear some of the things you'd like to hear more about. You can email us at podcast@tokensshow.com. Also remember you can sign up for our email list, or find out how to join us for a live event, all at tokensshow.com.
This is our interview with Professor Amy Jill Levine. Coming up, we'll hear from professor Levine about some common misconceptions about the ways Christianity and Judaism have incorporated and treated women, as well as some helpful insights about how we might all become better learners and listeners.
Part two in just a moment.
HALFWAY POINT
Lee Camp: Welcome back. Still here with Professor Amy Jill Levine, university professor of New Testament and Jewish Studies at Vanderbilt University. AJ you've been doing I understand an encyclopedia article on women, Jesus and women. What are some of the things you're learning and seeing there?
AJ Levine: Well, I've been working on Jesus and women since I was an undergraduate. And when I got to graduate school, which was back when Noah was still on the arc, this is quite a long time ago. I announced to the faculty that I really wanted to work on Jesus and women. And the faculty at that time, all men, said, oh, no, that's just faddish. It's not really important. Why don't you work on Paul and justification by faith? And I thought, you know, that's already been done. So, I had to find a different dissertation topic. And then when I got a job and I'm the only woman in an all male department, this is at Swarthmore College in Pennsylvania.
Uh, and they said, well, now that your dissertation has been published, what do you want to work on now? And I said, I really want to work on Jesus and women. They said, well, you may not be able to get tenure with that. That's just too faddish. Go find something else. So, I kept working on it, but I waited till I had tenure to be able to publish. So no, this is not a new subject for me. This is a very old and interesting subject and it's not just Jesus and women. It's Jesus and gender. How were men supposed to perform being male and what were women supposed to do and Jesus and sexuality. And how was that enacted?
So, I've been working on this for decades. What do you want to know?
Lee Camp: So, talk to us about, I mean, my sense in reading the gospel accounts is that Jesus is pushing against many of the presumed normative practices between men and women. Is that a fair enough assessment?
AJ Levine: No, I think it's a wrong assessment. Now don't throw me off the show. Cause I really like you and I liked talking with you.
Lee Camp: That's okay. Tell me more.
AJ Levine: So, when I started looking at this material, that was the assessment that I was handed by the books that were available and was handed by my faculty that first century Judaism epitomizes misogyny, was the height of misogyny.
As Jimmy Carter puts it in his Bible tapes on the epistle to the Ephesians, they kind of made the Taliban book progressive. Um, uh, so first century Jewish women were therefore oppressed and depressed and suppressed and repressed. And Jesus comes along and invents feminism in the pants suit.
I, you know, and I believed it because that's what my faculty were telling me. And then I had one of these moments. Which in the trade is called the hermeneutics of suspicion, which is otherwise known as how do you know that? You know, look, I'm a Jewish woman and I was accepting this, which was really counterintuitive.
And I thought, wait a minute, let's go look at the sources. And it turns out that entire construct is wrong. If Jesus had wanted to be feminist six of the 12 apostles would have been women. That would have been progressive, right? No and moreover, first century Jewish women are not so oppressed and depressed and suppressed and repressed that they're joining Jesus because he invents feminism.
They're joining Jesus for the same reason that their husbands and their fathers and their brothers and the guy down the street is joining Jesus. Because they find his teaching of the kingdom of heaven compelling. As Luke tells us, they joined him because he healed their bodies or exercised their demons.
But they remained practicing Jews at the same time. They're still going to synagogue. They're still going to the temple in Jerusalem. Nobody finds it bizarre that Jesus has women supporting him. The gospel of Luke chapter eight. I think it's verses one through three suggests that it's Mary Magdalen and Joanna and Susanna and other women who were providing for them.
The technical term for that is patronage. We have women according to the Jewish historian, Josephus who were patrons of the Pharisees. We have from Pompeii, right? The city that was destroyed when Mount Vesuvius blew up and we actually have graffiti that says something like, you know, Marsha and Lydia say vote for Marcus.
You know, that's, that's patronage. But Jesus doesn't, doesn't remove them from their standard gender roles, as he says, you know, there will be two women grinding meal at the mill and one will be taken in one knot. And there will be two men, it comes out differently in Matthew and Luke, either, reclining on a dining couch or working in the field.
He pairs men and women in standard gender roles. The man who loses his sheep, goes out to the field to find the sheep. And the woman loses the coin in her home and she finds the coin in her home and she celebrates with a bunch of other women, which means she can call a party and spend her money as she wants.
The gospels tell us that women own their own homes. Martha welcomed him into her home. That's Luke chapter 10. Uh, the house church in Jerusalem where Jesus’ followers are meeting is at the home of Mary, the mother of John Mark. So, women own their own home. They have access to their own funds, which is how they can serve as patrons or how the woman who anoints him, whether it's on his head or on his feet, or whether it's Mary, the sister of Martha. That's their Chanel, right?
Their expensive ointment. Or the widow who puts her two coins in the temple. They have freedom to travel which is how Mary can get from Nazareth to the hill country of Judea to visit her cousin Elizabeth or how the women can follow Jesus from Galilee up in the North to Jerusalem in the South and therefore be at the cross and at the tomb.
They can divorce their own husbands which is later precluded in rabbinic law. But at the time of Jesus, women could get divorced. We know that, not only because Mark forbids women from getting divorced, I don't think that's terribly progressive. That's taking away something rather than granting something, but Herodians the wife of Herod Antipas, the guy who's responsible for the death of John, the Baptist. She left her husband to marry Herod Antipas. They show up in synagogues, like the bent over lady, they show up in the temple in Jerusalem like Mary, for example, or Anna, the widow. They appear in crowds and nobody ever goes, oh my heaven, it's a woman in the crowd, right?
This is a great woman. And Luke who calls up to Jesus with this great kind of feminist, you know, blessed is the womb that bore you with the breasts that nursed you. I love this gynecological imagery in public. And nobody ever says, oh lady, you know, you're not supposed to be here. They're not restricted to women's quarters.
Cause most homes don't have women's quarters. You have to be really rich to have that. So, women follow Jesus and Jesus heals women and Jesus talks to women. I would not have expected anything else.
That was pretty good by the way that I rattled all that off.
Lee Camp: That was very impressive.
AJ Levine: Yeah, that was impressive.
Lee Camp: I can tell you've been doing your homework for several decades.
AJ Levine: I have.
Lee Camp: So, let me just recap what I heard you say at the very beginning in pushing back against my question or my presumption. That, the presumption that what we see in Jesus is a sort of progressive pushing back against his current sociocultural context, presumes a sort patriarchism or misogyny in first century Jewish practice. But instead, what we see Jesus doing is enacting a sort of engagement with women that would have been not unexpected in Jesus' day. But we might nonetheless find that surprising from certain Christian contexts because it still is so uh. And here, and here I'm adding on to the conversation or trying to extend the conversation, because from our perspective, in many of our church contexts, that seems to push so much against perhaps our practice.
AJ Levine: Well, if you can make first century Judaism, epitomized misogyny, and then you allow women to join your church, you're already progressive. You're already ahead of the curve. Um, so it becomes a really nice apologetic. The worst you can make Judaism look the better Jesus looks. I find sometimes liberal Christians will do this. Christians who can't accept as literal the incarnation, the resurrection, the miracles, the Ascension.
So, Jesus is just like this really interesting teacher. How then do you make him the one teacher that you want to follow? Why not follow Gandhi or the Buddha? I mean, they had really good things to say. So, what do you do? You make Judaism look so incredibly awful that over against it, Jesus becomes the only Jew who cares about social justice, women's rights, health care, you know, anti-Roman agitation and whatever, and that makes him unique.
And now you've got your theological category. You've got a unique Jesus, and I think that's just a sign of weak theology.
Lee Camp: So, what's been your experience in telling the stories of Jesus in that way and his engagement with women? What sorts of questions or pushback do you encounter if you do in recounting these things in Christian contexts?
AJ Levine: Yeah, well, every once in a while, somebody will say to me, boy, doesn't the Jewish tradition say that men aren't supposed to talk with women? And isn't there a prayer where the male Jew blesses God for not having made him a woman or a slave or a pagan? And yes, you can find one rabbi who, who says, you know, it was probably not a good idea to talk too much with women.
They can find a bunch of other rabbis who talked to women a fair amount and you can find women in rabbinic sources who are actually accepted teachers. So, this is just a bad form of history, where you look at the other group and you find like the worst quote possible, and then you reproject it back into the first century.
You make it normative for all Jews, and then you read Jesus over against it. That would be like my going to the church fathers who are not super progressive when it comes to women. It was like, you know, women are the devil's gateway and it was downhill from Eve. And say, oh, all Christians thought that look at how progressive all these Jews are because we have women rabbis whose teachings are authoritative.
That's just bad history. It's a nasty game. First century Judaism was patriarchal. So is 21st century America, right? We haven't gotten rid of that yet either. But I don't see Jesus pushing against it. That doesn't mean we shouldn't. First century Judaism also allowed slavery and Jesus presumed slavery.
Cause he tells parables about slaves, but somehow, we've gotten the message this is probably not a good idea, right? So, there's always going to be some sort of learning curve because we're not playing first century Bible. And what one can do is try to figure out what's going on with the women following Jesus.
So here, I'm going to ask you a trivia question. See if you can get this, right? With the exception of Mary and Joseph named me a married couple who are together and Jesus talks with them. There's one definite and one maybe.
Lee Camp: A married couple, that is together when Jesus talks with them.
AJ Levine: And Jesus talks with them.
So, I'll fill your airtime while you think.
Lee Camp: Yeah, nothing is coming.
AJ Levine: Okay. Yeah. Cause when you start thinking about these women, okay. So, the parents of John, the Baptist. Jesus, doesn't talk to them cause he's still a fetus. Anna in the temple. No, cause he's just a baby, right? And she's a widow anyway. The widow of name, no husband, Mary Magdalene, Mary and Martha, the Canaanite woman, puppies under the table. The women at the cross, the women at the tomb. We know that Joanna's married to Herod’s steward, but we never see the steward. He's just up in Tiberias, right? We have Mrs. Zebedee the mother of James and John who joins her boys in the movement. She shows up in the gospel of Matthew, but old man Zebedee is up in Galilee with the boats, right?
So, this is really hard to do. I'll just hold off on who they are. But it seems to me likely that Jesus had a particular appeal to people who were not married, to women who were not married, perhaps widows never married, deserted wives, divorced wives, because in his new family who are my mother and brothers and sisters? They might've found a family that they were otherwise lacking.
In other words, single folk. In his new family, he doesn't have husbands and wives because everybody should be loyal to everybody else. And husband and wives tend to pair off. But not in this group. We know Peter is married by the way, cause Jesus heals his mother-in-law, but we never meet Mrs. Peter.
So, who are they? The possible, maybe the two on the road to Emmaus, there's Cleopas and somebody else. And the verbs are in the masculine plural. Greek is a gendered language. It's like German. It has masculine and feminine and neuter. So, when Cleopas says we fought, that could have meant Cleopas and Mrs. Cleopas.
It could have also meant, you know, Cleopas and George, or Cleopas, and Fred. The only definite married couple who are together are Jairus and his wife, the parents of the dead girl.
Lee Camp: Ah, yeah.
AJ Levine: And Mrs. Jairus is absent from Matthew. So, she's only in Mark and Luke, that's it. So, I think it's a group of single people.
I think Jesus was celibate. And then I get all this pushback. No, all Jewish men got married. No, they didn't. The folks at the dead sea, for example. Philo, the Jewish philosopher from Alexandria in Egypt, a contemporary of Jesus, talks about a group called the Therapeutae, the therapeutic ones.
And they look kind of like Jewish shakers, they're men and women living celibately in adjoining dormitories who come together for Bible study, communal meals and singing. So, Judaism had a streak of celibacy in the first century, but what happened? The more the church in the second century, the third century talked about virginity and continents and celibacy.
The more the Jews said, get married, make babies.
Lee Camp: Hmm.
AJ Levine: So, a part of this whole thing about how we understand sexuality and gender and Jesus’ women. We have to do the history rather than either issue apologetic to make us feel better or read from later sources and presume that's what people were doing in the second temple period. In the second temple period, Jewish divorce was actually relatively hard to get. And then as we watch in rabbinic period, it becomes more liberal and more liberal and more liberal.
Lee Camp: So, when you think about so-called progressive Christianity, 20th century, early 21st century, do I hear you saying that to get to Christian feminism, for example. One does not or need not, or maybe even ought not get there through reading Jesus and the gospels?
AJ Levine: I think there's enough, in terms of a feminist impulse in the gospels themselves, without having to make Judaism look bad and worded to make Jesus look helpful on the women's issues. But I don't think we should stop with whatever the gospels say and that's the end of it. The gospel of Luke itself says that Jesus has a learning curve, right?
He grew in wisdom and stature, right? That's after he plays home alone with Mary and Joseph in the temple. So, if Jesus can have a learning curve, I think so can the church. I am a member of a tradition where women are not fully equal to men in terms of what we can do, liturgically. I go to an Orthodox synagogue.
But that's my synagogue and I love it. And I love the liturgy and I love the people. And I'm staying in there and I'm fighting from the inside thinking, I'm going to educate little girls in this congregation as best as I can, or little girls in this tradition, as best as I can. And maybe at some point the powers that be might open up a little bit.
Lee Camp: What has that experience been for you like personally? Has that been something that you've dealt with a significant degree of frustration or acceptance or vary, depending upon the time or season of life?
AJ Levine: You know, the wheels turn slowly. And I can see over the past couple of decades, that stuff that would have been impossible in the 1960s is just perfectly normative now. When I was a child in conservative Judaism in Massachusetts when little girls came of age at the age of 12 and a half 13, we read from the profits on Friday night. We did not read from the Torah on Saturday morning. We read several of us at one time, as opposed to the boys, who did it all singularly. And now in the conservative movement, it's completely utilitarian. So, I have seen the change in my own lifetime. Although my synagogue does not have equal liturgical concerns for women.
The past president of the congregation is a woman. And good for her. Cause she, she knows finances. Women were not part of Torah study or Talmund study before. And now that has opened up in a number of congregations or women are forming their own groups and saying, if you won't let us play with your group, we're going to form our own and we're going to become educated on our own.
So, things change. On the other hand, I don't like the idea when somebody says, oh, you go to such and such a church that doesn't ordain women. Right? You must be terrible, a bigot, whatever, because you know, you don't know what's in that person's heart. I think everybody, at some point probably sits uneasily in the pew.
So, can you change it? Can you change something on your own? Well, you know, you might, if you just spoke up and then some other people might speak up. And then you see where you get.
Lee Camp: Yeah. What, what's your take on continued, lots of conversations these days about white privilege, white fragility, male privilege, male fragility. How do you approach those sorts of conversations and the power dynamics that are at play in that?
AJ Levine: Yeah, I think that hits every individual distinctly because how you understand that might also depend upon your social class and your educational level and how you identify, do you identify as white or do you identify as something else? In a number of settings, we Jews who appear white.
I mean, there are black Jews and Latina Jews and Asian Jews and so on. We're not restricted to one particular group. But those of us who present white as I do, or like white, but not quite. So, that, when we moved to Nashville and this is many, many years ago and thank God she did this.
One of the people working for the realty organization suggested that there were certain neighborhoods in which we would not be welcome and our children would not be welcome. And we were very, very glad for that honesty because there were certain neighborhoods in which, well, Jews were not welcome. For me, what I found helpful in my own work, I guess two things.
One, when I was a child, a cousin of mine, cousin by marriage, but the families were very, very close, was a freedom rider who went missing in Mississippi and eventually turned up in a rock quarry.
Lee Camp: Hmm.
AJ Levine: Killed by the KKK, this fellow named Michael Schwerner, Mickey Schwerner. And I remember my aunt Abby, who was married to my mother's brother.
Well, Abby was his aunt. And I remember Abby telling stories about this. I was just a kid at the time. So, a little kid. And the importance of helping other people, even if your life might be on the line. And then I realized that when Jesus says you take up your cross, that's what he was talking about.
That's exactly what he was talking about. So, I was raised with extraordinary questions of privilege and racial sensitivity and memories of what happened in Nazi, Germany, and God forbid that would ever happen again to any other groups that haven’t had that. That's, that's part of who I am. The other thing is that I find helpful using the idea of white privilege and white fragility, sometimes helpful in talking to Christians about Christian privilege and Christian fragility. And this is Christians across the Christian spectrum from Latina churches and black churches and, you know, churches wherever. So that when I point out to some of my Christian friends, you know, that sermon, that, that kind of had an anti-Jewish ring to it. Or why are you using the Pharisees as negative exemplars?
You know, what do you know about Pharisaic history? What do you think we Jews think when you use that term? Or when you're preaching the gospel of John about the Jews who are children of the devil, you know, something like that. And I get comments like, well, I didn't mean all Jews or you're overreacting or well, surely some Jews were like that or, well, you know, Jews are okay today.
So, it doesn't really matter if we make comments like that. This is Christian fragility in the same way white people say, well, I didn't own slaves. My family didn't own slaves, or, you know, I'm not personally responsible for whatever, or you're overreacting, or we had a black president. You know, and all of these ideas just deny the problem.
Lee Camp: Yeah.
AJ Levine: So how do you listen and say, oh, maybe, maybe you're right. Let me see something through your eyes, or at least do my best to try. And instead of immediately going on the defensive, listen, think. That may be helpful.
Lee Camp: Yes. Well, and I think that, even like the question I opened up with earlier and my own presumption and my inability to see the unhelpful assumptions in the way. And I had not even thought about the way in which my question had certain assumptions of misogyny and first century Judaism until you pointed it out, right?
And, and until we're willing to have conversations with one another, in which we will really listen, we can just keep stumbling along in that sort of privilege, stumbling along in those sorts of presumptions.
AJ Levine: Right. And the point is not to inculcate guilt. I'm a Jewish mother. I can make you guilty if I want to. I know how to do that. So, you don't blame people. I mean, you don’t have to be blamed for your privilege any more than you should be blamed for lacking in privilege, right? Cause systemic problems are exactly that.
So, the point is not to inculcate blame or to shame, but to open up our horizons and say, we all see things from our own particular perspective, but when we open up and we begin to see something from somebody else's perspective then we can be better us. Right? It's not all solipsism. I say it's true because I say it's true.
Well, maybe somebody else has a different way of understanding reality, and it would be good to know that. And then you can start checking your privilege and saying, wait, wait, maybe I ought not to be thinking this particular way.
Lee Camp: Yeah, yeah.
AJ Levine: Right. So, when somebody says that there's a war on Christmas, you know what?
I don't think so. I don't think so. You got other things to worry about.
Lee Camp: Yes. And one would hope that we would find better things to be. If we, if we must be persecuted, one would hope there would be many better things to be persecuted for than the supposed war.
AJ Levine: Right. Um, and I get this from my students too. I'll say something and one of my students will go, you know, that just didn't ring right. And, and instead of immediately going into defensive mode, I didn't mean it. So, thank you. You're right. Help me to phrase this better. So, I don't make this mistake again.
And we're caught on this all the time. Years ago, when I was teaching at Swarthmore, I was. So, I'm teaching Hebrew Bible, Old Testament Tanakh, and I got to the Exodus story. And I'm talking about the Egyptians, you know, 400 years of slavery followed by genocide by killing the babies. Right? So, this kid in the front row raises his hand and said, uh, AJ I'm an Egyptian and I'm feeling uncomfortable.
Oh God. There are Egyptians, like real Egyptians. So, I knew that intellectually, but my mouth was just kind of running on and I hadn't really thought, how am I using these words? And what impression am I conveying? And am I reinforcing or introducing prejudice when that's not what I intended to do.
And then how do I do this better?
Lee Camp: Wonderful conversation today with Professor Amy Jill Levine, university professor of New Testament and Jewish Studies at Vanderbilt. As always, a delight. And I always learn lots of important, helpful things. Thank you so much.
AJ Levine: What a pleasure once again to be with you.
Lee Camp: Blessings.
You've been listening to Tokens: public theology, human flourishing, the good life.
If you would like to hear more about the Sermon on the Mount, then check out our recent episode with John Mark Comer.
Remember you can subscribe to our podcast on Apple podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, or wherever you get your favorite podcasts. And we'd be very appreciative for you to go to your podcast platform and give us one of those glowing five star reviews. It will help other people find our this podcast.
Got feedback? We'd love to hear from you. Email us text or attach a voice memo, and send to the address podcast@tokensshow.com.
Our thanks to all the stellar team that makes this podcast possible. Executive producer and manager, Christie Bragg of Bragg Management. Co-producer Jakob Lewis of Great Feeling Studios. Associate producers Ashley Bayne and Tom Anderson. Engineer Cariad Harmon. Music beds by Zach and Maggie White, and Blue Dot Sessions.
Thanks for listening, and peace be unto thee.
The Tokens podcast is a production of Tokens Media, LLC and Great Feeling Studios.
LEARN MORE