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

AMY-JILL LEVINE is University Professor of New Testament and Jewish Studies and Mary Jane Werthan Professor of Jewish Studies at Vanderbilt Divinity School and Department of Jewish Studies. She has also taught at Swarthmore College, Cambridge University, and the Pontifical Biblical Institute in Rome. She is the author of many books, including The Misunderstood Jew and Short Stories by Jesus, and she is the co-editor of the Jewish Annotated New Testament. 

“Jesus’ originally provocative parables have been sanitized, spiritualized, allegorized, and in general turned into ‘chicken soup for the soul’ for so many generations now that it can only be called Good News when another wise Jewish teacher calls a halt to that whole process, and asks ‘what if we read Jesus’ parables in their original Jewish context’? What happens is that we are challenged, confronted, caught off guard, and in general made uncomfortable by the pronouncements of Jesus about the coming saving reign of God. As A.J. Levine shows in this wonderfully readable book, not only could Jesus spin a yarn, he could challenge whole worldviews in the process. If it was the job of a true sage to comfort the afflicted all the while afflicting the comfortable, Jesus, as A.J. reminds us, shows us how to do this in his powerful parables. Highly Recommended!” - Dr. Ben Witherington, III, Amos Professor of New Testament for Doctoral Studies, Asbury Theological Seminary

“Ready or not, A.-J. Levine is here to change how you think about Jesus and the stories he told. With her characteristic wit and learned, iconoclastic imagination, Levine presses readers of the parables—especially Christian readers—to question their assumptions, curb their biases, and read Jesus’s words afresh with ancient eyes. A provocative read.” - Peter Enns, author of The Bible Tells Me So

“Levine will change how you think about Jesus and the stories he told. With her characteristic wit and learned, iconoclastic imagination, Levine presses readers of the parables-especially Christian readers-to question their assumptions, curb their biases, and read Jesus’s words afresh with ancient eyes. A provocative read.” - Peter Enns, author of The Bible Tells Me So

“In this brilliant book Amy-Jill Levine invites her audience to read the parables of Jesus through a Jewish lens. The result is a series of stunning new insights into our religious heritage. Levine, a Jewish New Testament scholar of enormous depth, powerfully illumines both Jesus and the Christian story.” - John Shelby Spong, author of The Fourth Gospel: Tales of a Jewish Mystic

“As subversive as any parable, this book not only offers readers new ears for hearing stories we thought we knew by heart; it also shakes the faithful where we most need to be shaken, showing us how close we have come to disarming some of Jesus’ most potent teachings. Every new book from A. J. Levine startles me with its brilliance and pluck, but this one goes next to my Bible.” - Barbara Brown Taylor, author of Learning to Walk in the Dark

“As subversive as any parable, this shakes the faithful where we most need to be shaken, showing how close we have come to disarming some of Jesus’ most potent teachings. Every new book from Levine startles me with its brilliance and pluck, but this one goes next to my Bible.” - Barbara Brown Taylor, author of Learning to Walk in the Dark

“Well crafted and ably supported, Levine’s touching and scholarly readings…should be fodder for rich discussion in church groups and also deserve a place on library shelves.” - Library Journal

“An erudite scholar who writes in an accessible and engaging prose, [Levine] is a wise sculptor who first chips away at the ‘complacent anti-Judaism’ of traditional interpretations of the parables . . . a remarkably generous book . . . a profound work of mercy.” - The Catholic Worker

“You will close the [book’s] back cover with far more questions than you dreamed possible. And that’s a very good thing. This highly esteemed Bible scholar… clearly loves these short stories by Jesus and wants readers to treasure the mufti-faceted reflections that Jesus intended to provoke in his listeners.” - Read the Spirit

“Levine tackles the more controversial parables Jesus spoke, making an effort to put these stories back in their first-century Jewish setting. If this isn’t Levine’s best, it’s close.” - The Dubious Disciple

“For those who hope to engage the New Testament perceptively . . . you may not agree with all of Levine’s conclusions. But you’ll never hear a parable again quite so complacently.” - U.S. Catholic

“Thought provoking… valuable for exploring the deep roots of faith that Jews and Christians share.” - The Boston Pilot

“Levine’s painstaking analysis not only frees the parables from their customary readings, but also convincingly argues that the parables are gloriously open-ended, impossible to pin down, and therefore living, vibrant texts. Short Stories by Jesus is a valuable work of criticism that asks us to reimagine Jesus as teacher who is concerned about the lives and the conditions of his followers, not merely in the condition of their souls in an afterlife.” - National Catholic Reporter

“Short Stories by Jesus is a valuable work of criticism that asks us to reimagine Jesus as teacher who is concerned about the lives and the conditions of his followers, not merely in the condition of their souls in an afterlife.” - National Catholic Reporter

“Those who view parables as easy nuggets of feel-good sentiment need to think again. Levine shows how despite their brevity, Jesus’s tales have disturbed from the very beginning [and] she shows how the biblical stories’ defiance of narrow understandings and application is reason for celebration.” - Publishers Weekly (starred review)

“Jesus’s parables have been sanitized, spiritualized, and allegorized for so many generations that it can only be called Good News when another wise Jewish teacher calls a halt. In this wonderfully readable book, not only could Jesus spin a yarn, he could challenge whole world views in the process.” - Dr. Ben Witherington, III, Amos Professor of New Testament for Doctoral Studies, Asbury Theological Seminary

“As a Jewish scholar and a clever raconteur, Levine is endowed with peculiar gifts to help us achieve her purpose: recovering ‘the art of hearing a parable.’ . . . She deftly marshals history, the social sciences, rabbinic thought, Philo, and people from other cultures. . . . What made me shudder was discovering that many of us have unwittingly been passing along anti-Jewish stereotypes. Haven’t we heard that Jewish fathers were stern and would cut off a recalcitrant son? Or that the Pharisee’s boastful prayer was typical of a works-righteousness Judaism? . . . Levine recovers a robust sense of what Judaism was and wasn’t in Jesus’ day, and she does so without chiding. . . . Levine’s writing is totally absorbing. . . . I will never preach or teach on a parable again without turning to Levine for shrewd and accurate insight, and to shield myself from even subtle derogations of Judaism.” - Christian Century

“What made me shudder was discovering that many of us have unwittingly been passing along anti-Jewish stereotypes. Levine recovers a robust sense of what Judaism was and wasn’t in Jesus’ day, and she does so without chiding . . . totally absorbing.” - Christian Century

“This is probably the best book on parables available today: brief, informative, witty, and very interesting. A perfect introduction for the merely curious, but even passionate readers who have lived with these stories for decades will find their eyes and hearts opened by Levine’s provocative insights.” - Mark Allan Powell, editor of the HarperCollins Bible Dictionary

“Amy-Jill Levine offers new translations of the parables, recovering the sense of provocation and challenge they would have presented to their first-century audiences. The Jesus we see here came up with inventive ways to challenge his listeners, and didn’t allow them easy answers or room for self-congratulation.” - Boston Globe

“Levine’s volume doesn’t simply challenge standard readings, it demolishes them. It wittily and carefully and thoroughly and relentlessly rips the parables from our ‘all knowing’ hands and un-domesticates them and gives them back to us in a form which Jesus himself doubtlessly intended.” - Jim West, Zwinglius Redivivus

“In Short Stories by Jesus, Amy-Jill Levine revisits the parables with an eye to how even these simple and straightforward stories unsettle and challenge.” - Publishers Weekly