Amy-Jill Levine brings a different perspective to the study of the Bible: that of a Jewish feminist.

“I’m very interested in people such as Mary Magdalene and Mary and Martha, the women who followed Jesus from the time he began his activities in Galilee. What was their economic class? Were they married? Did they have children? What was it in Jesus’ message that appealed to them?” she says.

Levine, a professor at Vanderbilt University Divinity School/graduate department of religion, would like to see people approach the Old Testament and New Testament with new eyes.

“Too often, the women in the Bible are overlooked both in academic study and the church. And too often when they are studied, their presentation is based on a very ugly view of Judaism,” she says.

“There’s a general perception that women followed Jesus because Jewish society fully marginalized them, treated them like chattel, refused them any public role, and Jesus liberated them. All available historical evidence suggests this is not the case.”

Levine, widely respected for her scholarship addressing topics such as formative Judaism, the origins of Christianity and biblical women’s roles and representations, will speak Sunday and Monday at Kansas University and in two Lawrence churches as the 2003 Theologian in Residence.

Launched in 2000, the Theologian in Residence program is a consortium of mainstream local churches, KU campus ministries, regional church bodies and area universities that are committed to dialogue about issues and questions of faith.

The departments of religious studies at KU, Baker University in Baldwin and Washburn University in Topeka are part of the consortium.

The goal of the annual event, which has brought to Lawrence theologians such as Marcus Borg of the controversial Jesus Seminar and Jonathan Z. Smith of the University of Chicago, is to bring together the academic and faith communities with acclaimed speakers to address topics of religion.

“When we first picked Amy-Jill, I’m not sure everybody was familiar with her, but I’m realizing it is quite a coup to get her to come,” says Jolinda Matthews, who coordinates Theologian in Residence.

Matthews is administrator of Ecumenical Christian Ministries, 1204 Oread Ave., which participates in planning the conference.

“We’ve gotten some pretty positive feedback from the community (about previous speakers),” she says. “Marcus Borg was well attended, and we anticipate seeing the same with Amy-Jill.”

Challenging assumptions

Levine, a self-described “Yankee Jewish feminist who teaches in a predominantly Protestant divinity school in the buckle of the Bible Belt,” is committed to exposing anti-Jewish, sexist and heterosexist theologies.

“One thing that I have found in studying the Gospels is that they are a marvelous resource for learning about early Judaism, but I’ve also found that too many studies of the Bible done by Christians lack the necessary knowledge of the Jewish sources of the period,” says Levine, who belongs to an Orthodox Jewish synagogue in Nashville.

“When I study the New Testament, not only do I get to recover part of my own history, I get to correct the anti-Jewish attitudes of others who study the Gospel.”

Levine is willing to challenge long-held assumptions about the Bible, yet she has met with few objections to her work by faithful people.

“I’ve had very little trouble, or even disagreement, with people who would classify themselves as conservative or evangelical, because I believe in treating the text with respect,” she says.

“I’m not inclined to throw material out, and I believe that much of what the Gospels have to say matches up perfectly with what I can find in Jewish sources of the period, so why not celebrate both traditions?”

Levine is interested in studying what has come to be called the “historical Jesus,” who he really was and how he was perceived by those who encountered him.

“If one takes the incarnation of Jesus seriously, then I think it’s essential also to take seriously the time and the place and the people among whom that incarnation occurred. In order to understand Jesus, one has to understand Judaism of the period in which he lived.”

Bible as history, literature

Levine explains why she was drawn to make the Bible the focus of her life’s work.

“I’m fascinated with the biblical text and how people interpret it for several reasons. One, because it shows the incredible creativity of the human imagination — that an ancient text can still have such meaning and, moreover, that it can produce such diverse interpretations,” she says.

“I think the study of history is itself fascinating, I like the study of literature, and the Bible is both history and literature. The parables are such spectacular stories, every time I look at them I see something new.”

But there is another, more personal reason for her to study the Old and New testaments.

“On the one hand, it allows me to recover part of my own history as a Jew. On the other, it provides me ammunition when someone says to my children that they’re going to go to hell because they don’t believe a particular way, or when someone asserts that early Judaism was a dead religion.”