Daring and original

Amy-Jill Levine is a very respected and established NT scholar, so that what might be dismissed as the cheeky chat of a bright undergraduate must be given some serious consideration even if it seems shocking or even - dare I say - occasionally blasphemous. In reality, her general stance coincides with much that I have ventured to work out and teach in my own ministry: Jesus must be understood to have been fully human for him to have been of any true inspiration to the rest of us, which must, perforce, include episodes of anger, fatigue and human fallibility. Amy-Jill affirms these views in her wonderfully insightful splurge around our Lord’s public ministry. If there is any significant weakness in this work it is that it reads like a positive shower of gems landing in some disorder: it’s sometimes difficult to know exactly what her main point is when she seems to skip from one story - one subject - to another: ‘too many diversions young woman!!!’ But how else could she work her magic?
The reading is so well done that it is impossible to imagine the author doing it with more authenticity.
My only concern is her implied sense of entitlement which sometimes irritates an English listener. When Peter’s mother-in-law is healed of course she immediately returns to her ascribed role: to imagine otherwise is unworthy of such a scholar! Yes, it’s fine in my book to feel angry at Jesus: his back is B-road and he’s used to it, but his incarnation was as a 1st century Palestinian Jew.
Nevertheless, this is an unmissable read from a very humane and often humorous scholar with her heart in the right place.

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