The first Jewish president of the Catholic Biblical Association of America (CBA) — Old and New Testament scholar Amy-Jill Levine — intends to strengthen resources for educators and to build partnerships with parishes for guidelines about Scripture, she told EWTN News.
Levine was elected by a vote of CBA members at the organization’s annual general meeting in August for a one-year term. She has been a CBA member since 1988. She had served as the vice president in the previous term and earlier served as a consultor for the executive board and held editorial positions for CBA’s scholarly journal, The Catholic Biblical Quarterly.
Although the association is open to scholars of any religious faith, the president is typically a Catholic. Levine told EWTN News she was stunned to be elected to the role but expressed gratitude for the position.
“When I received notice from the chair of the nominating committee, I emailed another member to ask if this were a joke,” she said. “I was more than surprised, I was stunned. I was also, and remain, honored and grateful.”
Levine has served on several CBA task forces and continuing seminars, participated on panels, and presided over sessions. Much of her scholarly work has focused on the Gospels. She is also the first Jewish person to teach a New Testament course at the Pontifical Biblical Institute in Rome.
“My primary role is to contribute to the work of the association: to work with my colleagues to make good work even better through discussion,” she said.
CBA’s constitution states that its work conforms to the teachings of the magisterium. Although the group is not operated by the Catholic Church, it offers consultation to the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB), including on translations of the Bible and faith formation and catechesis.
As its president, Levine said she wants to see certain suggestions in CBA’s strategic plan implemented, such as “strengthening international participation and expanding bilingual and global programming, producing resources for clergy and religious educators, and supporting professional development for biblical scholars.”
She said a particular interest of hers is partnering with local churches to offer public programs and working with the bishops “on providing up-to-date biblical guidelines for lectionary preaching and catechesis.”
Views on Scripture
Although Levine is not Catholic, she told EWTN News: “I am not interested in challenging doctrine.”
“I am interested in readings that promote abundant life, that are well grounded in history, and that also speak to communities today,” she said.
Levine does not believe “everything attributed to Jesus in the New Testament comes directly from Jesus,” she said. She noted that Christ spoke in Aramaic and the original New Testament text is Greek. She said “this view is entirely compatible with Catholic teaching.”
“However, I also believe that the proclamation of the Church is based on the words as received and not on an anterior scholarly reconstruction,” she said.
Dei Verbum, the Second Vatican Council’s Dogmatic Constitution on Divine Revelation, teaches that everything in the Bible is inspired by the Holy Spirit, which means “the books of Scripture must be acknowledged as teaching solidly, faithfully and without error that truth which God wanted put into sacred writings.”
Levine has also written on abortion and sexuality. She co-authored an article published in the Huffington Post in 2011 in which she discussed gender roles, no-fault divorce, same-sex civil marriages, birth control, abortion, and “private sexual expression.”
In the article, she stated: “People who read the Bible often find themselves on the opposite sides of many of these issues,” but “this does not mean that they are necessarily reading their texts incorrectly.” It asserted: “The Bible is open to multiple interpretations: we need to determine what is metaphor and what is to be taken literally, what is case specific and what is timeless, what is a matter of personal choice and what should be legislated.”
Levine told EWTN News: “Biblical texts on abortion are few” and there are “different views in Jewish and Catholic interpretation.” She said “people on various sides of this debate have used Scripture, and some uses are better grounded in history, language study, manuscript tradition, etc. than others.”
The Catechism of the Catholic Church teaches “human life must be respected and protected absolutely from the moment of conception.” It calls abortion and infanticide “abominable crimes.”
Levine also told EWTN News: “In matters of gender and sexuality, we need to consider not only what the Bible says, but also what the continuing teachings of religious traditions say as well as what science and even personal experience teaches.”
On matters related to gender identity, Levine similarly said: “There are better and less good readings, and these can be found in both opposition and promotion arguments.” She said: “In interpreting Scripture, we need to consider not only the historical context; we also need to consider what science, sociology, philosophy, etc. can teach us.”
The catechism’s teaching on same-sex sexual acts reads: “Basing itself on Sacred Scripture, which presents homosexual acts as acts of grave depravity, tradition has always declared that ‘homosexual acts are intrinsically disordered.’”
It also teaches that God created people either male or female, and “everyone, man and woman, should acknowledge and accept his sexual identity.”
Levine said: “My major concern is that Scripture not be weaponized to make people feel that they are not loved and that they are not recognized as in the divine image.”
Catholic-Jewish relations
Though she was raised and remains an Orthodox Jew, Levine grew up in a neighborhood that was mostly Portuguese and Catholic. She said she developed an interest in the Catholic Church at a young age but also faced antisemitism, which motivated her to work toward better Catholic and Jewish relations.
“My parents explained to me that we Jews and our Catholic neighbors read the same books, like Genesis and Isaiah; said the same prayers, such as the Psalms; etc.,” Levine said.
“Then when I was 7, a girl said to me, ‘You killed our Lord,’ I could not fathom how a tradition that seemed so beautiful could say something so hateful,” she said. “I started asking questions then, and I continue to work to ensure that a Gospel of love not become a weapon of hate. At the same time, working in New Testament studies helps me recover part of Jewish history that the Synagogue did not preserve.”
She’s authored several books related to Christian and Jewish relations, including “The Bible With and Without Jesus,” which she co-authored with Bible scholar Marc Zvi Brettler. This book, she said, is meant “to show the logic of each tradition’s reception history and thus encourage mutual respect between Jews and Christians who share texts but who interpret them differently.”
Levine also co-edited “The Jewish Annotated New Testament,” which has Jewish commentary on Scriptures, and authored “Short Stories by Jesus: The Enigmatic Parables of a Controversial Rabbi,” which analyzes Christ’s parables from a Jewish perspective.
“For the New Testament, my work has focused on the Gospels and in trying to understand how Jesus’ words, especially the parables, and actions, especially the healing narratives, would have been understood by his Jewish contemporaries,” Levine said. “In working with Scripture — the authoritative texts of a community — I think it essential to proceed with respect both for the texts and for those who hold those texts sacred.”
As president of the CBA, she said she also hopes to interact with the USCCB’s Committee on Ecumenical and Interreligious Affairs, “especially given the recent uptick in antisemitism.”
“Most of the antisemitism I have heard in church contexts comes from a combination of historical ignorance and tone-deafness,” she said. “It also often comes from making Judaism the negative foil in order to make Jesus look good. Nor should we think of Jesus as outside of rather than embedded within his Jewish tradition.”
Levine noted Christ’s “great commandment” — to love God and love your neighbor — comes from Deuteronomy 6 and Leviticus 19. She said “misunderstanding of Jewish practice and belief leads to misunderstanding of Jesus.”
She acknowledged: “I do not worship Jesus as lord or savior, since my heart is completely fulfilled in my own Jewish practice and belief” and “I have never felt the call.”
“At the same time, I find that Jesus, reflecting Jewish tradition, has important things to say about ethics, especially in the parables … and his discussion of how to extend Torah practice, from murder to anger, from adultery to lust, and in teaching his followers how to live as if they already have one foot in the kingdom of heaven,” Levine said.
