Quotes from Amy-Jill Levine

Inheriting the earth, for the psalm and for the Gospel, requires being humble, not in the sense of lowly, but in the sense of being able to listen to others, to share resources, to prioritize community rather than authority, to serve rather than to be served.

The synoptic Gospels suggest that the entire Jewish council, the Sanhedrin, met on the first night of Passover to determine Jesus's fate—this would be tantamount to gathering all the members of the Supreme Court, Congress, and the White House press corps together late on Christmas Eve to debate a minor case of law. If

Our role as historians is to ask, "What would these stories have conveyed to the people who first heard them?" Our role as readers is also to ask, "What do these stories mean to me, and what have they meant to my community and to my tradition over time and across the globe?

According to Matthew, in order to understand Jesus, we must also understand King David.

holy envy," that is, the appreciation of the beliefs and practices of another.2

Second, all four women in the genealogy are involved in unexpected sexual relationships. Therefore, they anticipate Joseph's learning that his betrothed is pregnant.

Finally, Rahab is a Canaanite, Ruth is a Moabite, and Uriah, Bathsheba's first husband, is a Hittite; and all show deep loyalty to Israel and Israel's God.

Matthew tells us, through the genealogy, that the birth of Jesus will be good news not only to Jews but also to gentiles.

Knowing the ancient story, Matthew's readers can anticipate that the second Joseph, son of Jacob, will dream dreams, take his family to Egypt to protect them, and return to the land of Israel. Since that original Joseph is the father of Ephraim, the eponymous ancestor of the main Northern tribe, we readers can even expect this second Joseph to relocate north, to Galilee.

But the Psalms not only ask for salvation; they also show that salvation is in a sense already present. We don't have to pin all our hopes on a hero and invest all our yearnings toward some future date. This is the day for rejoicing; any time the psalm is sung, this is the day. The kingdom of heaven is present here, if we just pay attention.

from loneliness, from poverty, from oppression. We are all in need of some form of salvation. Indeed, the idea of salvation for most of the Scriptures of Israel is not about spiritual matters, but physical ones: the Passover, the setting of the Passion narrative, is about salvation from slavery. God hears our cries. And the stories remind us that people, still, cry out to be saved. Will our cries be heard by others? Will we hear the cries of others? Will God act? Will we?

The swineherds ran off, and on going into the town, they told the whole story about what had happened to the demoniacs. 34 Then the whole town came out to meet Jesus; and when they saw him, they begged him to leave their neighborhood.

There is little reason to argue over who has the correct reading here. Isaiah's words will mean, and should mean, different things to different people over time. Moreover, different translations necessarily give rise to different interpretations, and translation itself is an act of interpretation.

The Triumphal Entry cannot be separated from the cross, and the cross cannot be separated from the call of justice. And that call cannot be separated from risk, personal, professional, permanent.

Salvation was palpable. So, too, for the Gospels, the message of salvation, the good news, must be more than a postmortem fate. Salvation also occurs in the here-and-now.

If one takes the incarnation—that is, the claim that the "Word became flesh and lived among us" (John 1:14)—seriously, then one should take seriously the time when, place where, and people among whom this event occurred.

Christians obtain yet another benefit in seeing Jesus in his Jewish context, for the recognition of Jesus's Jewishness and of his speaking in a Jewish idiom can also restore faith in the New Testament. Doing just a bit of historical investigation provides a much-needed correction to America's Christ-saturated, albeit biblically ignorant, culture.

Jesus of Nazareth dressed like a Jew, prayed like a Jew (and most likely in Aramaic), instructed other Jews on how best to live according to the commandments given by God to Moses, taught like a Jew, argued like a Jew with other Jews, and died like thousands of other Jews on a Roman cross. To

From one people, faithful to the Torah, come the messages, "You must love your neighbor as yourself," and "Any immigrant who lives with you must be treated as if they were one of your citizens" (Leviticus 19:18, 34). When these commandments are kept, by all who hold the text as sacred, the hungry are fed.

we should be able to look at nature as part of God's creation, as given to us in trust, as testifying to the divine while it is not itself divine. We get all this and more when we look at the nature miracles the Gospels record. Each one tells us something about Christ, but each one also tells us something about understanding the Scriptures of Israel, and each one also tells us something about ourselves.

we should resist the tendency, which is part of the rhetoric of the Gospels and their reception, to associate disability with sin.

15 Then Pharisees and scribes came to Jesus from Jerusalem and said, 2 "Why do your disciples break the tradition of the elders? For they do not wash their hands before they eat." 3 He answered them, "And why do you break the commandment of God for the sake of your tradition? 4 For God said, * 'Honor your father and your mother,' and, 'Whoever speaks evil of father or mother must surely die.

the census provides the Evangelist one more occasion to indicate Joseph's Davidic connection, and it also helps explain why "Jesus of Nazareth" was born not in Nazareth in Galilee.

Thus, when Magi appear in ancient sources, kings should get nervous.