Quotes from Amy-Jill Levine

Luke tells us: pay attention to earthly matters, neighbors and relatives, shepherds, and who else might be at the inn.

The shepherds function as a "sign" to Mary; they assure her, "yes, what you experienced was not a hallucination; yes, no matter how unbelievable everything has been, believe!

if a woman healed a person with a combination of herbs she learned from her mother, it was called witchcraft or at best "folk medicine," but if a man, with a medical degree, using the same herbs, healed a person, it was called medicine.

When American parents of Italian or Polish or Kenyan background tell their children to "stop acting like wild Indians," they are not intending to promote bigotry, but they are promoting it nonetheless. And when parents in rural areas of the Philippines tell their children to "stop acting like Jews," anti-Judaism is the unintended result. Disease cannot be cured when those infected are in denial.

Matthew offers other concerns: the response of the gentile nations to this Jewish king and, from Herod's reaction to the Magi's announcement of his birth, the clash between earthly and heavenly kingdoms.

When the Bible mentions righteous couples suffering from infertility, a conception is not far behind.

Worship at its best is something that engages not just the mind but the body.

one always goes "up" to Jerusalem; one could be on the moon and still go "up" to Jerusalem

The Epistle to the Hebrews (13:2) warns, "Don't neglect to open up your homes to guests, because by doing this some have been hosts to angels without knowing it.

In a single line, Luke tells us that Jesus is, like John, fully a member of the Jewish people, not just by birth, but also in the body.

It's possible these men were afraid. . . . And so the first question that the priest [and] the Levite asked was, 'If I stop to help this man, what will happen to me?' . . . But then the Good Samaritan came by, and he reversed the question: 'If I do not stop to help this man, what will happen to him?

The audience, surprised at this lack of compassion, would have presumed both that the third person would be an Israelite and that he would help.

Jesus has to explain that dropping bombs is not the proper response to a lack of hospitality.

to Jesus's Jewish audience as well as to Luke's readers, the idea of a "good Samaritan" would make no more sense than the idea of a "good rapist" or a "good murderer.

anti-Jewish material is repeated, because no one questions it.

None of the canonical Gospels provides an explicit date of composition. Paul, who likely died during Nero's persecution of Christians in Rome in 64 ce, never mentions the Gospels, and most scholars agree that the canonical Gospels postdate him.

we have no complete narrative of Jesus' life that existed at the time of Paul, and there may have been none. Thus, Paul's epistles demonstrate some knowledge of what Jesus said and did, and Paul did have contact with some of Jesus' original followers such as Peter and John (see Gal 2), but Paul does not appear to know the Gospels

Truly I tell you, the tax collectors and the prostitutes are going into the kingdom of God ahead of you.

polemics can sometimes be constructive.43 Averil Cameron notes that some polemics help sharpen arguments and consolidate knowledge.44 Polemics also tell us what is at stake for the individual or group issuing the invectives.

This solution, while logical, may also in part be motivated by Christian theological concerns. The idea of Q developed in the late nineteenth century in Germany, where Protestants and Catholics needed to find unity in their newly emerging nation-state, and the Jewishness of Jesus was increasingly being negated by the forerunners of Nazi theology

Luke gently criticizes people who pray, and pray, but who fail to open the gate, or to see the need at their doorstep.

Even without the angelic announcement, there are expectations placed especially on only children, or children born to comparatively older parents.

Although the analogy is a tad strained, the Torah functions for the synagogue as Jesus does for the church: it is the "word" of the divine present in the congregation.

Elijah, and John, will help in turning the people.