Religious Scholar Amy-Jill Levine to Headline Distinguished Events Program, Feb. 11

Jan. 26, 2010

FLORENCE, Ala. – The University of North Alabama’s Distinguished Events Series will continue next month with a presentation by author and religious scholar Amy-Jill Levine. The public lecture, “The Parable of the Good Samaritan: A Good Jewish Story,” will take place at 7 p.m. Feb. 11 in the Guillot University Center’s Performance Center.

Levine is the author of “The Misunderstood Jew: The Church and the Scandal of the Jewish Jesus.” “The book shows how Christians often misunderstand Judaism in general, the New Testament in particular, and thus yank Jesus out of this Jewish context, resulting in intolerance (and sometimes outright hatred) of Jews,” according to the publisher’s description. Levine hopes to tackle those misunderstandings and explain the “Jewishness” of Jesus through humor and informed truth-telling in an attempt to help Jews and Christians better understand one another.

Levine is also the co-author of “The Historical Jesus in Context.” She will do a book-signing following her lecture.

An E. Rhodes and Leona B. Carpenter professor of New Testament studies at Vanderbilt University Divinity School in Nashville, Levine has been awarded research grants from the Mellon Foundation, the National Endowment for the Humanities and the American Council of Learned Societies.

The UNA Distinguished Events Series was developed in 2005 to help expose the community to various sources of arts and culture. For more information, contact Debbie Chaffin at 256-765-4297 or dkchaffin@una.edu.