LAST YEAR I WROTE a piece pointing out that the translators of the the widely used Greek translations of Jewish scriptures current in the Jewish world around the time of Jesus and the New testament, the Septuagint, translated by presumably Jewish scholars in Alexandria, they probably chose the translation of that famous passage from Isaiah "a virgin will give birth" because they figured that "a sign" would have to be something more noteworthy than a young woman giving birth. It's a passage that the current common received wisdom claims is an intentional false translation in order to support the Virgin Birth of Jesus. the accusation that it's one of a number of Christian appropriations of Jewish scriptures, only it was translated that way centuries before Jesus by Jewish scholars. And that translation was found entirely acceptable to First Century Jews and those both earlier and later because the Greek translation not only was widely used but the legend of how it was translated, identically, by seventy scholars working independently was widely believed by both Jews and, later Christians. Those who believed that must have seen it as divine favor for the translation as well as the Hebrew original.
When I wrote that someone asked me if I'd ever read Amy-Jill Levine, a well known Jewish New Testament scholar. Well, I hadn't and I still haven't read her but I've listened to a number of her lectures and talks on Youtube and she's terrific. I had been listening to a number of Jewish scholars give their takes on the New Testament and early Christianity and Rabbinic Judaism and the interactions between them and found them to be enormously interesting and helpful in understanding some aspects of what the New Testament means and how post-Temple Judaism developed often in tension with early Christianity even as Jesus, Paul and all of the named disciples and very possibly all of the authors of the New Testament were and considered themselves to be Jews.
I might go into some of what she says more but I've decided to link to two of her shorter talks and interviews which show she not only is a really fine scholar but that she's got a great sense of humor, the kind that supports a refreshingly practical point of view about religion.
Here's a sort of Ted-Talky short one on the afterlife
Here's one on how you need to understand Jewish practice and belief to understand Jesus and Paul
I love her pluralistic take on things and can say that I won't think about these issues from now on without wondering how she'd see them. I intend to put her on my to-read list from next year so don't be surprised if she starts showing up here more. One of the things she says in the second one is something I've pointed out, that far from it being a terrible injustice for Christians to "appropriate" things from the Jewish Scriptures that that practice was rampant within the Jewish Scriptures, themselves, later Prophets putting their own interpretation on earlier passages from the Torah, something that A.J. Levine points out is a practice at the very heart of Jewish practice and religion. I think it would be far better for Christians to understand Christianity as a part of the same faith family as Judaism than to endlessly create dishonest and needless strife where an appreciation and respect for differences in reading things is more helpful and appropriate.
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