I have been reading recently a little book by the Jewish New Testament scholar, Amy-Jill Levine. Published in 2015, it is entitled ’Short Stories by Jesus’. I first met Amy-Jill in Cambridge a few years ago. She teaches at a Divinity School in Tennessee and is also a member of staff at the Woolf Institute in Cambridge, a centre for the study of Jewish-Christian-Muslim Relations. She describes herself as ‘a Yankee Jewish feminist who teaches in a predominantly Christian divinity school in the buckle of the Bible belt’. She is one of the most distinctive voices in New Testament studies today. In particular, her work serves to challenge some of the stereotypes and prejudices about Judaism among Christians. Indeed, her own interest in the New Testament was stimulated by an experience as a girl, when at the age of 7, a classmate said to her, ‘You killed our Lord’. Shocked by these words, Levine continues to be both fascinated and appalled by the way religious texts can become rocks that people throw at one another.

Described as ‘probably the best book on parables available today’, this little book presents a study of Jesus' parables. Levine is troubled by the way in which we often domesticate Jesus’ mysterious and provocative stories. In her description of the parables, she says this: “What makes the parables mysterious, or difficult, is that they challenge us to look into the hidden aspects of our own values, our own lives. They bring to the surface unasked questions, and they reveal the answers we have always known, but refuse to acknowledge. Our reaction to them should be one of resistance rather than acceptance. For our own comfort, we may want to foreclose the meaning rather than allow the parable to open into multiple interpretations. We are probably more comfortable proclaiming a creed than prompting a conversation or pursuing a call’. Amy-Jill is not satisfied with trivial or easy interpretations. She sees that the parables are designed to surprise us, challenge us, provoke us and shake us up. They make us think. They help us to see the world differently. As the nineteenth century Danish philosopher, Soren Kierkegaard, once commented: the problem with trivial interpretations of Jesus’ parables is that they create the almost 'comical difficulty that God should let himself be born, that the Truth should have come into the world….in order to make trivial remarks’. Levine helps us to rediscover the real meaning of words which will not be tamed or domesticated.

Revd Dr William Lamb

Vicar