Sunday Morning Bible Study

9:00 a.m. in the Session Room

As Christians we tend to consider Jesus’ parables through the lens of our Christian heritage.  Maybe, though, we might benefit from reading some of Jesus’ parables, remembering that Jesus was a Jew, speaking to his early followers who were both Jewish and Gentile.   The renowned biblical scholar, author of The Misunderstood Jew, in the book, Short Stories by Jesus, Jesus was a skilled storyteller and perceptive teacher who used parables from everyday life to effectively convey his message and meaning. Life in first-century Palestine was very different from our world today, and many traditional interpretations of Jesus’ stories may ignore this disparity in a way that limits the richness of what Jesus was saying then that is still very relevant for today.

In this wise, entertaining, and educational book, Amy-Jill Levine offers a fresh, timely reinterpretation of Jesus’ narratives.  In Short Stories by Jesus, she analyzes these “problems with parables,” taking readers back in time to understand how their original Jewish audience understood them. Levine reveals the parables’ connections to first-century economic and agricultural life, social customs and morality, Jewish scriptures and Roman culture. With this revitalized understanding, she interprets these moving stories for the contemporary reader, showing how the parables are not just about Jesus, but are also about us—and when read rightly, still challenge and provoke us two thousand years later.

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