I always appreciate Dr Levine's teaching and perspective on Christian interpretations of Jewish history and culture. It is eye-opening and a solid corrective of centuries of misunderstanding.

This collection was a fun one, with the various interpretations of Jesus' parables undergoing an X-ray analysis and many of them failing the anti-semitic sniff test.

The main thing I took away from this is: beware any time someone quotes "Jewish sholars" or "Jewish teaching" without citing their sources. It is disingenuous and dubious AF. Even when they do cite their sources, if you follow that rabbit trail as Levine does, you might see that the sources are taken out of context (it happens a lot with Mishnah being read by Christian folks), or A quoting B quoting C and nobody does their due diligence in fact checking where C came up with it (Levine found a particularly good example where "Jewish scholars" ended up being a Nazi).

Another thing that I had never paid attention to before is that the gospel writers themselves, particularly Luke, often do a first pass at parable interpretation for the reader, and sometimes do not even attribute the interpretation to Jesus. So when you remove that layer of interpretation, what other possible readings emerge? The challenge is to read the parables anew with the eyes of a child. To slow down and question why some details are deemphasized or skipped over in common interpretations--who decided they were unimportant and why?

Parables, contrary to what I have heard many teachers say, were not meant to make spiritual concepts easy to grasp. They were meant to provoke a mental wrestling--whether in trying to understand the teaching or in confronting the listener's expectations. They usually have a gotcha moment where the known story pattern is broken or reversed.

In my opinion, the major fault with this book is that Levine leans heavily into the philosophy of the koan. Koans are Buddhist parables of sorts that are not meant to be understood on the first, second, or fiftieth pass. They are an enigma that the listener can meditate on and perhaps one day reach an understanding using non-conscious logic. What I mean is, after critiquing many common interpretations of the parables, she does not provide her own interpretation and leaves that up to the reader to figure out. In some chapters it works better than others, where the reader is guided along the way to reach their own conclusions. But sometimes the chapter ends and you are left hanging. A western style academic critique didnt't blend so well with an eastern style non-conclusion.

Overall it was interesting! Maybe I would have enjoyed it more if I had someone to talk about it with.