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Review ------ “As subversive as any parable, this shakes the faithful where we most need to be shaken, showing how close we have come to disarming some of Jesus’ most potent teachings. Every new book from Levine startles me with its brilliance and pluck, but this one goes next to my Bible.” (Barbara Brown Taylor, author of Learning to Walk in the Dark) “In this brilliant book Amy-Jill Levine invites her audience to read the parables of Jesus through a Jewish lens. The result is a series of stunning new ins into our religious heritage. Levine, a Jewish New Testament scholar of enormous depth, powerfully illumines both Jesus and the Christian story.” (John Shelby Spong, author of The Fourth Gospel: Tales of a Jewish Mystic) “Jesus’s parables have been sanitized, spiritualized, and allegorized for so many generations that it can only be called Good News when another wise Jewish teacher calls a halt. In this wonderfully readable book, not only could Jesus spin a yarn, he could challenge whole world views in the process.” (Dr. Ben Witherington, III, Amos Professor of New Testament for Doctoral Studies, Asbury Theological Seminary) “Levine will change how you think about Jesus and the stories he told. With her characteristic wit and learned, iconoclastic imagination, Levine presses readers of the parables-especially Christian readers-to question their assumptions, curb their biases, and read Jesus’s words afresh with ancient eyes. A provocative read.” (Peter Enns, author of The Bible Tells Me So) “This is probably the best book on parables available today: brief, informative, witty, and very interesting. A perfect introduction for the merely curious, but even passionate readers who have lived with these stories for decades will find their eyes and hearts opened by Levine’s provocative ins.” (Mark Allan Powell, editor of the HarperCollins Bible Dictionary) “Those who view parables as easy nuggets of feel-good sentiment need to think again. Levine shows how despite their brevity, Jesus’s tales have disturbed from the very beginning [and] she shows how the biblical stories’ defiance of narrow understandings and application is reason for celebration.” (Publishers Weekly (starred review)) “Amy-Jill Levine offers new translations of the parables, recovering the sense of provocation and challenge they would have presented to their first-century audiences. The Jesus we see here came up with inventive ways to challenge his listeners, and didn’t allow them easy answers or room for self-congratulation.” (Boston Globe) “Levine’s volume doesn’t simply challenge standard readings, it demolishes them. It wittily and carefully and thoroughly and relentlessly rips the parables from our ‘all knowing’ hands and un-domesticates them and gives them back to us in a form which Jesus himself doubtlessly intended.” (Jim West, Zwinglius Redivivus) “In Short Stories by Jesus, Amy-Jill Levine revisits the parables with an eye to how even these simple and straightforward stories unsettle and challenge.” (Publishers Weekly) “Short Stories by Jesus is a valuable work of criticism that asks us to reimagine Jesus as teacher who is concerned about the lives and the conditions of his followers, not merely in the condition of their souls in an afterlife.” (National Catholic Reporter) Read more ( javascript:void(0) ) From the Back Cover ------------------- Have We Domesticated Jesus's Radical and Provocative Parables? Read more ( javascript:void(0) ) See all Editorial Reviews ( /dp/product-description/0061561037/ref=dp_proddesc_0?ie=UTF8&n=283155&s=books&isInIframe=0 )