Editor’s note: Amy-Jill Levine was a speaker at “Jews and Mennonites: Reading the Bible after the Holocaust,” a symposium hosted by Anabaptist Biblical Seminary in 2023.

When she was six years old and watching the funeral of Pope John XXIII on TV, Amy-Jill Levine learned from her mother that the pope was “a friend to the Jews.”

Levine told her mother she wanted to be pope. That wasn’t to be. But last month, she received a unique honor, and perhaps the next best thing: Levine was named president of the Catholic Biblical Association of America, the first Jewish scholar to hold the title.

The 90-year-old association, which promotes the scholarly study of the Bible and provides exchanges between scholars, allows non-Catholics as members. Levine, a distinguished New Testament scholar, joined as a member soon after she earned her Ph.D. from Duke University 42 years ago. Over the years, she has served on the editorial board of the association’s quarterly journal, as a consulter to its executive committee and as an editor of the journal’s New Testament book reviews.

In announcing her election to the one-year post, the association’s statement said Levine was “recognized and deeply appreciated for her work in Jewish-Christian relations.”

It also mentioned that she was the first Jewish scholar to teach New Testament at the Pontifical Biblical Institute in Rome in 2019, and that she had three audiences with Pope Francis.

Levine is a professor of New Testament and Jewish studies at Hartford International University for Religion and Peace in Hartford, Connecticut. She spent the better part of her career at Vanderbilt Divinity School in Nashville. This fall she will teach a course at the Institute for Jewish-Christian Research at the University of Lucerne, Switzerland.

Her scholarship has focused on understanding Jesus as a first-century Galilean Jew and on how his first followers, all Jews, would have understood him.

“Much of what I do is in reciprocation for the Church’s willingness to change its teaching,” Levine wrote in an email to RNS.

Levine was referring to the landmark 1965 church declaration known as Nostra Aetate that Jews should not be held responsible at all times and places for the death of Jesus, and that the church “decries hatred, persecutions, displays of anti-Semitism, directed against Jews at any time and by anyone.”

Levine, 70, grew up in North Dartmouth, Massachusetts, in a mostly Catholic neighborhood. As a child, she said, “I was fascinated by nuns in habits, including the singing nun and the flying nun, Christmas trees and Easter bunnies, stained glass windows.”

She watched the funeral of Pope (now Saint) John XXIII on TV alongside her mother and learned from her mother that the pope was from Italy. To her that meant “spaghetti,” “a great hat” and “cheering crowds,” she said. 

Levine is the author of 20 books, including The Misunderstood Jew: The Church and the Scandal of the Jewish Jesus. She co-authored The Bible With and Without Jesus: How Jews and Christians Read the Same Stories Differently with Marc Zvi Brettler and co-edited The Jewish Annotated New Testament with him as well.

In her email, Levine wrote that she sees herself as a “guest in the CBA household” and hopes to be a good representative for its work. She said she would like to provide guidelines to the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops on biblical interpretation in parochial school textbooks and catechesis and, if possible, offer recommendations on a revised lectionary.

She mentioned she would love to meet Pope Leo XIV but acknowledged, “My loyalty to the Red Sox does conflict with his preferences.” (The pope is a White Sox fan.)