A few years ago I enjoyed reading Amy Jill Levine's The Misunderstood Jew: The Church and the Scandal of the Jewish Jesus. It's interesting how one remembers certain things and not others. For example, I've never forgotten Levine's analysis that "Abba" is not best translated "Daddy," as some Christians are wont to do.
Now Levine and co-author Marc Brettler have given us The Jewish Annotated New Testament. Why not, since Jesus was a Jew? The nytimes has an article on it here. "The volume includes notes and explanatory essays by 50 leading Jewish scholars, including Susannah Heschel, a historian and the daughter of the theologian Abraham Joshua Heschel; the Talmudist Daniel Boyarin; and Shaye J. D. Cohen, who teaches ancient Judaism at Harvard."
Levine says “the more I study New Testament, the better Jew I become.”
