An American Jewish woman has been elected as the first-ever Jewish president of the Catholic Biblical Association of America.
Prof. Amy-Jill Levine, who was elected at the 88th annual meeting and will serve as CBA president for the 2026-2027 year, told The Jerusalem Post that she is “honored by the election, gratified that the work that [she has done for the association has been recognized, and grateful to the members of the association for their welcome and their trust.”
In addition to working with the Executive Board and the membership on the association’s academic work, Levine told the Post she wishes to focus on fostering biblical scholarship both nationally and internationally. She also said she wishes to use this recognition to implement in churches, seminary education, and Catholic schools “better knowledge of Jewish beliefs and practices in the first century CE and better understanding of Jewish-Catholic relations.”
“Some programs are terrific; others could do more,” she said, noting that CBA, under the direction of Prof. Chris Seeman, has already produced guides for understanding first-century Jewish practice and belief, and it features on its website short talks she and others gave on lectionary readings (i.e., the weekly Torah portion for Roman Catholics) for the Abraham Joshua Heschel Center at the Catholic University of Lublin, Poland.
Levine is a New Testament scholar. She is a University Professor Emerita of Vanderbilt Divinity School and also the Rabbi Stanley M. Kessler Distinguished Professor of New Testament and Jewish Studies at the Hartford International University for Religion and Peace.
She has authored or co-authored over 20 books, including The Misunderstood Jew: The Church and the Scandal of the Jewish Jesus and The Bible With and Without Jesus: How Jews and Christians Read the Same Stories Differently. She had three audiences with Pope Francis.
She is also the first Jewish scholar to teach the New Testament at the Pontifical Biblical Institute in Rome in 2019.
Levine has previously dismissed rumors that she is a Messianic Jew, noting that she is a member of Congregation Sherith Israel in Nashville, an Orthodox synagogue.
Levine also hopes to work on assessing parochial school textbooks, catechetical guides, homiletic publications, annotations in Catholic Bibles, and the revision of the lectionary. She is already working with some Catholic publishers, such as the Liturgical Press, and would like to do more of this.
Ideally, she also hopes to organize a Hebrew translation of the third edition of the Jewish Annotated New Testament (Oxford University Press, 2026), which she co-edited with Marc Brettler. There are translations of the second edition in German, Italian, and Dutch, and a French translation of the third edition is underway.
The work, done entirely by an international body of Jewish scholars, directly addresses the difficult passages, explains Jewish history, and shows the progress made in Jewish-Christian relations.
Catholics would do well to be informed about Judaism, Levine said
Regarding what her Jewishness brings to the role, Levine told the Post: “Given the rise in antisemitism globally as well as the increasing number of incidents in Israel of Jews disrespecting Catholics, ideally this election shows the strength of Catholic-Jewish relations.”
“Not only would it be good for Catholics to be better informed about Jewish practice and belief, it would be good for Jews to be informed about the New Testament, Catholicism, and especially the changes in Catholic teaching following Vatican II.”
She said there has “of course” been pushback against a Jewish person taking on the role, but then she said there was also pushback when she was hired for her first job at Swarthmore College, when she joined the faculty at Vanderbilt Divinity School, and when she has been invited to give talks at churches.
'Ignorance helps no one,' Levine says
“Christians are concerned that I will dismiss or deny their theological claims,” she said. “That is not my agenda. Working with another’s Scripture requires having respect both for the text and for those who hold it sacred. My scholarship focuses primarily on how first-century Jews would have assessed Messianic claims, why some Jews would have followed Jesus, and others did not, how Jews would have understood Jesus’s parables, etc. This type of work can serve to enhance Christian belief rather than challenge it. It also can introduce Jews to part of our history that the synagogue has not preserved.”
She said that when she first started studying the New Testament, she also received pushback from her own family members who asked, “Why are you studying that hateful, antisemitic book?”
“I asked them if they had ever read it, to which they responded, ‘No, why would I read that hateful antisemitic book?’”
“Ignorance helps no one,” she added.