Amy-Jill Levine is a New Testament scholar who specializes in the teachings of Jesus Christ.
She's also Jewish.
"People do think it's weird that I'm a Jew and I happen to be an expert in the New Testament," she says. "But when we think about that, Jesus is Jewish, all of his immediate followers are Jewish, the New Testament talks about Jews, so at the very basic level, studying the New Testament is studying Jewish history."
Levine, the author of the book "Short Stories by Jesus: The Engimatic Parables of a Controversial Rabbi", says Jews could learn a lot about themselves and about Christians by reading the New Testament. Similarly, she believes there's a lot in the New Testament that could teach Christians about Judaism. "If we want to know about first century Jewish history, the New Testament is one of our best sources"
Levine is the featured speaker at this year's David L. Dungan Memorial Lecture, presented by the Department of Religious Studies at the University of Tennessee.