Jesus Christ is Who Christianity is based on, but He was a practicing Jew during His life. Amy-Jill Levine was born into a Jewish home and now is the professor of New Testament Studies at Vanderbilt. Her focus and purpose in writing is to bridge the gulf between Christianity and Judaism by examining the Jesus of the Bible. On the one hand, there is Jesus the rabbi, whose wise words are seldom heard in modern synagogues; on the other hand there is Jesus the iconoclast, who upheld the Law of the Lord to the point of fulfilling it. In Levine's often humorous book, she attempts to pave a middle path, where understanding between the two traditions centers on the Jesus of her studies - an observant Jew Whose teachings should engender love of the Jewish people on the part of those who follow His way and Whose words should hold wisdom for those whose traditions He grew up in.
