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BETHANY, W.Va. – Bethany College has announced that Dr. Amy-Jill Levine will deliver the 61st annual Oreon E. Scott Lectures to be held April 4-5 at Bethany’s Mountainside Conference Center. This year’s lecture series is titled “Jesus, Judaism, and Jewish-Christian Relations.”

Levine is University Professor of New Testament and Jewish Studies, E. Rhodes and Leona B. Carpenter Professor of New Testament Studies, and Professor of Jewish Studies at Vanderbilt Divinity School and College of Arts and Science; she is also Affiliated Professor, Centre for the Study of Jewish-Christian Relations, Cambridge UK.  Her books include The Misunderstood Jew: The Church and the Scandal of the Jewish Jesus;  The Meaning of the Bible: What the Jewish Scriptures and the Christian Old Testament Can Teach Us (co-authored with Douglas Knight); The New Testament, Methods and Meanings (co-authored with Warren Carter), and the thirteen-volume edited Feminist Companions to the New Testament and Early Christian Writing.  Her most recent volume is Short Stories by Jesus: The Enigmatic Parables of a Controversial Rabbi.  Levine is also the co-editor of the Jewish Annotated New Testament.

Holding a B.A. from Smith College, and the M.A. and Ph.D. from Duke University, she has honorary doctorates from the University of Richmond, the Episcopal Theological Seminary of the Southwest, the University of South Carolina-Upstate, Drury University, Christian Theological Seminary, and Franklin College. A self-described Yankee Jewish feminist, Levine is a member of Congregation Sherith Israel, an Orthodox Synagogue in Nashville, although she is often quite unorthodox.

Registration for the Scott Lectures begins at 8:30 a.m. April 4, and the first lecture, “Hearing Jesus’ Parables through Jewish Ears,” begins at 10 a.m. The Timothy Luncheon will follow at noon. The second half of Levine’s lecture, “The Bible and the Middle East: A Difficult but Necessary Conversation,” will begin at 1:30 p.m.

Dinner will be served at 6 p.m., followed by a worship service at Bethany Memorial Church with Bethany College President Rev. Dr. Tamara Nichols Rodenberg presiding. A reception will be held after the service at Christman Manor at Pendleton Heights.

April 5, Levine will present her final lecture, “Misunderstanding Judaism means Misunderstanding Jesus,” from 9 a.m. to noon.

The Oreon E. Scott Lectures are funded through the Oreon E. Scott Foundation, which was established to strengthen the Christian Church and support Disciples-related colleges and institutions. Since its founding in 1840 by Alexander Campbell, Bethany has been affiliated with the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ). Now in its 61st year, the first Scott Lectures were held on March 1, 1956, with Professor Arthur M. Schlesinger, Harvard University historian, as the lecturer.

To register or for more information on this year’s Oreon E. Scott Lectures, please contact the Office of Church Relations at 304.829.7723 or by email at mwalden@bethanywv.edu.

About Bethany College

Bethany, a small college of national distinction, is located on a picturesque and historic 1,300-acre campus. Bethany, the oldest degree granting institution in West Virginia, was founded in 1840 and traces its origins to the founding of Buffalo Seminary in 1818 at what was then Bethany, Virginia.