The Catholic Biblical Association (CBA)has elected Dr. Amy-Jill Levine as its new president, a historic move given that she is Jewish and has publicly revealed that she is not a literalist and “does not read the gospels as recording exactly what happened.”
Levine, a former professor in New Testament and Jewish studies at Vanderbilt University, is considered by some to be one of the world’s leading biblical scholars and has been a CBA member for dercades.
Founded in 1936, the Catholic Biblical Association of America‘s mission is to “promote, within a context of faith, scholarly study of Scripture and related fields” through meetings of the association, publications, and support for those engaged in such studies, most notably through the peer-reviewed academic journal Catholic Biblical Quarterly, as well as Old Testament Abstracts and the CBQ Monograph Series. According to NCR:
CBA’s constitution states that its work conforms to the teachings of the magisterium. Although the group is not operated by the Catholic Church, it offers consultation to the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB), including on translations of the Bible and faith formation and catechesis.”
Following blowback to her appointment, including some regarding her non-Christian status (Past President’s have typically and historically been Roman Catholic) the CBA released a statement of support, noting:
She was not elected because she is Jewish, but because she is an exceptional scholar and has played a very important role in Catholic-Jewish dialogue.
She is the first Jewish scholar to teach New Testament at the Pontifical Biblical Institute in Rome (2019). She had three audiences with Pope Francis.
Speaking of her role as an “exceptional scholar,” in 2022, in Roman Catholic priest James Martin’s Outreach magazine, she offered an apologetic for why we need to rethink the Bible’s condemnation of homosexuality, writing in part:
If it is not good for human being to be alone, why would we condemn queer people to lives of singleness and celibacy?…There are other verses that have been, and can be, read as affirming to those outside of heterosexual monogamous relations, as there are verses that suggest that the G-d of the Bible transcends any gender roles we might construct.
…Anything that prevents such love needs to be questioned, if not eliminated. Not all passages are of equal import, and not all actions lead to wholeness.To rely only on the Bible, or on particular interpretations of particular verses, and to dismiss what we know from both science and from personal testimony is both harmful and theologically aberrant. Knowledge does not stop with the last verse of John’s Apocalypse.
She also received a statement of support Bishop Joseph C. Bambera, in his role as Chair of the Committee on Ecumenical and Interreligious Affairs for the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB)*
What a dumpster fire.
A previous version of this suggested that her appointment was endorsed by the org as a whole, rather than just one individual speaking in his role as Committee chair. Corrected for clarity.
8 responses to “Catholic Biblical Association Elects Woke Jewish Woman As President: ‘I’m not a literalist’”
Uh, wow. Just wow. Just shows the dumpster fire cult that the catholic “church” has always been.
A good example of how the bloviations of “educated experts” are often little more than smoke and mirrors to obfuscate their rebellious, defiant childishness. It’s like they’re immature teenagers still stuck in high-school. At the end of the day she accuses the writers of scripture of doing exactly what she herself is doing, wants to do, and blatantly intends to do – make mess up as she goes in order to get her own way and to try to take the place of God in the lives of others. If they just made up stuff then she can just make up stuff. And this simple truth is hidden beneath mountains of meaningless, worthless, technocratic smoke and mirrors. That’s why most of them get their Ph.D. in the first place. It’s their motivation. They want the prestige, power, influence over others, and so on. The result, as we all know, is nothing but an insane whirlwind of relativist, necessarily baseless, circular, and fallacious “reasoning”.
Now if you oppose what she says about scripture, oppose her feminism, oppose her advocacy and promotion of abominable sin, they’ll call you an anti=Semite. Why? Well, that’s their motte and bailey. That’s their bait and switch. When everyone with at least half a functioning brain cell knows that the problem with her has nothing whatsoever to do with her Jewish ancestry. The irony though, is that in so doing, in trying to leverage that ancestry to promote a wicked agenda, they are doing exactly what real anti-semites do – associating Jews with all manner of wickedness and problems, and essentially blaming them for it. She’s essentially doing what the nazis did. She is feeding the anti-semitism in the name of fighting it. How smart is that?
“… always learning and never able to arrive at a knowledge of the truth. …”
Dr. Levine uses the typical tactic of selecting a single scripture verse (It is not good for man to be alone) as the basis for a perversion which God soundly condemns in both the Old and New Testaments.
Also, St. Paul points out that there occasions when it is good for man to remain single (1 Cor 7:8). Dr. Levine may have credentials but, based on what I have read from and about her, I doubt she has an eye for the truth.
Yet, in her own words, in the video referenced in the article here, she does not believe the Genesis account of creation. So there’s yet another example of her baseless reasoning. She’s appealing to scripture that she herself claims is fiction. What God did when He said that it is not good for man to be alone all led up to what He was about to do, impressing on Adam the value of woman and how she was a perfect fit for him. That phrase she has abused is about the value of women. And she denigrates women by claiming that anything and anyone can be a suitable replacement for a woman. The same goes for children, because that is a part of a man not being alone. Not just the company of woman, but also of children – of family.
[…] Catholic Biblical Association Elects Woke Jewish Woman As President: ‘I’m not a literalist’ […]
Dr. Levine uses the typical tactic of selecting a single scripture verse (It is not good for man to be alone) as the basis for a perversion which God soundly condemns in both the Old and New Testaments.
Also, St. Paul points out that there occasions when it is good for man to remain single (1 Cor 7:8). Dr. Levine may have credentials but, based on what I have read from and about her, I doubt she has an eye for the truth.
Yeah, so? What else do we expect now? It’s all WOKE from here on, ladies and gents, because people DEMAND it. I just laugh at this stuff anymore.
Imagine if she worked for the Airlines . the instructions say fasten your seat belt its if its going to.be a
rough landing . But im not a literalist so just get up and walk around and enjoy the bumpy landing . or would she make a great pharmist . the instructions say for your heart your to take some thing that hard to pro nounce but im not a literalist . so i just picked out a bunch a pills you can take instead there all differnt colors to! Enjoy!