As someone who, I confess, has frequently nodded along at the gospels’ sweeping language, I read Amy-Jill Levine’s “Quit Picking on the Pharisees!” (March 2015) with great interest. Her fine piece and the additional reading it inspired have convinced me that certain Christian criticisms (Luke’s “money-lovers” charge, for example) are unfair and promote harmful stereotypes, while others (Jesus’ discussion of the Sabbath in Mark 2:23-28) demonstrate not distortion, but legitimate theological critique. I regret that such subtleties are missing from the article’s headlines, which I know Levine did not pen. Far from arguing that “Christian criticism of the Pharisees is anti-Semitic,” Levine says “[t]he pastors and priests who make such comments are not anti-Semites.” Instead they are, as I was before reading this piece, insufficiently informed.
Adam Pachter
Arlington, Massachusetts
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