Jesus, Paul, Peter, James, Jesus’ mother Mary and Mary Magdalene were all Jews even though they appear prominently in the Christian Bible, also known as the New Testament. Their lives were imbued with Jewish history, beliefs, and practices. Often those nuances and meanings are lost when those texts are read without that understanding. In this class we will read some of the Gospels through the lens of the Jewish world of which these texts came out of. Our text book will be, The Jewish Annotated New Testament, edited by Amy-Jill Levine and Marc Z. Brettler, who assembled the best Jewish scholars of our generation to write commentaries on the text. This class will explore the messages of the Gospels as well as unpack the Jewish culture from where they emerged from.