A Vanderbilt University professor will discuss Jesus’s Jewish ancestry during the Carmichael-Walling lecture series in November.

The Carmichael-Walling Lecture series is a yearly event started in 1987 that brings in a well-known scholar to discuss topics of faith each November. This year Dr. Amy-Jill Levine, professor of New Testament and Jewish studies and Werthan professor of Jewish studies at Vanderbilt University, will be the speaker of the series. She is also an affiliated professor of the Woolf Institute: Centre for Jewish-Christian Relations in Cambridge.

Levine has written and co-authored over half a dozen books for adults and many children’s books. She also has worked on several adult education programs and tapes.

Dr. Jeff Childers, Professor of New Testament and Early Christianity in the Graduate School of Theology, directs the lectureship. He also is the director of the Center for Study of Ancient Religious Texts.

“A.J. Levine is a Jewish Scholar in New Testament and early Christianity,” Childers said. “She does a lot of research on Jesus’s Jewish background. I think it will be very interesting to anybody who is interested in Jesus or the Gospels.”

The lectures will take place on Nov. 14 in the Onstead-Packer Biblical Studies Building room 114 and are open to the public.

The first lecture will begin at 4 p.m., and Levine will discuss the Jewishness of Jesus and how that leads to a greater understanding of Jesus.

The second lecture will start at 8:15 p.m. and will discuss several parables, such as “The Parable of the Lost Coin” and “The Parable of the Prodigal Son,” and how these stories are affected by Jesus’s Jewish culture.

“I am really hoping students will have a greater understanding of who Jesus is,” Childers said. “But also, that they will understand that his Jewishness is absolutely integral to who he is and what he means.”