Studies in Christian-Jewish Relations 

 

             SCJR 8 (2013)                                                 1  www.bc.edu/scjr 

 

REVIEW 

David Rudolph and Joel Willitts, Eds. 

Introduction to Messianic Judaism:  
Its Ecclesial Context and Biblical Foundations 

(Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2013), paperback, 335 pp. 

 

Yaakov Ariel,  

The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill 
 

 

 

The Messianic Judaism movement appeared on the scene in 

the early 1970s, stirring much interest and controversy. Unlike 

most previous Jews who embraced Christianity and eventually 

lost their Jewish identity, the more assertive and independent 

minded Messianic Jews have considered it within their right to 

establish congregations that are intended for Jewish believers 

in Jesus and preserve Jewish practices. They created their own 

cultural and religious environments, combining evangelical 

theology and morality with Jewish identity, symbols, customs, 

and loyalties. The movement has succeeded in building a 

niche for itself within the larger evangelical world and 

throughout the years gradually gained the respect of the more 

inclusive elements in the Jewish community.  

 

In the 2000s-2010s, a new generation of Messianic Jewish in-

tellectuals has further developed the theological independence 

of the movement and its scholarly enterprises. Introduction to 
Messianic Judaism serves as a declaration of the movement’s 

scholarly coming of age. Merely a few years earlier, such a lit-

erary endeavor would not have been possible. The volume 

gives voice to the intellectual interest and self-perceptions of 

the group. Messianic Jews have seen themselves as heirs of the 

first disciples of Jesus. They often refer to these early Jewish 

adherents as “Messianic Jews,” which also establishes the legit-

imacy of modern believers as a proud Jewish presence within 

the body of Christ. The book represents such notions and 

comes to draw a connection between the contemporary and 

early believers.  



Studies in Christian-Jewish Relations 

 

             2                                                                                    SCJR 8 (2013) 

The book is divided into two parts. The first deals with the 

contemporary realities of the Messianic Jewish community. 

Twelve Messianic scholars and leaders explore various theo-

logical, communal, missiological, and ethical challenges of the 

current movement. The authors include Stuart Dauermann, 

David Rudolph, and Mark Kinzer, leaders of Hashivenu, a 

new movement within Messianic Judaism that calls for greater 

independence from traditional Christian theology and from 

earlier missionary approaches that marginalized Judaism. A 

number of articles, including those of Kinzer, Daniel Juster, 

and Jennifer Rosner, explore the relations of Messianic Jews 

to both the Jewish and Christian worlds and the kind of dia-

logues in which Messianic Jews should be engaged.  

 

The second part contains articles by mostly evangelical schol-

ars, almost all of them not from the Messianic community, 

that relate to early Christianity, the New Testament, Jewish 

communities of believers in Jesus, and early Christian attitudes 

towards Judaism and Jewish Law. Messianic Jews take special 

interest in such matters as they are strongly connected to their 

historical perception of the place of Jewish believers, and of 

Judaism in general, within the church. The articles reflect cer-

tain common approaches to the study of early Christianity, the 

New Testament and Second Temple Judaism. Scholars such 

as Daniel Harrington, Darrell Bock, Todd Wilson, and Scott 

Hafemann take the view that passages in the New Testament 

point to the existence of vibrant Jewish Christian communities 

in the early generations of Christianity. They also question 

some long held assumptions about supersessionist or anti-

Jewish sentiments in Christian sacred texts.  

 

One can, perhaps, question if the two sections, so different in 

their historical foci and methodologies, really belong in one 

volume. However, the book as a whole is a remarkable 

achievement. It brings together a large number of high-level 

essays on two important and timely topics and provides a very 

useful resource to scholars, students, and interested readers 

both within the Messianic Jewish community and among the 

general public. I strongly recommend it.