This book explores the relationship between Christian faith and Jewish identity from the perspective of three Jewish believers in Jesus living in eastern and central Europe before World War 1: Rudolf Hermann (Chaim) Gurland, Christian Theophilus Lucky (Chaim Jedidjah Pollak), and Isaac (Ignatz) Lichtenstein. They were all rabbis or had rabbinic education, and were in different ways combining their faith in Jesus as Messiah with a Jewish identity. The book offers a biographical study of the three men and an analysis of their understandings of identity. This analysis considers five categories for identification: the relation of Gurland, Lucky, and Lichtenstein to Jewish tradition, to the Jewish people, to Christian tradition, to the Christian community, and to the network of Jewish believers in Jesus. Lillevik argues that Gurland, Lucky, and Lichtenstein in very different ways transcended essentialist as well as constructionist ideas of Jewish and Christian identity.
This fascinating, groundbreaking, and much-needed study of these three pioneers highlights their contribution to nineteenth-century Hebrew Christianity and to Messianic Judaism today. Lillevik tells their stories, traces their theological development, and explores the challenges they posed and faced. Through the lens of history and comparative analysis, his careful scholarship calls for renewed attention to the role of Jewish believers in Jesus as the bridge between church and synagogue. Read, reflect, and enjoy!
--Richard Harvey, Hebrew Bible and Jewish Studies, All Nations Christian College, Hertfordshire, UK
Lillevik's book is a timely and pioneering study of three Jewish-Christian leaders of the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. How did they negotiate the difficult challenge of combining two apparently incompatible identities, Jewish and Christian? Lillevik addresses this question with great empathy and methodical finesse. No one has presented and studied these three leaders in such breadth and depth before. His book will remain a landmark study of Jewish-Christian identities in the modern period.
--Oskar Skarsaune, Norwegian School of Theology, Oslo, Norway
Raymond Lillevik (PhD) is lecturer in Kristen Videregaende skole in Nordland, Nesna in Norway. Apostates, Hybrids, or Jews? is a publication of his Phd-dissertation at The Norwegian School of Theology.
