What are the key diversities?
Just about every level of theology - sufficient for him to write a whole book on it!
Here is an excerpt of a review of the book:
Book Review by Raymond Pfister of Richard Harvey's
Mapping Messianic Jewish Theology: A Constructive Approach - Studies in Messianic Jewish Theology.
Milton Keynes: Paternoster, 2009. (316 pages) ISBN 978-1842276440.
As an engaged Messianic Jewish practitioner himself, Richard Harvey was a founding member of the London Messianic Congregation, and also served as President of the International Messianic Jewish Alliance. This book is a revised version of his doctoral dissertation (Ph.D., University of Wales, Lampeter).
The publication of Harvey’smost significant research fills an important gap in a relatively new field of study, i.e. Messianic Jewish theology (there are some 150,000 estimated Jewish believers in Jesus worldwide). Being the first of its kind, logically this monograph does not claim to be exhaustive. His proposed taxonomy is extremely helpful, as it shows how plurality rather than uniformity characterizes its more recent developments. He identifies eight distinctive approaches (which he calls
types or streams of thought) on a theological continuum moving from a more Christian (i.e. Gentilized) to a more Jewish understanding of the faith. He quotes extensively various Messianic Jewish authors on a selection of major theological themes: the doctrine of God, the messiahship of Jesus, Torah (in theory and practice), and the future of Israel. It is particularly significant to take note of the fact that Messianic Judaism is actually not a child of (modern-day) Judaism, but is born out of (modern-day) Protestant evangelicalism and the Charismatic movement.
Harvey’s work pays however very little attention to the pneumatology of Messianic Jews! Moreover, a great majority of Messianic Jews have adopted and are directly or indirectly influenced in their thinking about Jewishness and Jewish identity by Dispensationalism and the presuppositions of its hermeneutical system. This is most obviously seen in the considerable impact of dispensational eschatology and its specific premillennial features (i.e. detailed discussions around end-time scenarios and various views about a thousand-year reign of the Messiah). There is little expectation that this will change in the near future
Copyright: Raymond Pfister
The book is titled: 'Mapping Messianic Jewish Theology' by Dr. Richard Harvey, published in the UK.
The book has been in the Book List sticky for quite some time