In the past 150 years, the rediscovery of the Jewishness of Jesus has provided Jews and Christians of good will with the raw data on which to build a new understanding of one another. Likewise, the motivation underlying interfaith dialogue has pushed scholars to challenge old constructs, often based on prejudice, and to develop a more accurate history of the formative period of both traditions. This has not always been easy.

In her new book, Abraham Geiger and the Jewish Jesus (The University of Chicago Press, 1998), Susannah Heschel assess-es the life and scholarship of one of the pioneers of the Jewish study of Jesus. Geiger (1810-1874) was both a scholar and a leader of the emerging Reform movement in Germany. His work on early Christianity was part of his larger effort to overcome the anti-Judaism that characterized German New Testament studies and to provide support for the struggle against the religious and cultural objections to Jewish civil equality. He also wanted to give Jews "an explanation of Christianity that would foster respect for it among Jews without encouraging abandonment of Judaism or conversion." By defining Jesus as a figure within Judaism rather than as the founder of a new religion, Geiger sought to empower his co-religionists by providing them with a view of Judaism as "the original, true religion, from which Christianity was a deviant derivative." This portrayal of Jesus and Christianity, not surprisingly, caused quite a storm in Christian theological and scholarly circles. It is an important episode in the history of both scholarship and Jewish-Christian relations.

Heschel's meticulously researched book is well-written, and, if one can say this about a work of scholarship, even enter-taining. She provides a fascinating portrait of 19th-century German culture and society and of a Jewish community trying to redefine itself for the modern world and establish its place within that world. In addition to an engaging description of this significant chapter in the history of Jewish-Christian relations, Heschel also reminds us of how much is at stake for both Jews and Christians in the effort to recover the "real" Jesus.