In this paper we consider the Newton-like methods for the solution of nonlinear equations. In each step of the Newton method the linear equations are solved approximatively by a projection method. We call this a projective-Newton method. We investigate the convergence and the order of convergence for these methods. Next, the projective-Newton methods in the finite element space are applied for nonlinear elliptic boundary value problems. In this case the linear equations of the Newton method are solved by the Ritz method.