Embracing the Human Jesus is a sincere effort to think anew about Christianity and Christian practice on the foundation of a purely human Jesus. Against the inevitable criticism that such a Jesus undermines the historic faith of the church, David Galston finds a human Jesus who inspires a new era of honesty in the practice of Christianity.

The book expresses the awareness held by many scholars that the historical Jesus was an end-time prophet not well suited to the contemporary world. Galston counters that, by pointing out that whether taking the apocalyptic or non-apocalyptic view, virtually all scholars see Jesus as a participant in the Jewish wisdom tradition. On this often marginalised foundation, Galston proposes that the trajectory of the ancient wisdom of Jesus can be grasped in the contemporary world and can find life in the thinking and practices of a new church. The book combines both academic theory and basic Christian experience to offer a simple model that will help communities take the historical Jesus to church.