The Human Christ reveals how the idea of Jesus has functioned as a vehicle for some of the best and worst ideas of the West. The historical person of Jesus has intrigued a panorama of some of the most interesting figures of modernity: Spinoza, Newton, Voltaire, Hegel, George Eliot, Cecil B de Mille and Norman Mailer. Jesus research has been shaped by nearly every intellectual fashion and the scholar-ship of each epoch of Jesus research has dated with alarming speed. But have the Jesus-searchers of every era merely reconstructed an historical Jesus who was little more than an image of themselves? In this revealing new book, the author enters the sometimes tragic, sometimes comic, always complex mental worlds of these researchers and concludes that the future of Jesus studies lies with those who give credence to his Jewishness and to the canonical Gospels as historical documents. 'Vividly and entertainingly she conveys that the range of responses to Jesus has always been one of the most endless variety ...Thoroughly recommended.' Ian Wilson, author of Jesus: the Evidence.