Tucker S. Ferda examines the notion that the historical Jesus himself had grappled with the failure of his mission to Israel. This theory, known as the Galilean crisis achieved traction in the 19th century before research moved on to consider the response of the Jesus movement to the rejection of the gospel.

Tucker makes three main contributions. First, he reconstructs the origin of the crisis theory in a way that greatly expands traditional histories of New Testament research. Tucker considers contributions before Hermann Samuel Reimarus to show that the crisis theory was shaped in many ways by earlier (in some cases \"pre-critical\") gospel interpretation. Second, despite the claims of modern scholarship to have moved beyond the 19th century quest, Tucker shows that the logic of the crisis theory is still very much a part of current scholarship, albeit in a different guise. Finally Tucker makes the case that while the crisis theory is a failed hypothesis, its suggestions about early success and growing opposition in the ministry, as well as its claim that Jesus met and responded to disappointing cases of rejection, should be revisited. This book thus resurrects some of the key historical moves of the crisis theory for contemporary scholarship.