[galaktiusman]

I like the idea of taking the Buddha down off the pedestal and seeing him as just a man

Agree. When his image comes to my mind I see a man, a teacher, giving wise instructions to be followed.

And It is where the greatness of the historical Buddha resides; he was a teacher, an outstanding one whose teachings are only, and only for, deliverance of mind. To see him as a man is, actually, one of the main reformations taken by some Soto Schools about Buddha, more as a teacher, more as an experience of the teachings than the kind of the Mahayana deity we usually find in their religious oeuvre. Mahayana religion, because such, needed to make out from him a kind of deity. And it happend.