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\[T\]he true apostolic and, therefore, canonical witness \[refers to \] the earliest layer of witness now accessible to us through historical-critical study of the \[s\]ynoptic \[g\]ospels, which, following one of the most careful students of this whole matter, Willi Marxsen, I call the Jesus-kerygma (F&F: 45 f.).
Here, if anywhere, in these earliest Jesus-traditions \[sc. these very oldest traditions that any quest of the historical Jesus must perforce reconstruct\], or, as Willi Marxsen prefers to say, in this earliest 'Jesus-kerygma,' we have what for us today must function as the real Christian canon or norm of appropriateness (PC: 113 f.).