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This is further confirmed, then, when Bultmann speaks of New Testament theology as providing a control whereby the identity of present preaching and systematic theology with "the apostolic preaching" can be secured (New Testament and Mythology and Other Basic Writings: 62). That this "apostolic preaching'" is not identical with, but distinct from, the New Testament writings is made clear by another passage in which Bultmann expressly appeals to the apostolic preaching as the primary authority. "The word of God," he argues, "is God's word only in the event, and the paradox lies in the fact that it is this word as one and the same word that begins with the apostolic preaching and is fixed in scripture and that continues to be borne by human beings in the proclamation," namely, "the word of Christ" (121).

Wiki MarkupThere seems little question, then, that the primary authority for Bultmann as much as for Marxsen or for me is neither the canon as such nor some "canon _within_ the canon," but rather "the canon _before_ the canon" constituted by the earliest Christian witness, which he refers to as "the apostolic preaching" and as "the kerygma of the earliest community" (cf. also his references to "\[t\]he Easter faith of the first disciples"; "the word of proclamation that arises in the event of Easter"; and "the emergence of faith in the risen one in which the proclamation has its origin" \ [39 f.\]). If any theology, including Paul's and John's, is authoritative, it is only because, or insofar as, it unfolds in a more or less scientific, conceptual way the self-understanding correlative with this earliest kerygma.

Moreover, the proclamation of the crucified and risen Jesus hardly seems to be the earliest form of Christian preaching. By Bultmann's own account, the decision of faith of the first disciples at Easter was by way of re-making a decision they had already made in "following" Jesus during his lifetime. Therefore, insofar as this decision became explicit in the kind of kerygmatic formulations that make up the earliest layer of the synoptic tradition -- and by Bultmann's own analysis, these formulations are precisely kerygmatic -- we must recognize what Marxsen calls the "Jesus-kerygma" as a distinct and presumably earlier form of kerygma alongside the "Christ-kerygma." (It may be worth pointing out that Bultmann's reconstruction of the proclamation of Jesus is an implicit acknowledgement of what Marxsen means by "the Jesus-kerygma." For by his own admission, all that is certain about his reconstruction is that it is in this way that Jesus is represented in the earliest stratum of Christian witness.)

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