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There are clearly many reasons for not exaggerating the differences between Bultmann's view of Christian origins and Marxsen's. Thus, when Bultmann says, for example, that "while it is true that Jesus did not demand faith in his own person, he did demand faith in his word,' " he anticipates almost exactly Marxsen's distinction between the "two separate branches of tradition" in the New Testament writings, i.e., Jesus-kerygma and Christ-kerygma. Or, again, even though Bultmann characteristically talks about Jesus himself, or "the historical Jesus;' ," whereas Marxsen typically talks about "the Jesus-kerygma" and not about "the historical Jesus," Bultmann is also explicit in saying that what lies before us in the earliest stratum of the synoptic tradition is not Jesus' proclamation, but the proclamation of the earliest community, and in allowing, accordingly, that all he or anyone else could possibly mean by "Jesus' proclamation" as a historical phenomenon is "the complex of ideas" expressed in that earliest stratum. And yet Bultmann, as I said, characteristically gives all this one spin -- by proceeding to explicate the kerygma or proclamation of Jesus himself -- while Marxsen typically gives it another -- by explicating, instead, the Jesus-kerygma of the earliest church.

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