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But, then later, in another essay in the same book (136), he says exactly the opposite – -- that revelation and the apostles' witness to revelation, and thus the real canon, are identical.

Clearly, if the second position is correct, Marxsen is as vulnerable, in his way – -- the way of what might be called his "Jesus-kerygmatic docetism" – -- to the criticism he makes both of Bultmann's appeal to the Christ-kerygma and of the appeal conservatives are wont to make to the Bible, or the New Testament (cf., e.g., Anfangsprobleme der Christologie: 54 f.). If, on the contrary, the first position is correct, he evidently has to make much more clearly and consistently than he does something like my distinction between the empirical-historical Jesus, on the one hand, and the existential-historical Jesus, on the other.

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