Ritröð Guðfræðistofnunar - 01.09.1998, Side 175

Dealh, Jesus, Derrida
Christ (Bultmann’s phrase).38 In this Bultmann has isolated the person of Jesus
as a mere “historical” fact whose teaching is more or less harmonious with
that of Paul and whose (secret) messiahship becomes revealed in the resur-
rection as proclaimed by the early church and Paul (who personally claims
to have received a revelation of Jesus being the messiah, see Gal 1:12-16).
The original proclamation (kerygma) of the church consists of acknowledging
the “historical” person of Jesus as the messiah: he is neither a teacher nor a
role model or a hero—attributes that Bultmann finds applicable only to a
historical person. And they cannot apply to Jesus because, in his opinion, Jesus
is beyond such a personal profile. He cannot be known by attributes applicable
only to the flesh. Indeed, Bultmann claims that the person of Jesus cannot be
known except through the message that proclaims him as Christ and that in
faith: Jesus Christ is lord.39
While Bultmann was later to modify his position on the inaccessibility of
the historical Jesus,40 the voice of the founding figure was to remain attainable
basically through the proclamation of Paul about the death and resurrection
of Jesus. Much has since been done in terms of identifying traces of the Jesus
tradition in apocrypha literature, as well as reconstructing more clearly the
same tradition within the New Testament gospels—to which Bultmann
contributed no insignificant effort—41 while he had used sources most
indiscriminately in order to subordinate the voice of Jesus (as would seem to
be the case) to the fabrications of Paul. That the death and resurrection of
Christ constitute the core of the Pauline kerygma is echoed throughout the
Pauline tradition.42 However, in the tradition of the sayings of Jesus such as
38 lbid., 191-202.
39 lbid., 202-213.
40 Cf. James M. Robinson, A New Quest of the Historical Jesus, SBT 25 (London: SCM,
1959), passim.
41 Cf. his, “Was lasst die Spruchquelle iiber die Urgemeinde erkennen,” Oldenburgische
Kirchenblatt 19 (1913) 35-37, 41-44 [“What the Sayings Source Reveals about the Early
Church,” in John S. Kloppenborg, ed., The Shape of Q: Signal Essays on the Sayings
Gospel (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress, 1994) 23-34; Die Geschichte der synoptischen
Tradition, FRLANT 29, 2nd ed. (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1931) [ 1921] [Tlie
History ofthe Synoptic Tradition, 2nd. rev. English ed., J. Marsh, transl. (New York, NY:
Harper & Row, 1968)] [earlier 2nd English ed., 1963].
42 The nature of the resurrection became an issue of a prominent debate between Karl Barth
and Bultmann earlier in this century. Barth claims in his exposition on 1 Cor 15 [Die
Auferstehung der Toten, Eine akademische Vorlesung iiber 1. Kor. 15 (Munich: Kaiser,
1924)] [The Resurrection ofthe Dead, H. J. Stenning transl. (New York, NY: Revell, 1933)]
that Paul refers to a physical resurrection which Bultmann rejects in his review of the
commentary [“Karl Barth, ‘Die Auferstehung derToten,’” in ideni, op. cit., 38-64 (1926)]
[Faith and Understanding] by appealing to a different understanding of the body in Paul,
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