Kerygma, Catechesis and Other Things We Used To Find Twentieth-Century Research On Early Christian Teaching Since Alfred

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Currents in Biblical Research
Kerygma, Catechesis and

10(3) 410–441
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Research on Early Christian

Teaching since Alfred
Seeberg (1903)
Benjamin Edsall
University of Oxford, UK
Abstract
Inquiry into the content of the preaching and teaching of the early Church was commonplace
in the first part of the twentieth century. Such research was carried out under a number
of different headings – kerygma, catechesis, etc. – and pursued with the form-critical tools
of the day. However, these reconstructions encountered serious criticism and since the
1970s such inquiries have been more reserved. Today the field is divided, if sparse, with
some employing the methods and results of earlier scholarship and others all but ignoring
the question entirely. The present article examines this history of scholarship from Alfred
Seeberg into the twenty-first century.
Keywords
catechesis, early Christian teaching, ethical catalogues, form-criticism, kerygma, missionary
preaching, Alfred Seeberg
When early Christian missionaries established a community, what did they

teach? Can we discern the shape and content of this teaching and, if so, how? By
what terminology should we designate it (kerygma, Missionspredigt, catechesis,
Heilsverkündigung)? How is it related to the texts that later became designated
as the New Testament? These questions, and others related to them, occupied the
Corresponding author:
Benjamin Edsall, The Queen’s College, University of Oxford, Oxford OX1 4AW, UK
Email: ben.edsall@theology.ox.ac.uk
Downloaded from cbi.sagepub.com at NORTH CAROLINA STATE UNIV on March 6, 2015

Edsall: Kerygma, Catechesis and Other Things We Used to Find 411
time and energies of many scholars during the early part of the twentieth century,
though indeed the interest in identifying the teaching of the early Church stretches
back in various forms to the post-apostolic period (e.g. Apostolic Constitutions
6.3.14; Irenaeus, Haer. 3.pr; 3.3.4). At the beginning of the twentieth century, the
works of Alfred Seeberg (1863–1915) provided new impetus to the question and
represent the first ‘critical’ reconstruction of what he saw as the early Christian
catechism (1903, 1905, 1906, 1908).
In tracing the history of the study of early Christian preaching and teaching, it
is often a matter of following a golden thread through many works in disparate
fields––Gospel origins, ethical catalogues, early confessional forms, etc. Because
of the disparate nature of the inquiry, Alfred Seeberg’s influence will be used
here as a limiting factor, giving manageable shape and size to this account.
However, few scholars who used his reconstruction, arguments or presupposi-
tions tried to develop his theses as they stood. Indeed, many explicitly refuted his
work while implicitly developing his project, building on shared methods and
presuppositions.
However, by the late 1970s, the rising tide of criticism against the work of
Seeberg and his ‘followers’ finally eroded its foundations with new assumptions
and methods (e.g. Dunn 1977). The question of the content of early Christian
teaching, that is, the missionary preaching and teaching that lies behind the New
Testament texts as we have them, was largely discarded in favour of a number of
other projects, such as sociological reconstruction of early Christianity, rhetori-
cal criticism, and the New Perspective, to name a few. Yet, even with the strin-
gent criticism that Seeberg et al. have received, the conclusions of these early
scholars resurface periodically, often without much justification or discussion
(e.g. Ferreira 2010: 268; Yarbrough 2009: 32, 34, 48; Stewart-Sykes 2008: 357;
Hultgren 2002: 119-20; Thiselton 2000: 444). As will be seen below, this phe-
nomenon cannot be due to the validity or universal acceptance of their conclu-
sions or methods.
Nevertheless, the question of this early Christian teaching remains an impor-
tant one. The reconstruction of early Christianity inevitably rests on the neces-
sary reconstruction of the underlying relationships between New Testament
texts. Early Christian teaching is an important part of this reconstruction.
However, the work of Seeberg and his followers does not provide a satisfactory
reconstruction for reasons to be discussed. What is needed is an approach to the
question that is able to cope with the vagaries of history and selective nature of
the evidence.
The purpose of this article, however, is a modest beginning: reviewing the
history of scholarship on this issue in order to identify major pitfalls in the quest
for early Christian preaching and teaching. To this end I will first describe
Seeberg’s proposal and method, noting some critical problems (§1). Following
that will be a necessarily selective look at important ways his work, method and/

412 Currents in Biblical Research 10(3)
or presuppositions were developed and critiqued until the late 1970s (§§2-3).
Finally, I will discuss more recent attempts at exploring early Christian teaching
(§4) before drawing a few conclusions (§5).
1. Alfred Seeberg and Der Katechismus

Alfred Seeberg attempted to reconstruct the catechism of early Christianity both
in terms of ethical teaching (die Sittenlehre) and theological content (die
Glaubensformel), though the majority of his 1903 work is given to the latter. In
reconstructing the former, Seeberg took his cue from Carl von Weizsäcker 1892
(ET 1907) and passages like 1 Cor. 4.17 and Rom. 6.17, where Paul refers respec-
tively to what he taught ‘in every church’ and a τÚπος διδαχ»ς (typos didachēs,
pattern of teaching) received by the Roman Christians. Seeberg argued that there
was a set of Christian ethical teachings which were referred to as ‘the ways’
(Seeberg 1903: 1-8). These ‘ways’ were composed of vice and virtue lists
(Laster-, Tugendkataloge) which Seeberg derived from comparisons between
letters in the New Testament. His approach was essentially statistical in that he
gathered all the terms from the various New Testament vice and virtue lists and
compared them (pp. 9-20), then following the same procedure through into the
Early Church Fathers (pp. 21-31). Words that occurred more often across these
lists were thus more likely to be part of the ‘traditional materials of the ways’
(‘Traditionsstoff der Wege’, pp. 18-19). Seeberg argued that, because the mate-
rial from these catalogues is spread throughout the New Testament, die Wege
were a set tradition of ethical teaching utilized by ‘every Christian missionary’ as
part of the baptismal instruction, though he notes that ‘the ways’ were not a tex-
tually fixed tradition but rather orally transmitted (pp. 41-42). Later, however,
Seeberg noted more cautiously that the strong evidence for such baptismal
instruction is comparatively late (Seeberg 1905: 111). Ultimately, Seeberg
claimed that ‘the ways’ go back to a Jewish proselyte catechism (Seeberg 1903:
44), a point he later argued more fully (Seeberg 1905: 96-134; Seeberg 1906:
24-34; Seeberg 1908: 1-5).
In reconstructing die Glaubensformel, Seeberg began with a discussion of 1
Cor. 15.1-5, arguing that the death, burial, resurrection and appearances of Christ
‘came to stand as the content of the Apostle’s gospel preaching’ (‘als Inhalt des
eÙαγγeλ…ζeσθαι des Apostels zu stehen kamen’, Seeberg 1903: 44-55). Proceeding
in a way similar to his discussion of the ‘ways’, he filled this content out with a
further exploration of Paul’s letters, 1 Peter, the Pastoral Epistles, Luke and
Hebrews identifying major themes such as the confession of the one creator God
who raised Jesus from the dead (cf. 1 Thess. 1.9-10; 4.14), Christ being from the
seed of David, and his imminent return for judgment (1903: 58-151).
For Seeberg, the Glaubensformel fulfilled multiple functions. First, he argued
for a close relationship between the Glaubensformel and Pauline missionary

preaching such that the formula provided the outline and basis for preaching.
Indeed, in a later work, Seeberg identified the two stating that ‘the content of the
gospel is the content of der Glaubensformel’ (Seeberg 1905: 34). In elucidating
this content, Seeberg adopted an uncontroversial position agreeing with many of
his contemporaries. The missionary preaching, according to Seeberg, dealt with
the unity and person of God; the person, birth, death, resurrection and glorifica-
tion of Jesus as Christ, and the gracious justification of humanity by God; the gift
of the Spirit and the eschatological promise of judgment and justification
(Seeberg 1903: 154-55 citing Müller 1898; cf. the apparently independent views
of Harnack 1904: 111; Deissmann 1911: 244; Weiss 1914: 220-57; and Meyer
1923: 349-63). However, not only was the Glaubensformel a crucial theological
core and the main content of the Missionspredigt, Seeberg also argued that it
filled the role of an instructional and confessional formula (Unterrichts- und
Bekenntnisformel) which was tied closely to baptismal instruction and the act of
baptism itself (Seeberg 1903: 168, 213).
As can be seen, Seeberg’s reconstruction of der Katechismus is wide-ranging
and he attempted to cover all bases and phases of integration into the early
Christian community. However, within two years of publication, there were hints
that not all was well (Bailey 1905: 773). (Even Adolf Schlatter, who was other-
wise sympathetic to the conservative trends in Seeberg’s work, did not consider
the evidence for a fixed catechetical order or praxis to be clearly attested
[Schlatter 1922: 518].) Indeed, the method by which Seeberg arrived at his con-
clusions is deeply problematic. For example, in elucidating the content of the
ethical teaching, he began with a short discussion of 1 Thess. 4.1-6 and noted
that Paul’s reference to ‘all these things’ in v. 6, in conjunction with the remind-
ers regarding sexual morality and greed (vv. 3-5), indicates that sin-catalogues
belonged ‘to the traditional materials of ‘the ways’, though in fact an actual
catalogue is absent from 1 Thess. 4 (Seeberg 1903: 10). He then moved with
breathtaking speed through (more or less) similar catalogues in Gal. 5.21; Col.
3.6; Rom. 1.32; 1 Cor. 6.9; Eph. 5.5; Rev. 21.8; 22.15 and Heb. 13.4––all on page
10!––arguing that they (or parts of them) belong to ‘the ways’.
There are a number of problems with this approach. First, Seeberg presents
the material as though it were spread evenly across the New Testament texts, but
upon closer examination one can easily see that the majority of the evidence is
Pauline (so Crouch 1972: 15-16). Furthermore, though he claims that there was
no textual tradition of ‘the ways’, Seeberg takes little cognizance of the possibil-
ity that the agreements between the Pauline and non-Pauline material might be
due to factors other than common Christian tradition such as a common religious
outlook of two independent writers, or natural and social constraints of language.
In the statistical comparisons, one almost gets the feeling that he is attempting to
recover the ipissima verba of ‘the ways’ despite the fact that he does discuss con-
nections with synonyms, which he accounts for by positing various translations

from an Aramaic tradition (Seeberg 1903: 31, 43-44). The problems of potential
lines of influence and dating of texts are not addressed by Seeberg whose basi-
cally lexical approach spans the entire New Testament sometimes within a single
page. Such an approach could only work on the a priori assumption of a unified
early Church. Indeed, Seeberg’s thesis rests not only on an assumed unity of the
early Church but also on the essential unity of early Judaism in which the
Christian catechism originated (cf. Niederwimmer 1998: 36 n. 50). The confi-
dence with which Seeberg reconstructs his ubiquitous and ancient Katechismus
leaves one bemused in light of these problems. At best, such a synthetic pastiche
of texts provides a vague idea of the sorts of things an early (Pauline) Christian
missionary might say, but it hardly leads to a set catechetical tradition. As Karl-
Wilhelm Niebuhr stated, ‘Seeberg’s individual proofs for his thesis are today
only of interest for a history of scholarship’ (‘Die Einzelnachweise Seebergs für
seine These sind heute nur noch von forschungsgeschichtlichem Interesse’,
Niebuhr 1987: 1-2; cf. Wibbing 1959: 8).
Be that as it may, Seeberg’s work influenced a number of subsequent scholars
and various parts of it were taken in three general directions. First, it was appro-
priated by the form-critical approach to gospel origins and the kerygma (§2.1-2,
below). Second, his work on Laster- and Tugendkataloge has been pursued and
expanded multiple times (§§2.3, 4.4). Third, his specific emphasis on catecheti-
cal forms was carefully pursued by two scholars in particular, Carrington 1940
and Selwyn 1958 (§2.4).
2. Positive Appropriation of Seeberg

2.1. The Kerygma in Acts and the Gospels: Dibelius, Dodd and Gewieß
Two scholars are particularly responsible for appropriating the material from
Seeberg’s Glaubensformel and Sittenlehre into discussions of the Gospels,
Martin Dibelius and C.H. Dodd. In 1919 (2nd edn 1933, ET 1934) Dibelius tried
to account for the form and content of the Gospels by arguing that they were
based on Christian missionary sermons that were comprised of the kerygma,
scriptural proofs and paraenetic material (Dibelius 1934: 17). Dibelius derived
this kerygma through a comparison between Paul’s references to his preaching
and an analysis of the Acts speeches (pp. 9-36). While their projects differ sig-
nificantly, Dibelius considered Seeberg to be an ally in supporting his arguments
about primitive Christian paraenesis as ‘a primitive Christian Halakha’ (p. 238).
He argued that the hortatory sections in Paul’s letters lacked ‘immediate relation
with the circumstances of the letter’ thus indicating that they were ‘nothing else’
but further extensions of previous paraenetic instructions (p. 239). In line with
Seeberg, he argued that Paul’s statement in Rom. 6.17, the hortatory section in
Rom. 12–13, and similar materials in James, 1 Peter, 1 Clement, Didache and

Shepherd of Hermas, indicate that Paul ‘assumes that his readers have received
similar teaching’ and thus such sections of Paul’s letters ‘belong to tradition’ (pp.
239-40). Because Dibelius was concerned primarily with gospel traditions, he
did not elucidate the content but rather argued that the origin of the paraenetic
material stems from an early collection of Jesus’ sayings and from Judaism’s
proselyte teaching (pp. 240-43).
In 1935, Charles Harold Dodd gave three lectures at King’s College, London,
subsequently published as The Apostolic Preaching and its Developments (1936),
in which he attempted to derive the gospel form and content from the primitive
Christian kerygma. Though Dodd fits here chronologically and in terms of his
project, he stands out in that he never claimed to be a form-critic nor did he
explicitly draw on Seeberg. However, in 1926 Dibelius lectured in Oxford where
Dodd was a young faculty member and one wonders if some of the striking simi-
larities between these two works are due in part to his influence (see the Author’s
Preface in Dibelius [1934: v]; although Stanton [1974: 14] considered Dodd to
be independent of Dibelius). Dodd’s thesis is like Dibelius’s, if more simple. In
a move strikingly reminiscent of Seeberg (1905: 21-22, 29), he argued that the
kerygma (proclaimed message) of the early Church, as distinguished from
didache (which involves ‘ethical instruction’), provides the framework for the
narrative of the Gospels which were created to explain it (Dodd 1936: 56). To
discern this kerygma Dodd began with direct references to Paul’s preaching in
his letters (1 Cor. 1.23; 2.2-6; 15.1-5; Gal. 3.1) and expanded these notices
through thematic parallels to this content elsewhere in the Pauline corpus. He
arrived at the conclusion that ‘[t]he Pauline kerygma included the facts of the
death and resurrection of Christ in an eschatological setting’ (p. 13) while also
arguing that Paul himself drew on an older kerygma common to himself and
other Christian missionaries which included proof from prophecy, Jesus’ Davidic
lineage, and his exaltation by God (p. 14). In order to show that this kerygma is
indeed early and widespread, Dodd turned to the speeches in the first part of
Acts. Like Dibelius before him, though with more confidence in the historicity
of Acts, Dodd argued that although the Acts speeches ‘may be free compositions
of the author’, they likely go back to a primitive source which gives the reader
access to the early kerygma.
Notably, Dibelius and Dodd pick up on the two sides of Seeberg’s reconstruc-
tion, Dibelius with the Sittenlehre and Dodd with the Glaubensformel. Like
Seeberg, Dibelius argued for widespread primitive paraenetic material that was
utilized in early Christian preaching. Also like Seeberg, his approach is largely
synthetic across a wide range of texts, though he gave his method firmer deline-
ation in form-critical terms than did Seeberg. Both Dibelius and Dodd agreed
with Seeberg that the material in question can largely be traced back to Jewish
origins at least insofar as the earliest Church was comprised of Jews proclaiming

the Messiah to other Jews. The similarities between Dodd’s account of the
kerygma and Seeberg’s Glaubensformel are striking, especially given that Dodd
does not mention Seeberg’s work. Importantly, though, in sharing these similari-
ties they also share his weaknesses. The easy synthesis across a range of texts so
characteristic of Seeberg’s work is present here too. As noted above, a necessary
assumption for such synthetic work is the fundamental unity of the early Church,
a point that had been contentious for a long time, to say the least. Finally, one
aspect of these works that has received the most critique is their heavy reliance
on the notion that the Acts speeches preserve primitive Christian traditions (see
below).
Slightly later, similar arguments to those of Dodd were put forward by J.
Gewieß (1939) who focused on the speeches from Acts 1–12 to discover ‘the
earliest apostolic kerygma’ (Gewieß 1939: foreword). He argued that this
included Jesus as Christ, Servant of God, Lord; the imminent and eschatological
salvation benefits – such as the gift of the Spirit, forgiveness of sins, salvation
and the life to come – baptism and the Lord’s Supper. The ‘earliest apostolic
proclimation of salvation’ (urapostolische Heilsverkündigung), he argued, was
an outworking of the Easter experience, focused on Christology and was inher-
ently missionary in orientation (p. 178). For all his similarities to Dibelius and
Dodd, however, neither of them appear in his bibliography.
2.2. Rudolf Bultmann’s Ideological Kerygma

Beside these works, and distinct from them in many ways, stands Bultmann’s
Theology of the New Testament (1948; ET 1952). Unlike Dibelius and Dodd,
Bultmann was not concerned to account for gospel forms but rather to give a
comprehensive account of the theology of the New Testament which is not, as in
so many other New Testament theologies, an account of the various ideas present
in each book of the New Testament. Rather, with his concern for the existential
‘encounter’ with Christ in the proclamation (Bultmann 1953: 15-16), he traced
the messages of Jesus and the early Church and their development into the the-
ologies of Paul, John and the later Church. Although he emphasized the develop-
mental aspect of early Christian teaching – from the earliest kerygma to that of
the Hellenistic church – Bultmann nevertheless appreciated the value of Seeberg’s
work (Bultmann 1952: 360). Indeed, his reconstruction of the kerygma of the
Hellenistic church bears striking resemblance to that of Seeberg: ‘proclamation
of the one God’, the person and lordship of Jesus Christ, immanent judgment, the
Church’s relation to Jews and Gentiles, the sacraments (baptism and the
Eucharist), and the Spirit (pp. 63-183). For Bultmann, there is a ‘christological
kerygma’ (cf. Dibelius 1934: 17) which is distinct from ‘Christian missionary
preaching in the Gentile world’ while both are part of a much more comprehen-
sive ‘kerygma of the Hellenistic church’ which seems to encompass the bulk of

early Christian teaching and doctrine (Bultmann 1952: 65). Like the above
scholars, Bultmann’s project rests on the assumption of a relatively clearly
defined early Christian teaching that can be identified through the synthetic com-
parison of a wide range of New Testament texts. Although the unity of the
kerygma for Bultmann tends towards philosophical idealism rather than histori-
cal claims (cf. Käsemann 1988: 330), his reconstruction suffers the same diffi-
culties noted above of abstraction and synthesis. Be that as it may, the kerygma
ruled the day in the first half of the twentieth century and was taken for granted
by a great number of scholars (e.g. Wood 1959; Hunter 1940; Hatch 1939; cf. the
discussions in Davies 1962; McDonald 1980: 3-7).
2.3. Ethical Catalogues and their Origins: G. Klein to W. Schrage

Contrary to this pervasive emphasis on the kerygma, a number of scholars con-
cerned themselves with studies of ethical materials, such as those Seeberg identi-
fied as constituting ‘the ways’. Although in this area of inquiry Seeberg was by
no means the first (see Wibbing 1959: 1-13 for the history of scholarship from
Hugo Grotius to E.G. Selwyn), his work did provide further impetus in this ques-
tion especially in his arguments for a set Christian catechism arising from a pre-
vious Jewish archetype. A caveat is needed: the question of ethical catalogues is
connected to the vast scholarship on the ‘two-ways’ traditions famously pre-
served in the Didache, Barnabas, and a number of later texts (see esp. van de
Sandt and Flusser 2002). While studies of these texts and their relationships are
legion, I will only take up their arguments where they directly impinge on the
question of early Christian teaching as defined previously.
The first to follow up Seeberg’s work was G. Klein, Der älteste christliche
Katechismus und die jüdische Propaganda-Literatur (The Oldest Christian
Catechism and Jewish Propaganda Literature, 1909). Rather than Seeberg’s
attempt to work backwards from the New Testament and other early Christian
documents to a Jewish proselyte catechism, Klein began with the shape of reli-
gion in pre-exilic Israel and worked his way up to the Didache, the main focus of
the book. He argued that beginning in the post-exilic period, there was a move
within Judaism towards universalism which was accompanied by Jewish mis-
sionary activity (Klein 1909: 38-43, 61-64) and resulted in the formation of the
Derekh Eretz literature and noachide commands (pp. 61-65), where his explora-
tion of vice and virtue lists occurs (pp. 94-101). The contribution of Klein’s work
is found in his extensive exploration of Jewish (particularly Rabbinic) sources,
even if some are of questionable value due to dating (Davies 1948: 117; Crouch
1972: 16 n. 16; but see the more recent discussion in van de Sandt and Flusser
2002: passim). However, in addressing the material in the New Testament he
effectively presumes a familiarity with and appropriation of the Derekh Eretz
propaganda (Klein 1909: 153, 249) and argues for the New Testament use of

ur-Didache material on very slender grounds (pp. 157-62). The whole of Klein’s
work rests on an understanding of a unified Second Temple and Rabbinic Judaism
as well as an essential unity in the early Church, assumptions that have been
substantially contested and undermined by many recent scholars.
Anton Vögtle was the first to devote an entire monograph to the ethical cata-
logues per se in 1936. Vögtle first isolated the vice and virtue lists as a formal
element in missionary preaching and moral formation (Vögtle 1936: 9-21,
48-51) as contrasting elements to his negative portrayal of Greco-Roman
morals (note his reference to Cicero, Epictetus, Musonius Rufus and Plutarch as
‘so-called moral philosophers’ who represent ‘the perversity of the Zeitgeist’,
pp. 22-28). Still arguing for a close affinity between Christian ethical catalogues
and popular Stoic ethical catalogues (pp. 120-24), he cautiously allowed for the
possibility of a general moral catechism underlying the ethical catalogues
including such moral staples as prohibitions against idolatry, sexual immorality
and covetousness (pp. 38-45). However, he took issue with Seeberg’s ‘radical
construction’ which does not account for the variety in the extant New Testament
catalogues (pp. 44, 51). Indeed, Vögtle argued that one cannot even speak of
vice catalogues in unitary terms since the terminology within the catalogues
varies too much (p. 113). Further, he argued, the close connections between the
various catalogues and the Old Testament actually tell against a Jewish cate-
chism since it accounts for similarities by appealing to deeper roots than a
Jewish proselyte schema (pp. 113-14). Vögtle argued that it is not even clear
that the two-ways material is of a Jewish rather than Christian origin (p. 120).
Of course, the discovery of 1QS in 1947 would prove definitively that it
pre-dated Christianity.
The next to take up the question of Laster- and Tugendkataloge was Siegfried
Wibbing in 1959. Wibbing is important in the history of scholarship for two rea-
sons. First, his is the first full-scale study of these ethical catalogues after the
discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls. He noted that while there are affinities
between the pre-Christian Jewish catalogues and those in Stoicism (especially as
seen in Stoic popular philosophy), the Jewish lists also present a notably dualis-
tic ‘two-way-schema’ (Zwei-Wege-Schema). He linked this schema to Jer. 21.8,
contrary to Seeberg’s argument that the two-ways material in his Katechismus
originated from Lev. 18–19 (Wibbing 1959: 34). Further, he noted that the Old
Testament often provided the content for these catalogues with material drawn
from the second half of the decalogue (p. 42). It was his comparison with the
ethical lists in 1QS that allowed Wibbing to develop this thesis with Jewish texts
contemporaneous with the New Testament (pp. 43-76). Thus, Wibbing argued,
as seen in the Jewish catalogues, the seemingly Stoic form is given distinctively
Christian content by the New Testament authors (note esp. his comparison
between terminology in 1QS and the New Testament ethical lists using the LXX
as a control for the translation, pp. 92-94).

The second reason for Wibbing’s importance is that he denied the connection
between these catalogues and a proselyte catechism while still attributing the
material to a Jewish provenance. For Wibbing, the connection made by Seeberg
and Klein between the later Rabbinic materials and the New Testament cata-
logues was inadmissible on the grounds of style and dating; the Rabbinic mate-
rial that is so fundamental to Seeberg and Klein’s theories of a Jewish proselyte
catechism is too late to bear the weight of their arguments (1959: 8). He states,
‘the fiction of a proselyte catechism, as based on the present materials, turns out
to be untenable’ (‘Die Fiktion eines Proselytenkatechismus erweist sich so auf
grund der vorliegenden Materials als unhaltbar’, p. 7, cf. p. 9).
The most recent full-scale study of the ethical catalogues as such is that of
Ehrhard Kamlah in his Die Form der katalogischen Paränese im Neuen Testament
(The Form of Catalogue Paraenesis in the New Testament, 1964). His distinctive
contribution is in liberating further studies of ethical lists from the conundrum of
direct lines of dependence between Jewish and Greco-Roman ethical catalogues
(Kamlah 1964: 2). Rather, he argued that both sets of vice and virtue lists have
their roots in Iranian dualism that began to influence Jews during exile and
exerted influence on the Greeks through the advances of the Persian empire as
well as the later burgeoning orientalism within Hellenism (ch. 2). However, with
respect to the vice and virtue lists in the New Testament he argues that, whatever
minor influence Hellenistic syncretism may have played, the immediate origin
and influence on them comes from Judaism (p. 176).
Kamlah’s work begins with an analysis of the New Testament catalogues, argu-
ing that while they all share characteristics, notably a penchant for dualism, they
seem to represent a looser genre (Gattung) rather than a particular form (contra
Dibelius and others); that is, the catalogues represent certain paraenetic tendencies
in early Christianity, the instantiations of which are shaped by their Sitze im Leben
rather than any preexisting form (1964: 38). Although he disagreed with Seeberg
that these lists constitute a verbally fixed catechesis, he did argue that such ethical
lists were aimed at neophytes in need of instruction and cautiously affirmed a con-
nection with baptism (pp. 35-38, cf. p. 183). He argued that these catalogues gen-
erally, and the two-angel-doctrine in particular, constitute ‘foundational instruction’
(Grundparänese) which codifies Christian conduct and functions equally for
neophytes and later community exhortations. It is this Grundparänese that is actu-
alized in the New Testament texts such as Paul’s letters (pp. 197-98).
In a slightly different vein, but still concerned with the ethical side of early
Christian teaching, Wolfgang Schrage focused on concrete, specific commands
in Paul’s ethics (1961). While most of this work is not directly relevant to the
topic at hand, in chapter 5 Schrage addressed the general validity of the Apostolic
demands and in so doing took up the question raised by Seeberg. Working from
within Paul’s letters, he noted that Paul proclaims the validity of his teaching all
his communities (cf. 1 Cor. 4.17) and universally among Christians (1 Cor.

14.33), suggesting widespread agreement (pp. 117-22). However, this is as far as

he went with Seeberg et al. The oft-posited Jewish proselyte catechism with a
fixed two-way schema, Schrage argued, cannot be substantiated from Paul’s
letters (p. 134). He argued that there is ‘no sure starting-point for the discovery
of a moral catechism’ (‘kein sicher Anhaltspunkt für einen Sittenkatechismus zu
entdecken’, p. 129). However, he affirmed close ties between Paul’s ethic and
tradition, simply not the fixed catechetical tradition posited by Seeberg and
others (cf. also Furnish 1968: 68-89).
2.4. Early Christian Catechism: Carrington, Selwyn and Moule

Aside from kerygmatic reconstructions and ethical catalogues, Seeberg’s empha-
sis on early Christian catechetical forms was famously developed by Philip
Carrington and E.G. Selwyn. In 1940, Carrington published The Primitive
Christian Catechism: A Study in the Epistles in which he focused on the New
Testament epistolary evidence in his reconstruction. Carrington opened his work
with two brief chapters in which he lays out the Jewish background for the early
Christian catechism looking at the concept of Torah and proselyte baptism. This
baptism, he argued, was accompanied by catechetical teaching drawn chiefly
from Lev. 17–19 and Exod. 12–24 and manifest in teaching like the two-ways
material preserved in Did. 1–6 which he considered to be operational within the
Greek synagogues (Carrington 1940: 13-14). However, unlike the work of
G. Klein, Carrington focused almost exclusively on Old Testament texts only
mentioning later sources anecdotally (pp. 6-7, 14).
Taking this Jewish proselyte catechism as his base, he argued that early
Christianity appropriated this material––as seen in the Apostolic decree of Acts
15.19-21 and 1 Thess. 4.1-2––into ‘a Christian law of holiness’ (Carrington
1940: 14-16). Carrington then attempted a series of synthetic comparisons
between 1 Peter and other New Testament Epistles. He laid out parallels between
1 Thessalonians, Romans, Galatians and 1 Peter ‘to make clear that our four
authorities do actually represent the same thought sequence’ (p. 20). Examining
Colossians, Ephesians, 1 Peter, James and Hebrews, Carrington identified a
fourfold catechetical form: (1) putting off all evil, (2) being subject to church,
government and social structures, (3) vigilance/prayer and (4) resisting the devil
(pp. 30-31, cf. 42-43; his headings were given in Latin to match the vulgate: (1)
Deponentes igitur omnem malum, (2) Subiecti estote, (3) Vigilate (et Orate), (4)
Resistite diabolo [or State]). According to Carrington, this form was a Christian
oral ‘torah’ that underlies all the New Testament documents (p. 88) and can even
be seen behind Pliny’s famous letter to Trajan.
In the second appendix to his 1946 commentary on 1 Peter (2nd edn 1958),
Edward Selwyn picked up the catechetical ball, so to speak, and ran with it.
Rather than jumping straight into his analysis, Selwyn began the appendix with

a discussion of ‘Formgeschichte and its application to the Epistles’ (Selwyn

1958: 365-69). Noting his indebtedness to Dibelius (p. 366 n. 1), he explained
that he would focus on ‘a number of collateral relationships which present them-
selves to view before––or largely before––that point [of the completed text] is
reached’ (p. 368). With his framework set, Selwyn identified two stages of devel-
opment within the baptismal catechism. Beginning with a comparison between
the Thessalonian letters, 1 Peter, and the Apostolic decree (Acts 15.19-21), he
argued that the first stage of catechetical material included baptism, abstention
from idolatry, murder and sexual immorality and the dualistic imagery of light
and dark (pp. 369-72), with an emphasis on love (p. 374). Selwyn used a series
of charts to visually explain the parallels between these letters (as well as some
extra material from Romans, 2 Peter and Revelation). Indeed, he considered the
evidence so clear at times that he argued Paul’s words ¢κριβῶς ο‡δατe (akribōs
oidate, you know well, 1 Thess. 5.2) ‘certainly imply precise verbal instruction’
regarding the believer’s status as a child of light (p. 379).
Selwyn identified the second stage of the catechism with the form developed
by Carrington, grounded in parallels identified between Romans, Colossians,
Ephesians, 1 Peter, and James. This catechism begins with (1) baptism as the
entry into new life which (2) necessitates certain renunciations, (3) patterns of
faith and worship (analogous to Seeberg’s Glaubensformel) and (4) social vir-
tues/duties (1958: 389-423). He argued that Carrington’s stages of ‘vigilance’
and ‘resistance’ were incorporated into the catechism later, being developed as a
persecution form (p. 455).
The results of Carrington and Selwyn’s tour de force argument share obvious
similarities with Seeberg’s position: a baptismal catechism including catalogues
of vice and virtue and faith confessions. Notably, when these works were first
published they were warmly received by numerous scholars (Miller 1947; Davies
1948: 122, passim; Dodd 1959: 107; but note the critical appraisal of Beare
1946). However, even some otherwise positive responses were cautious regard-
ing the confidence with which Selwyn and Carrington reconstruct these elusive,
semi-textual traditions (Dinkler 1952: 234-35). While such caution is well taken,
it does not address a number of other problems present particularly in Selwyn’s
analysis (though by extension applicable to Carrington as well). Indeed Selwyn’s
work well demonstrates some of the pitfalls of such synthetic form-critical work,
problems that recur in more contemporary appropriations of this theory (e.g.
Hultgren 2002: 119-22).
First, the attempt to identify catechetical forms through highly synthetic com-
parison leads him to treat disparate elements as though they were fixed formulae.
Selwyn’s charts, noted above, are typical instantiations of this misleading arrange-
ment. In order to present the parallels convincingly, he uses one text (usually
from 1 Peter) as the base of the formal pattern and rearranges the other texts in
the chart to match. This leads to the impression that the catechetical material

adduced by Selwyn occurs in the same order when in fact very often materials
from disparate parts of a text are placed beside one another, even with the order
reversed, to show the ‘form’ more clearly. This is putting the cart before the horse.
Second, Selwyn at times loses the wood for the formgeschichtliche trees. For
instance, his commitment to the existence of oral forms leads him to say, ‘we
may be content to note that Rom xiii. 13, 14 are so similar in thought and phrase
to 1 Thess. v. 7-8 as to point to a common source’ (Selwyn 1958: 381). But surely
that common source is easily identified as Paul; no outside catechetical content
necessary.
Third, as noted with respect to Seeberg’s arguments above, the evidence for
the catechism of the early Church is drawn almost exclusively from 1 Peter and
Pauline letters though it is presented as though it extends throughout the whole
early Church. In fact, this critique is even more pronounced for Selwyn’s argu-
ments since he attributes many of the similarities between 1 Peter and 1
Thessalonians to the fact that Peter and Paul list Silvanus as co-author (or possi-
bly as amanuensis; δι¦ Σιλουανοῦ, dia Siloyanoy, through Silvanus, 1 Pet. 5.12).
A further difficulty in depending so heavily on 1 Peter is the fact that this letter
is difficult to place. On a conservative reconstruction, it was written by Peter from
Rome at the end of his life (c. 64–68 ce) at a time when he would have been in
contact with Paul, who was likely also there, and indeed it could have been written
after Paul’s death. Thus imprecise conceptual agreements with Pauline letters
could easily be accounted for by means of general familiarity and agreement
rather than fixed catechetical forms (cf. Tuckett 2005: 513; although Tuckett’s
article focuses on the relationship between the Didache and Matthew, his com-
ments on dependence apply equally here. This problem is exacerbated given that
most of the other evidence Selwyn cites in his charts is from Pauline literature. On
a more common dating, 1 Peter was written by an anonymous early Christian
leader some time after Peter’s death in the middle of the first century and before
Polycarp’s letter to Smyrna (c. 135 ce, Beare 1970: 29) or perhaps before 1
Clement (c. 95 ce) or previous persecutions mentioned by Pliny the Younger
(c. 92 ce, Elliot 2000: 135). In that case, there is no way to rule out Pauline influ-
ence (even if muted) on 1 Peter, thus undermining arguments for shared pre-
textual catechetical traditions. Thus, even this developed and well-received recon-
struction did not avoid the same problems already encountered by Seeberg.
A work that could be considered the fullest flowering of the formgeschichtli-
che method in British scholarship is C.F.D. Moule’s The Birth of the New
Testament (1966). Moule drew on arguments put forth by Dibelius, Dodd,
Selwyn, and Wibbing (among others) and attempted to trace the origin and
development of the actual documents which comprise the New Testament. Moule
argued that the New Testament documents were developed from three major
aspects of the early Church: its communal worship (where his discussion of the
kerygma is located), its need to explain itself (both internally and externally) and

its need to defend itself. He argued that worship provided the Church with a
‘matrix for the formation of Christian exhortation and ethical direction’ that was
based on the kerygma but is primarily manifest in the various hymnic fragments
found in the New Testament (1966: 11-32). The kerygma of the early Church was
accompanied by catechetical material that, according to Moule, is seen clearly in
Heb. 5.11-14 (among other places) but he judiciously severs the ties between
catechism and baptism (pp. 129-30). Further, picking up on earlier arguments
(cf. Evans 1956), Moule nuanced the distinction between preaching and instruc-
tion (kerygma and didache) arguing that in actual practice a missionary sermon
included both information about the Christ event and an appeal for repentance
that included ethical exhortation while later catechesis involved extensions of
both areas of teaching. He noted that ‘[a]t any rate, [the] instructional and edifi-
catory material often looks like a reminder’ (Moule 1962: 133).
Importantly, in defining the actual content of this teaching Moule leaned on
the conclusions of the above scholars with very little else. Indeed, he even went
as far as to identify ‘a certain uniformity in the “headings” relating to baptismal
divestiture and investiture’ which are drawn from the categories developed by
Carrington and Selwyn (1962: 134). However, unlike many of the previous
authors, the implicit necessity of a unified early Church was brought out of the
shadows and addressed directly. While admitting the diversity of early commu-
nities and expressions, he stated that ‘[t]he marvel is…that the basic Christian
convictions persist with such remarkable consistency through such diversity’
(p. 163). The unifying centre, Moule argued, is ‘the unique, distinctive Christian
Gospel of the undeserved graciousness of God actually effected in history in
Jesus Christ’, surrounded by the liturgical practices of baptism and the Eucharist
(pp. 175-77; cf. earlier Cullmann 1943).
3. Criticism of Seeberg et al.

It is important to note that, various disagreements and nuances aside, there was
widespread agreement in the first half of the twentieth century on three major
points: (1) the existence of a kerygma or catechesis (variously defined), (2) the
ability of scholars to identify it especially through the use of Formgeschichte (at
least in general outline), and (3) the essential unity of the early Church necessary
to support such theses. As has been noted by several scholars, it is no accident
that studies of the kerygma flourished contemporaneously with a burgeoning
ecumenical movement (Evans 1956: 25; Davies 1962: 6-7; Wilckens 1974: 19;
McDonald 1980: 3; though Lemcio 1988: 15 n. 5 calls this assessment ‘unfair
and unscholarly’). The close ties with form-criticism have also been clear from
the time of Dibelius onwards. However, it is precisely these three points that were
increasingly questioned by subsequent scholars until ultimately the question of
early Christian teaching, at least as it had been asked, was largely set aside.

3.1. Ulrich Wilckens, Graham Stanton, and the Speeches in Acts

As already seen in some of the scholars discussed above, confidence in the abil-
ity to reconstruct early Christian teaching varied from the beginning. While
Seeberg, Dodd, Carrington and Selwyn were bold in their reconstructions, others
such as Vögtle, Schrage, Kamlah and Moule were more cautious. However, on a
more significant front, the whole formgeschichtliche method became increas-
ingly questioned. In 1963 Ulrich Wilckens published Die Missionsreden der
Apostelgeschichte (The Missionary Speeches of Acts; 2nd edn 1969; 3rd edn
1974) in which he contested the then popular view of Dibelius (among others)
that the speeches in the early part of Acts could be explored for content of the
earliest kerygma. Based on a careful analysis of these speeches, Wilckens argued
that they were integrally related to their literary context such that they could not
be extracted like form-critical gems to be polished and set elsewhere (Wilckens
1974: 71; cf. already Baur 1876: 61). He noted that the speeches in Acts 1–12
share, at best, minor agreements with Pauline passages such as 1 Cor. 15.3-8, 1
Thess. 1.9-10 and that the latter display quite different emphases, countering a
crucial part of Dibelius’s argument (Wilckens 1974: 77-86). In fact, according to
Wilckens, it is not the early speeches in Acts that correspond to the Pauline for-
mulations, but the speeches in Hellenized contexts: at Lystra and Athens (p. 89).
From this, he suggested that Luke drew on a ‘Hellenistic-Christian missions
schema’ and worked backwards from this to construct speeches he thought
fitting for the earliest Church (p. 91).
Although this position about speeches in Acts did not go uncontested, the
doubts about the basis for such form-critical reconstructions were sown. Graham
Stanton, for one, rejected parts of Wilckens’ work (e.g. Stanton 1974: 19-26). He
found ‘no need to quarrel with the form-critical axiom that the traditions [about
Jesus] are kerygmatic’ (p. 172, cf. p. 28) and considered it highly likely that the
life and work of Jesus held a central place in early Christian preaching of all
varieties (pp. 27, 84, 114). Nevertheless, Stanton agreed with the critics of Dodd
and Dibelius that the speeches in Acts were shaped by ‘Luke’s own theological
perspective’ (p. 15). Further, he offered his own criticisms of form-critical
assumptions concerning the Sitz im Leben of texts and was less optimistic estab-
lishing the theological outlook of the Church at any given time or of the details
of its missionary preaching (pp. 6, 115).
3.2. Erhardt Güttgemanns and the Critics of Unity

Another blow to form-critical reconstructions of early Christian teaching occurred
when Erhardt Güttgemanns published his Offene Fragen zur Formgeschichte des
Evangeliums (1969, 2nd edn 1971; ET 1979, Candid Questions Concerning
Gospel Form Criticism). Although he was concerned principally with

form-criticism of the Gospels, drawing inspiration from the earlier criticism of

Willi Marxsen (1956, 2nd edn 1959, ET 1969) and others, many of Güttgemanns’
observations undermined the entire project of form-criticism and as such are
relevant here. Güttgemanns argued that form-criticism is actually in conflict with
the existence of completed texts (especially the Gospels) since form-critics are
methodologically concerned with pre-written oral units (Güttgemanns 1979:
98-99, 102). In a move that anticipates what came to be known in Anglophone
scholarship as the literary turn, he noted that the ‘anti-individualist’ approach of
the form-critic is not able to take the author of the text into account (p. 103). This
strikes at the heart of Dibelius’s argument that the hortatory material in Paul’s
letters was general and unconnected to the given situation, a position that was
followed by many scholars (cf. Furnish 1968: 68-69). Further, he observed that
any ‘hypothetical reconstruction of the pre-history’ of these forms is necessarily
dependent on the ways in which the authors use them (Güttgemanns 1979: 104;
cf. Marxsen 1969: 20). That is, we are at the mercy of the final form of the text
for our ability to isolate pre-textual traditions.
Turning specifically to Dibelius’s account of the development of the Gospels
from early Christian sermons, Güttgemanns claimed that this was based more on
an a priori conceptual model than actual analysis of the ‘primitive-Christian-
kerygmatic texts’ (Güttgemanns 1979: 302). Noting Dibelius’s reliance on the
speeches from the early part of Acts, Güttgemanns drew on Wilckens to argue
that these speeches cannot be pressed for the historical data Dibelius needed
since they are Lukan compositions severed from the actual preaching of the ear-
liest Church (pp. 302-303; cf. also Conzelmann 1987: xliii-xliv; Haenchen 1971:
112-16; Lüdemann 1984: 21). He concluded that
‘ur-historical’ territory seems to be a pretty shaky terrain, because of the often

considerable differences in the traditio-historical results in each case, and it is
necessary to persuade oneself of its safety, since the evolutionary implications of the
method [of form-criticism] produce only false hopes and scientific phantoms
(Güttgemanns 1979: 311).
After levelling similar critiques at Dodd (Güttgemanns 1979: 316) – namely, that
there is no real connection between ‘kerygmatic’ passages in Paul’s letters and
the synoptic structure – Güttgemanns turned finally to Seeberg. While he rejected
what he saw as a confused mixture of Form- and Religionsgeschichte, the crux
of his criticism was Seeberg’s concept of ‘an ancient, all encompassing credo’ (p.
319), a view which Güttgemanns thought was no longer tenable (p. 317).
In this he was in a growing company of scholars. A strong strain of scholarship
had denied any such early unity since the influential works of Semler, de Wette
and Baur. Further inspiration for a generation of scholars who firmly distinguished
between the primitive church and the Hellenistic church was found in the 1912

article by D. Heitmüller. In 1934 Walter Bauer published his Rechtgläubigkeit und

Ketzerei im ältesten Christentum (2nd edn 1964; ET 1971, Orthodoxy and Heresy
in Earliest Christianity) in which he claimed that the traditional view of heresy as
a later distortion of the truth is not historically accurate. Although not immediately
significant outside the European continent (see Georg Strecker’s appendix in
Bauer 1971: 286-316), his arguments against a unified Church in the second cen-
tury pushed the period of deep conflict into the second century and later. It may be
significant that its translation into English came at the time when criticism of
Formgeschichte was gaining steam and the unity of the early Church was even
more widely questioned. In this respect, one must mention Ernst Käsemann.
Reacting to the heritage of his teacher (cf. Käsemann 1988: 328-31), Rudolf
Bultmann, Käsemann argued ‘[t]here is no uniform and steady development of the
whole church’ but rather ‘many currents’ and ‘a great variety of traditions’. Any
unity there is in the New Testament witness ‘is provided by an early catholicizing
and more or less orthodox Church’s interest in normative doctrine’ (Käsemann
1973: 242; cf. Käsemann 1988: 332). In light of the oft supposed ecumenical moti-
vation for the scholars thus critiqued, it is notable that Käsemann tied his discus-
sion of the diversity of the early Church to his own ecumenical concerns (p. 332).
3.3. James D.G. Dunn

In this context, James D.G. Dunn produced his incisive and influential Unity and
Diversity in the New Testament (1977) (2nd edn 1990, 3rd edn 2006). Dunn notes
in the preface that in 1969 and 1970 he was involved in two different scholarly
workshops formed to discuss the strengths and weaknesses of Walter Bauer’s
book and throughout the course of the work Bauer’s influence and that of Ernst
Käsemann are evident. In a sweeping statement that bears quoting in full, Dunn
dismisses the work of Dodd and Seeberg:
The second [pitfall of the study of primitive confessional formulae] is the danger of
looking for a single unified creed––the danger of making a patchwork quilt of bits and
pieces from here and there in the NT and hailing it as a seamless robe. This was the
weakness of Dodd’s reconstruction of the primitive kerygma. And A. Seeberg fell into
the same trap in his pioneering study in our present area of concern. The temptation
here is to pick our confessional forms from diverse strands of the primitive tradition
and to group them together into a single formula, disregarding questions about their
original life-settings. In such a case ‘the Church’s primitive confession of faith’ is
nothing more than an uneven amalgam of disparate elements bonded together by
twentieth-century methodology (1977: 34).
He took up a similar critique of the theories of Carrington and Selwyn where he

subsumed them under the tendency towards ‘pan-liturgism’ (Dunn 1977: 141-
48). As Moule had already noted, ‘this fashion has overreached itself a trifle’

such that scholars were ‘in danger of crying worship, worship where there is no
worship’ (Moule 1962: 12; cf. van Unnik 1959: 271-72).
What is particularly interesting about Dunn’s treatment is the small amount of
space he gives to refuting these various theories. Apparently, by 1977, he felt that
the variety of the New Testament witnesses was established clearly enough as to
become his operable assumption. Indeed, in the end he identified a single unify-
ing element in early Christianity: ‘the unity between the historical Jesus and the
exalted Christ, that is to say, the conviction that the wandering charismatic
preacher from Nazareth had ministered, died and been raised from the dead to
bring God and man finally together’ (Dunn 1977: 396; this conclusion was antic-
ipated by Käsemann 1963). Thus, a unified kerygma or catechetical material that
underlies the New Testament texts is designated as a scholarly fiction.
3.4. New Movements in New Testament Scholarship

If these thoroughgoing critiques were not enough to sideline the question of the
teaching of the early Church (as defined above), they coincided in their fullest
form with a number of major works that have attracted the attention of scholars
ever since. In 1977 the so-called ‘New Perspective’ on Paul (and Judaism) irrupted
into mainstream New Testament scholarship with E.P. Sanders’s Paul and
Palestinian Judaism (1977). Dunn, for instance, has devoted much of his subse-
quent scholarly career to working out the implications of this approach. Two
years later, Gerd Theissen published his important collection of studies, Studien
zur Soziologie des Urchristentums (1979), launching a new sociological trend
that still holds the interest of many. In the same year, the New Testament guild
was challenged and inspired by the publication of H.D. Betz’s commentary on
Galatians (1979) in which he effectively pioneered the programatic use of Greco-
Roman rhetorical forms for analysis of Paul’s letters, developing the argument
from his 1975 article. In three consecutive years, narrative criticism of biblical
texts also made a grand entrance into biblical scholarship in Alter’s The Art of
Biblical Narrative (1981), Rhoads and Michie’s Mark as Story (1982), and Hays’s
The Faith of Jesus Christ (1983). The tendency of these latter two criticisms to
ask questions about the ‘art’ or ‘argument’ of the completed text, often accompa-
nied by striking exegetical insights, was particularly damaging to many form-
critical assumptions. To further complicate matters, the North American Jesus
Seminar began in 1985 and the associated quest for the historical Jesus absorbed
the energies of many New Testament scholars for the next two decades.
After the decline in confidence in the form-critical ability to accurately see
pre-textual forms, scholars seemed to be left only with direct statements regard-
ing the teaching of the early Church, which are of course fewer than one would
like. Further, because many argued that the early Church lacked the requisite
unity to sustain any widespread kerygmatic or catechetical material, scholars

were left with disparate and independent texts that could no longer be tied
together into a coherent framework (cf. the comments in Davies 1962: 4-5 about
the state of New Testament scholarship before Dibelius). The student of early
Christianity was left like Hume’s billiard spectator: one could observe discon-
nected movements and collisions with no way to supply the necessary ‘cause
and effect’.
4. A Second Wave?
Although work on various aspects of ethical catalogues has still progressed apace
(see below, §4.4), since the 70s, studies on early Christian teaching as such have
had a much more restrained quality.
4.1. Claus Bussmann and Paul’s Missionary Work

In 1971, still heavily influenced by form-criticism, Claus Bussmann attempted to
isolate themes of Paul’s missionary preaching (Missionspredigt) and compare it
to the material found in Jewish missionary literature. In some ways, this was a
project born out of time, given the heavy critique of Formgeschichte by
Güttgemanns and others noted above, and as such it seems to have received little
attention. He proceeded by isolating traditional material in five passages of
Paul’s letters: 1 Thess. 1.9-10; Gal. 4.8-9; 1 Cor. 8.6; 15.3-5; and Rom. 1.18-32.
The centre of Paul’s Missionspredigt, Bussmann argued, is the polemic against
idolatry and the proclamation of the one living God, on which point Paul and the
Jews ‘fought on the same front’ (‘kämpft…an derselben Front’, Bussmann 1971:
44). Although his work is focused on Paul’s preaching, he noted in the end that
Paul’s use of these missionary themes reveals a Paul who is largely in agreement
with the earliest Church (p. 191). What is particularly striking about this work is
the confidence with which he proceeds on his form-critical investigation. First,
his distinction between Missionspredigt and later instruction is at best theoretical
and can hardly be substantiated concretely given that the very material from
which he draws the Missionspredigt is material written to established Christian
communities (cf. the insights of Moule already discussed above). Second, the
passages he selects are an odd combination of those with explicit reference to
Paul’s missionary work (1 Thess. 1.9-10, Gal. 4.8-9?) and those which contain
no explicit indicators (1 Cor. 8.6; Rom. 1.18-32). Further, as already noted by
Darrel Doughty (1973), Bussmann omits many other passages with direct state-
ments of Paul’s missionary preaching and does not address the question of
whether Paul’s preaching was relegated to these ‘traditional’ elements, even if
they could be confidently established. In terms of comparisons with Jewish lit-
erature, Bussmann helpfully collated many textual parallels but added little new
to the discussion (cf. the similar work of Pak 1991).

4.2. James McDonald and the Structure of Early Christian Communication

In 1980, James McDonald attempted a new approach to the study of the teaching
of the early Church. In his book, Kerygma and Didache: The Articulation and
Structure of the Earliest Christian Message, McDonald dispensed with the con-
cepts of kerygma and didache arguing that, although they ‘can still be used as
complementary terms to denote the central complex of Christian utterances’,
they do not provide a proper analytic framework for investigation of early
Christian communication given the disagreements between scholars as to their
content (McDonald 1980: 4-7). Instead, drawing on scholars like Bo Reicke
(1953), he proposed a structural analysis, dividing up different modes of com-
munication into Propheteia, Paraclesis and Homily, Paranesis and Catechesis,
and Paradosis. In so doing, McDonald concerned himself with the mode of com-
munication rather than the content of any given message.
Contrary to Carrington and Selwyn, he argued that the similarities between 1
Thessalonians and 1 Peter do ‘not substantiate the hypothesis of a common
source, operating in a fixed formula at baptism or in catechetical instruction. It
suggests rather common themes or motifs, the main points of which tend to recur
in such paraenesis’ (McDonald 1980: 91). McDonald correctly noted that the
material traditionally associated with the kerygma or didache could fit variously
with any of his proposed structures, depending on the context of the speaker and
what they needed to say (pp. 126-27). However, he ultimately undercut his own
anti-kerygmatic argument by replacing the core kerygma with paradosis. He
argued that the prophet, exegete and teacher may vary their message due to audi-
ence and context but as for the paradosis on which they base their message, ‘its
centre, its substance, is inviolate’ (p. 124). This sounds strikingly like the relation
between the Glaubensformel and Missionspredigt already argued by Seeberg
(1903: 154). McDonald goes on to say that ‘the kerygma is inseparable from the
paradosis which conveys the data necessary to the intelligibility of the pro-
claimed message’ and regardless of its potentially didactic function, ‘paradosis
is no less present in the proclamation itself and is in any case essentially keryg-
matic’ (McDonald 1980: 129). In spite of his differing approach, McDonald’s
project encountered the same problems inherent in earlier synthetic, form-
critical reconstructions. Further, his structural approach provides little traction
for the question of what early Christian teachers said or how their messages
might relate or conflict.
4.3. Eugene Lemcio and the Unifying Kerygma

Responding to James Dunn’s work discussed above, Eugene Lemcio published
two articles wherein he attempted to delineate the ‘unifying kerygma of the NT’
(Lemcio 1988; 1990; restated in Lemcio 1991). Addressing Dunn’s claim that

‘[n]o NT writer proclaims [the] kerygma as such’ (Dunn 1977: 30), Lemcio pro-
ceeded to isolate ‘six consistent items’ within the kerygmatic core of the New
Testament message: ‘(1) God who (2) sent (Gospels) or raised (3) Jesus. (4) A
response (receiving, repentance, faith) (5) towards God (6) brings benefits (vari-
ously described)’ (Lemcio 1988: 6). He then identified this core in numerous
New Testament texts – Acts, Paul’s letters, Hebrews, 1 Peter, Revelation, and the
Gospels (p. 14). In his second article, Lemcio added nine more examples of this
form in the New Testament and included later examples from 1 Clement,
Diognetus, Justin Martyr, and Acts of Paul and Thecla (Lemcio 1990: 7-8). The
examples adduced by Lemcio are surely significant and have not yet received the
attention they possibly deserve. However, it should also be noted that the keryg-
matic frame resulting from his work is vague and minimal. At almost every point
these statements admit a variety of interpretations (the benefits are ‘variously
described’). Further, there are subtle differences between the various formula-
tions such as the difference between sending Jesus and sending Christ, which
was later significant in debates between ‘orthodox’ and ‘gnostic’ groups. Further,
this analysis says nothing of the early teaching on morality, community forma-
tion, ethics, or any other ‘non-core’ topic. In the end, his analysis seems more
suggestive than conclusive.
4.4. Recent Work on Ethical Catalogues

In line with the scholars who focused on ethical catalogues, some recent works
should be noted, though they all in different ways relate only partially to the
question at hand. Eckart Reinmuth attempted to account for the tension in Pauline
thought between the rejection of the Law and its apparent use as a moral norm.
Reinmuth suggested that Paul’s logic behind this tension is that the Law was
summed up in the love-command (Gal. 5.14) where it is reintroduced as a crucial
part of living in the Spirit (Reinmuth 1985: 73-74). Thus, for Reinmuth, the
Jewish Law provided the ground for Paul’s paraenetic material, a sort of parae-
netic substructure which he shared with his Jewish and Christian contemporar-
ies, emphasizing particularly the continuity of vice catalogues and the emphasis
on sexual immorality and greed (Unzucht, Habgier, pp. 12-47). However, he did
not move beyond such observations, refraining from any attempt at reconstruct-
ing such a substructure or catechesis.
In relation to Jewish catechetical material, Karl-Wilhelm Niebuhr argued
that there was no real pre-Christian Jewish catechism to speak of but rather
‘catechism-like instructional series’ (katechismusartige Weisungsreihen) that
tend to recur in Second Temple Jewish literature (Niebuhr 1987). Significantly,
although Niebuhr denies the concept of a unified Jewish catechism, he never-
theless identifies striking continuity in moral and ethical exhortation in these
Jewish materials (cf. Thomas 1992: esp. 363-453 whose study of

Pseudo-Phocylides touches on the relation between Jewish ethical teaching

and the New Testament).
The work of J. Daryl Charles (1997) briefly explored Jewish and Greco-
Roman ethical catalogues as a backdrop for understanding 2 Peter 1. He argued
that the ethical lists ‘resist any attempts at being reduced to a single Urkataloge
or set pattern’ (p. 125) though he did allow for a cautious connection between the
lists and catechesis, following Vögtle (p. 127).
In an erudite work on the Didache, Huub van de Sandt and the late David
Flusser carefully examined the Didache and related documents (e.g. Doctrina
Apostolorum, Barnabas 18-21, and 1QS 4) in order to reconstruct the Greek two-
ways catechetical material that seems to undergird chapters 1–6 of the former
(van de Sandt and Flusser 2002: esp. ch 4; building on Klein 1909; and Audet
1952). In a wide-ranging and learned discussion of ‘the Two Ways as a Jewish
document’, van de Sandt and Flusser noted the use of the golden rule, the privi-
leging of the second half of the Decalogue, and the emphasis on the Noachide
commandments in both their reconstructed two-ways document and in various
Jewish documents, especially the Derekh Eretz tractates, following G. Klein (van
de Sandt and Flusser 2002: 158-80). Further, they argued in favour of a wide-
spread Jewish catechetical use of the two-ways material linked with proselyte
baptism. It is notable that although they refer to Seeberg’s work once (p. 140),
they do not acknowledge in their footnotes the fact that, in his 1905 and 1906
works, Seeberg anticipated many of their arguments, especially regarding pre-
Christian Jewish baptismal instruction (examples include the pairing of the rel-
evance of the noachide laws [Seeberg 1905: 119], the Golden Rule and the
second half of the Decalogue [Seeberg 1906: 3-9, passim], and the arguments for
pre-Christian Jewish baptism based on b. Yebam. 46-47, Gerim 1.1ff, Barn.
11.1f.; Arrian, Epic. diss. 2.9; Sibyl 4.165; and m. Pesah.. 8.8 [Seeberg 1905:
104]; see van de Sandt and Flusser 2002: 177, 158-59, 227-28 respectively). In
this way, some of Seeberg’s arguments have been vindicated through further
analysis and comparison with Qumran materials, though all parties admit that the
evidence cannot be applied with certainty to the New Testament (cf. Seeberg
1905: 111).
Van de Sandt and Flusser’s heavily textual approach to the two-ways ethical
lists and proselyte catechism has recently been critiqued by Jonathan A. Draper
(2008). Draper emphasizes the oral culture of early Christianity and tries to
account for the three vice lists in the Didache in terms of three particular perfor-
mances of an unwritten, and indeed fluid, catechetical tradition. These lists are
not intended to be exhaustive or authoritative, according to Draper, but rather
they function as memory-aides for the performance of the teacher who uses the
Didache as a ‘skeleton’ for their teaching (p. 112, passim).

4.5.Three Contrasting Recent Approaches: Reinbold, Ellis and

Schnabel
I close this section with a discussion of three recent authors on the early Christian
movement. These works demonstrate the fragmentation of this field with some
adhering to the form-critical approaches and conclusions already heavily cri-
tiqued and others all but ignoring the question of the content of early Christian
preaching and teaching.
Wolfgang Reinbold’s 2000 monograph, Propaganda und Mission im ältesten
Christentum (Propaganda and Mission in Earliest Christianity) is an interesting
example of studies of the early missionary Church after the decline of form-
critical studies of early preaching and teaching. Reinbold explored the spread of
early Christianity looking for ‘the modalities of the mission…that is, the con-
crete circumstances for the winning of Jews and Gentiles for the earliest Church’
(‘den Modalitäten der Mission…d.h. nach den konkreten Umständen der
Gewinnung von Juden und Heiden für die älteste Kirche’). In doing this, he was
concerned with ‘the how of the spread of the earliest Church’ (‘das Wie der
Verbreitung der ältesten Kirche’, Reinbold 2000: 6). Rather than focusing on the
teaching of the early Church, he approached the spread of the Church by focus-
ing on the various personalities of early Christianity (p. 5; Schnabel 2004: xxiv
notes that ‘geographical and theological questions are largely ignored’). With
respect to Paul, through whom we have the most information about early
Christian mission, he discusses various modes of interaction (first contact,
through work, in the synagogue, etc.) and the means of the mission (the ekklesia,
teaching, miracles, etc.) (Reinbold 2000: 182-225). Notably, especially in com-
parison with earlier accounts of early preaching, Reinbold devoted only three
pages to ‘Teaching’ (Lehre) discussing the various forms teaching could take, but
never trying to elucidate the content (pp. 197-99). He devoted a short paragraph
excursus to the issue of catechetical instruction, concluding that there is no solid
evidence for it at such an early period (p. 199). Surprisingly, he did not address
the arguments of any of the scholars discussed above on this topic. This may be
some indication of how far scholarly assumptions have shifted from those of the
early twentieth century.
E. Earle Ellis’s 1999 work, further developed in 2001, also revisits issues of
early Christian preaching and teaching. He argued that all the New Testament
documents were written by their traditional authors (with Hebrews being
attributed to ‘a prophet in the Pauline mission’) and stem from a fourfold,
cooperative mission of the early Church headed by Peter, James, John and Paul
(Ellis 1999: 307-319). As such, Ellis dates every New Testament document
except the Johannine materials before the destruction of the temple in 70 ce
(p. 319), arguing like J.A.T. Robinson (1976) that such a catastrophic event

would surely have been mentioned by the New Testament authors had it already
taken place.
Nonetheless, the foundation of Ellis’s argument actually lies in his analysis of
shared traditions that are spread throughout the New Testament, attempting at
times to tap into common early Christian catechetical material. In this respect,
however, his method and arguments are strikingly reminiscent of Selwyn, though
much more comprehensive in scope. Namely, Ellis’s arguments for early shared
traditions only carry necessary weight if one also accepts his truncated chronol-
ogy of New Testament documents and theory about the Church’s fourfold mis-
sion. It is this chronology that forces one to account for textual similarities in
ways other than dependence. Otherwise there is no reason that, for example,
James’s discussion of faith and works is not dependent in some (reactionary?)
way on Paul’s thought (note the chart of shared traditions in Ellis 1999: 312-13).
Indeed, the relationship between faith and works was apparently still topical a
few centuries later, as attested by Mek. Besh. 7 (Lauterbach 1935: 252-55;
though, it is not clear that the discussion of faith and works in Mek. is responding
directly to Gentile Christianity, pace Cohen 1984). Thus, although Ellis rightly
critiques the tradition of classic form-criticism, his method does not move far
enough away from it to avoid the same pitfalls and ends up being slightly circu-
lar. (The most recent development of Ellis’s theories is that of Mark M. Yarbrough
[2009] who explores ‘preformed traditions’ in 1 Timothy, though his work is
heavily dependent on the more learned work of Ellis.)
More recently, Eckhard Schnabel has produced a massive two-volume tome
entitled Early Christian Mission (2004; cf. Schnabel 2008). In it he devotes
almost two hundred pages to ‘missionary tactics and communication’ (Schnabel
2004: 1293-1475), though very little space is actually devoted to preaching or
teaching per se, with most of the emphasis given to journeys and logistics.
Regarding ethical catalogues, he argued that such lists probably go back to a
Jewish provenance given the stringent criticism that Paul, for one, has for Greco-
Roman culture (pp. 1342-1343). However, Schnabel does not think it likely that
these catalogues and other recurring themes can be traced to a fixed sermon
scheme. In a statement that echoes earlier critiques, he states,
The texts that have been used as a basis for the reconstruction of such a scheme [for
the early Christian missionary sermon] are rather disparate, in terms of both subject
matter and the sequence of topics… Attempts to anchor such a scheme in tradition
history have been unsuccessful (2004: 1391-1392).
Even so, Schnabel’s own account of early missionary preaching relies heavily on
Acts and 1 Corinthians with little effort to balance the picture or critique the
value of the sources (cf. 2004: 1370-1378).

Summary and Concluding Observations

As noted at the beginning of this article, the secondary literature on the mission-
ary teaching of the early Church is diffuse and not always easily categorized and,
indeed, this survey does not even include the numerous studies of ancient mis-
sionary practice more generally (cf. Carleton Paget 1996; Dickson 2003;
Goodman 1994; McKnight 1991; Riesner 2000; Schwartz 2007) or studies of
missionary practice at particular locales (e.g. Börschel 2001; Chester 2003; Ware
2005). Nevertheless, a general summary is instructive, though it should be
remembered that this account only fits a particular stream of New Testament
scholarship, since among others, more influenced by the conflict-based recon-
structions of J.J. Semler, W.M.L. de Wette, and F.C. Baur, the requisite unity of
the early Church had long been denied (see Kümmel 1973: 62-73, 120-84).
Beginning with Seeberg’s works, the initial quest had a distinctively form-
critical flavour (Kümmel 1973: 450 n. 404). In the work of Dibelius and Dodd,
the quest for the kerygma and moral preaching of the early Church became inti-
mately connected with Formgeschichte and with a particular view of the speech
material in Acts. Further, these theses relied (implicitly or explicitly) on the
scholarly assumption of an essential unity of the early Church. However, in the
1960s several scholars began to question form-criticism’s explanatory power
and, ultimately, its methodological validity. Others argued that the speeches in
Acts could not be mined for the early kerygma and still others denied the under-
lying unity of the Church so necessary for the theses of Seeberg et al. Their quest
was too wrapped up in these methods and assumptions to escape the criticism
directed at them and so the question became obsolete together with the methods
employed to pursue it.
It must be said that many of the criticisms traced above should stand, if some-
what modified by further study. Form-criticism does not provide access to pre-
textual Christian teaching in the way that was hoped. The mining of the speeches
in Acts for the earliest kerygma is problematic, as Wilckens (and others) argued.
The early Church, by most accounts today, was strikingly diverse in theory and
practice. However, that is not all that can be said. The arguments put forward by
Seeberg in his four works are wide-ranging and, at times, surprisingly cautious,
a fact not often appreciated. Indeed, the poor reception of some of his work may
be due to the Zeitgeist of his time in which a strong boundary between Christianity
and Judaism was desirable. Even among conservative Anglophone scholarship at
the time, Seeberg’s work was surprisingly neglected, perhaps due to the desire to
present Christianity as a novum, distinct from both pagan and Jewish antecedents
(see the comments on the ‘newness and originality of Christianity’ in Denny
1892: 9-12; cf. Klauck 2000: 4). Although earlier scholars were prone to a
Hellenistic explanation of the two-way ethical schema (Heitmüller 1912; Easton
1932; Vögtle 1936; Bultmann 1952), Seeberg’s identification of this with Jewish

ethical catalogues (even if overstated at points) has been vindicated by subse-

quent scholarship since the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls (see Audet 1952;
van de Sandt and Flusser 2002). In some ways, the suggestive power of Seeberg’s
arguments are found in the fact that he spread himself so widely. Of course, this
also opens him up to the criticisms noted above.
Nevertheless, as stated at the beginning of this article, the question of early
Christian teaching remains an important one as the texts of the New Testament
are but the tip of the iceberg, the visible portion of much larger social, theologi-
cal, and historical phenomena. As things stand, however, it is an important ques-
tion in need of a new approach.
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420781 CBI10310.

Currents in Biblical Research

Kerygma, Catechesis and

Research on Early Christian

When early Christian missionaries established a community, what did they

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1. Alfred Seeberg and Der Katechismus

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2. Positive Appropriation of Seeberg

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2.2. Rudolf Bultmann’s Ideological Kerygma

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2.3. Ethical Catalogues and their Origins: G. Klein to W. Schrage

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14.33), suggesting widespread agreement (pp. 117-22). However, this is as far as

2.4. Early Christian Catechism: Carrington, Selwyn and Moule

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a discussion of ‘Formgeschichte and its application to the Epistles’ (Selwyn

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3. Criticism of Seeberg et al.

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3.1. Ulrich Wilckens, Graham Stanton, and the Speeches in Acts

3.2. Erhardt Güttgemanns and the Critics of Unity

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form-criticism of the Gospels, drawing inspiration from the earlier criticism of

‘ur-historical’ territory seems to be a pretty shaky terrain, because of the often

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article by D. Heitmüller. In 1934 Walter Bauer published his Rechtgläubigkeit und

3.3. James D.G. Dunn

He took up a similar critique of the theories of Carrington and Selwyn where he

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3.4. New Movements in New Testament Scholarship

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4.1. Claus Bussmann and Paul’s Missionary Work

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4.2. James McDonald and the Structure of Early Christian Communication

4.3. Eugene Lemcio and the Unifying Kerygma

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4.4. Recent Work on Ethical Catalogues

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Pseudo-Phocylides touches on the relation between Jewish ethical teaching

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4.5.Three Contrasting Recent Approaches: Reinbold, Ellis and

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Summary and Concluding Observations

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ethical catalogues (even if overstated at points) has been vindicated by subse-

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1979 Candid Questions Concerning Gospel Form Criticism: A Methodological