Die folgenden Ausführungen wollen nicht das Verständnis der Kirche bzw. der Gemeinde (von dem Ineinander beider im Neuen Testament wird später zu sprechen sein) nach den Schriften der Urchristenheit in extenso erarbeiten. Dazu bedürfte es einer umfänglichen Monographie, sowohl angesichts der vielfältigen Beziehungen der Verkündigung des Neuen Testaments insgesamt zu der Gegebenheit ‘Kirche’ wie im Blick auf die umfängliche Debatte schon allein über die Begriffe ἐκκλησία und σ⋯μα in der Fachliteratur (auf die ausdrückliche Auseinandersetzung mit ihr muß verzichtet werden). Es soll genug sein, auf entscheidende Kennzeichen der Kirche (bzw. der Gemeinde) hinzuweisen, wie sie sich u. a. aus ihren Benennungen und deren Kontext (II), aber auch aus bestimmten Aussagen sonst erge ben.

Scholars who set out to clarify a particular issue can proceed along one of two different lines: either they can scrutinize the existing sources critically or they can compass land and sea to discover new sources. As the former procedure is the established one so far as Christian origins are concerned and as it is indeed advisable since the New Testament sources are something apart, it may easily be understood that some more radical minds should venture to explore the other course. Voltaire was one of these. He urged his correspondent to consult the Jewish Toledoth Jeshu as they stem from the first century and contain ‘des choses beaucoup plus vraisemblables que dans nos évangiles’. Other men followed in his steps. But attempts to write a history of Jesus based on the Jewish reports and centred on details related by them—attempts made by some rare birds of the last century—were bound to prove unsuccessful. Jewish scholarship was quick to realize this and to dissociate itself from the Toledoth (and other material) as from absurdities or a ‘Schmarren’—something like a penny-dreadful—not worth looking at. There the matter rested.

The Epistle of I Peter has occupied a rather large place in recent critical studies of the New Testament. E. G. Selwyn has advanced the view that the epistle draws from four primary sources: a liturgical document, a persecution fragment, a primitive Christian catechism, and verba Christi. E. Lohse prefers to think that the early church had a common stock of oral paraenetic tradition, from which the epistolary writers drew. F. W. Beare has popularized in English the liturgical-homiletical hypothesis widely accepted in Europe, namely, that the major part of I Peter (i. 3–iv. 11) is the transcription of a baptismal liturgy-homily, transformed into an epistle by the addition of i. 1 f. and iv. 12–v. 14. The view has been carefully worked out by F. L. Cross, but has encountered increasing resistance.

In the second chapter of the Prolegomena to his recent study ‘Salvation as History’ (Heil als Geschichte) Oscar Cullmann argues for the similarity of Rudolf Bultmann's theology and the gnosis of the second century. Cull-mann works out the comparison starting with both gnosticism and Bultmann's denial of the idea of salvation as history. And if; in the second century, the early church's struggle with gnosticism was really a matter of life and death, is there not, Cullmann asks, in the present theological debate something similar at stake?