Kerygma or Martyria?

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

E-ISSN: 1475-3065|22|1|90-95

ISSN: 0036-9306

Source: Scottish Journal of Theology, Vol.22, Iss.1, 1969-03, pp. : 90-95

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Abstract

Aremark of E. G. Selwyn, in the course of his essay ‘Eschatology in 1 Peter’ contributed to the C. H. Dodd Festschrift, deserves more attention than it has yet received. He mentions his misgivings over the term kerygma which has been so prominent in the last decades and suggests that the word martyria would be more appropriate to describe the primitive and indispensable core of the Christian message. ‘At any rate’, he writes,if we examine the comparative occurrences in the New Testament of the two sets of terms, we find that the occurrences of the verbs alone which speak of ‘witness’ considerably outnumber the occurrences of κηρσσειν while the occurrences of the noun μαρτυρα outnumber those of the noun κρυγμα by more than six to one. (p. 395)