Finding the Shards #16
A second question, unresolved since the middle of the nineteenth century, again surfaced and created even greater scholarly consternation. This was the question of where to locate the foundation of Christian faith in early Christian texts, and how to interpret their meaning for modern Christians. Was the core of Christianity to be found in the person of Jesus and his message according to the gospels, or was it contained in Paul's interpretation of Christian faith with its focus on the "proclamation" (kerygma) of the death and resurrection of Jesus? New Testament scholars were not able to say and they found themselves embarrassed by their uncertainty about the "message" at the core of the Christian faith and how that message might be "heard" again in the pages of the New Testament today. Finding ways to locate the central message of Christianity was called the hermeneutical question (from hermeneia, "interpretation"), and renewed attention to this pursuit consumed New Testament scholarship before and after the second world war.