Kerygma (from, ) is a Greek word used in the New Testament for "proclamation" (see Luke 4:18-19, Romans 10:14, Gospel of Matthew 3:1). It is related to the Greek verb κηρύσσω (kērússō), literally meaning "to cry or proclaim as a herald" and being used in the sense of "to proclaim, announce, preach". Amongst biblical scholars, the term has come to mean the core of the early church's teaching about Jesus.

Origins

"Kerygmatic" is sometimes used to express the message of Jesus' whole ministry, as "a proclamation addressed not to the theoretical reason, but to the hearer as a self"; as opposed to the didactic use of Scripture that seeks understanding in the light of what is taught. The meaning of the crucifixion is central to this concept. During the mid-20th century, when the literary genre of the New Testament gospels was under debate, scholars like C. H. Dodd and Rudolf Bultmann suggested that the gospels were of a genre unique in the ancient world. They called the genre kerygma and described it as a later development of preaching that had taken a literary form. Scholarship since then has found problems with Bultmann's theory, but in Biblical and theological discussions, the term kerygma has come to denote the irreducible essence of Christian apostolic proclamation. The ancient Christian kerygma as summarized by Dodd from Peter's speeches in the New Testament Book of Acts was: In the 4th century, the kerygma was formally published in the Nicene Creed.

New Testament

The New Testament is a collection of early Christian writings taken to be holy scripture.