during Bultmann’s day.17 Bultmann translated the apocalyptic elements of the Gospels and Paul’s letters into an existential plea rather than an apocalyptic one. As Richard Hays has wisely noted, Bultmann’s Theology of the New Testament “is neither an explanation nor a defense of the program of demythologizing; rather, it presupposes the necessity of such a program. The book therefore functions as a performance” of that program and its assumptions.18 It was decades until Bultmann’s formidable reconstruction