Abstract
The history of the first decades of the emerging Christian church is marked by a number of "pivotal turns": the transition of the Jesus movement into the "post-Easter" community, the missionary outreach beyond the borders of Palestine, the impact of the Jewish war and the "parting of the ways" with Judaism, and the transformation of the imminent eschatological expectations. There were also substantial transformations in the early Christian literature: from the epistles of Paul to the story-writing of the Gospels and among them, two different ways of taking up the pioneering enterprise of Mark: synoptic supplementing and Johannine rewriting.
The present study examines the question of continuity between Paul and Mark and between Mark and John. It works back from the Gospel of John and describes the mechanisms and tentatively also the reasons for these transformations at the very beginning of the Christian tradition.
It proposes that, theologically, John should be seen within the Pauline tradition, rather than as an alternative to it. It may be viewed as the second "transformation" of Pauline theology, with Mark being the first one.