It is the odd nemesis of the Protestant principle of sola scriptura that one of the basic models to which it has given rise has little place within its hermeneutical structure or authority-system for Jesus himself, since he was the author of no New Testament book. From this point of view, Bultmann was perfectly correct in the famous opening sentence of his New Testament Theology: ‘The message of Jesus is a presupposition for the theology of the New Testament rather than a part of that theology itself.’
