Raymond E. Brown

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Raymond Edward Brown
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The Rev. Dr.

Raymond E. Brown

Union Theological Seminary
Academic background
Alma materSt. Mary's University, Baltimore
ThesisThe Sensus Plenior of Sacred Scripture (1955)
Academic work
InstitutionsUnion Theological Seminary (UTS)

Raymond Edward Brown

Johannine community, which he speculated contributed to the authorship of the Gospel of John, and he also wrote studies on the birth and death of Jesus
.

Brown was professor emeritus at Union Theological Seminary (UTS) in New York City, where he taught for 29 years. He was the first Catholic professor to gain tenure there, where he earned a reputation as a superior lecturer.[1]

Life

Born in

Catholic priest for the Diocese of St. Augustine. In 1955, he joined the Society of Saint-Sulpice following his reception of a doctorate in Sacred Theology from St. Mary's Seminary in Baltimore. He earned a second doctorate in Semitic languages in 1958 from Johns Hopkins University, where one of his advisors was William F. Albright.[2]

Following his studies, Brown taught at his

American Schools of Oriental Research in Jerusalem, where he worked on a concordance of the Dead Sea Scrolls. In 1963, he served as an expert adviser, known as a peritus, to Joseph P. Hurley, the Bishop of St. Augustine, at the Second Vatican Council.[2]

Brown was appointed in 1972 to the

Society of New Testament Studies (1986–87). Brown was awarded 24 honorary doctoral degrees by universities in the United States and Europe, including many from Protestant institutions.[1][3]

Brown died at

Archbishop of Los Angeles, Cardinal Roger Mahony hailed him as "the most distinguished and renowned Catholic biblical scholar to emerge in this country ever" and his death, the cardinal said, was "a great loss to the Church."[4]

Scholarly views

Brown was one of the first Catholic scholars in the United States to use the

historical-critical method to study the Bible.[2]

In 1943, reversing the approach that had existed since

Dogmatic constitution on Divine Revelation, known as Dei verbum, which superseded the conservative schema, "On the Sources of Revelation", that originally had been submitted. While it stated that Scripture teaches "solidly, faithfully and without error that truth which God wanted put into sacred writings for the sake of salvation,"[7] Brown pointed out the ambiguity of this statement, which opened the way for a new interpretation of inerrancy by shifting from a literal interpretation of the text towards a focus on "the extent to which it conforms to the salvific purpose of God." Brown saw this as the Catholic Church "turning the corner" on inerrancy, saying, "the Roman Catholic Church does not change her official stance in a blunt way. Past statements are not rejected but are requoted with praise and then reinterpreted at the same time....What was really going on was an attempt gracefully to retain what was salvageable from the past and to move in a new direction at the same time."[8]

New Testament Christology

In a detailed 1965 article in the journal Theological Studies examining whether Jesus was ever called "God" in the New Testament, Brown wrote, "Even the fourth Gospel never portrays Jesus as saying specifically that he is God" and "there is no reason to think that Jesus was called God in the earliest layers of New Testament tradition." He wrote that, "Gradually, in the development of Christian thought God was understood to be a broader term. It was seen that God had revealed so much of Himself in Jesus that God had to be able to include both Father and Son."[9]

Thirty years later, Brown revisited the issue in an introductory text for the general public, writing, "three reasonably clear instances in the NT (Hebrews 1:8–9, John 1:1, 20:28) and in five instances that have probability, Jesus is called God," a usage Brown regarded as a natural development of early references to Jesus as "Lord".[10]

Gospel of John

Brown analyzed the

Book of Glory
. The Book of Signs recounts Jesus' public miracles, which are called signs. The Book of Glory features Jesus' private teachings to his disciples, his crucifixion, and his resurrection.

Brown identified three layers of text in John: 1) an initial version Brown considers based on personal experience of Jesus; 2) a structured literary creation by the evangelist which draws upon additional sources; and 3) the edited version that readers of the Bible know today.[11]

Reactions

Support

Brown has been described as "the premier Johannine scholar in the English-speaking world."

The New Jerome Biblical Commentary, the standard basic reference book for Catholic Biblical studies, and he served as one of its editors and authors along with dozens of other Catholic scholars.[15]

Joseph Ratzinger, later Pope Benedict XVI, complimented Brown saying that he "would be very happy if we had many exegetes like Father Brown".[16] Later on however, Ratzinger would critique the overuse of historical criticism and parts of Brown's scholarship, saying that "we need a self-criticism of the historical method".[17][18]

Criticism

Brown's scholarship was controversial for questioning the

fundamentalist Christians but not carrying his conclusions as far as many other scholars. His critics included Cardinal Lawrence Shehan, Father Richard W. Gilsdorf, and George A. Kelly. Gilsdorf defined Brown's work as "a major contribution to the befogged wasteland of an 'American Church' progressively alienated from its divinely constituted center."[4] George A. Kelly found fault with Brown's questioning of whether the Virgin birth of Jesus could be proven historically.[19]

Other writers, critical of historical Christian claims about Jesus, criticized Brown for excessive caution, arguing that he was unwilling to acknowledge the radical implications of the critical methods he was using. Literary critic

having your cake and eating it."[22] In his obituary for The New York Times, Gustav Niebuhr wrote: "Father Brown was regarded as a centrist, with a reputation as a man of the church and a rigorous, exacting scholar whose work had to be reckoned with."[1]

Works

Thesis

Books

His total of 25 books on biblical subjects include:

Editor

See also

References

  1. ^
    ISSN 0362-4331
    . Retrieved June 15, 2023.
  2. ^ a b c Felix Corley, "Obituary: The Rev Raymond E. Brown", The Independent, London, 19 August 1998 [1]
  3. ^ "Honorary Doctors of the Faculty of Theology – Uppsala University, Sweden". www.uu.se (in Swedish). Retrieved February 17, 2017.
  4. ^ a b King, Henry V. (September 10, 1998). "Library : Traditional Catholic Scholars Long Opposed Fr. Brown's Theories". Catholic Culture. Retrieved June 15, 2023.
  5. ^ R.Kendall Soulen, Handbook of Biblical Criticism, Westminster John Knox Press (2001), p. 49
  6. ^ William James O'Brian, Riding Time Like a River: The Catholic Moral Tradition Since Vatican II, Georgetown University Press, 1993, p. 76.
  7. ^ Dei verbum, 11.
  8. ^ Raymond Brown, The Critical Meaning of the Bible, Paulist Press (1981), p. 18.
  9. S2CID 53007327
    .
  10. .
  11. .
  12. ^ Francis J Moloney, 'The Legacy of Raymond E Brown and Beyond', in John R Donahue, ed, Life in Abundance: Studies of John's Gospel in Tribute to Raymond E. Brown, Liturgical Press, 2005, p. 19.
  13. ^ Most Reverend Terrence T. Prendergast, 'The Church's Great Challenge: Proclaiming God's Word in the New Millennium', in John R Donahue, ed, Life in Abundance: Studies of John's Gospel in Tribute to Raymond E. Brown, Liturgical Press, 2005, pp. 3–4
  14. ^ James T. Bretzke, Consecrated Phrases: A Latin Theological Dictionary, Liturgical Press (1998), p. 90.
  15. ^ The New Jerome Biblical Commentary. Ed. Raymond E. Brown, Joseph A. Fitzmyer, and Roland E. Murphy. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1990.[page needed]
  16. ^ Francis J Moloney, 'The Legacy of Raymond E Brown and Beyond', in John R Donahue, ed, Life in Abundance: Studies of John's Gospel in Tribute to Raymond E. Brown, Liturgical Press, 2005, p. 251, footnote quoting Origins, 17/35, (February 11, 1988), p. 595.
  17. ^ Ratzinger, Joseph (1988). "Biblical Interpretation in Crisis - The 1988 Erasmus Lecture". FirstThings. Retrieved September 6, 2023.
  18. ISSN 1468-0025
    . Retrieved September 6, 2023.
  19. ^ a b Kelly, George A. (January 2000). "Library : A Wayward Turn in Biblical Theory". Catholic Culture. Retrieved June 15, 2023.
  20. ^ Felix Corley (August 19, 1998). "Obituary: The Rev Raymond E. Brown". The Independent. Archived from the original on November 6, 2012. Retrieved January 29, 2010.
  21. ^ Frank Kermode, New York Review of Books, 29 June 1978, pp. 39–42.
  22. Geza Vermes
    , The Nativity: History and Legend, London, Penguin, 2006, p. 21
  23. ^ "Responses to 101 Questions on the Bible". 1991. {{cite web}}: Missing or empty |url= (help)
  24. ^ Description, "Look inside" preview (from Amazon.com). Retrieved October 1, 2018.
  25. ^ Johnson, Luke Timothy (1997). "Books in Review: An Introduction to the New Testament". www.leaderu.com. Retrieved June 15, 2023.
  26. ^ Andreas J. Köstenberger (1998). Book review of An Introduction to the New Testament, Faith and Mission, 15/2. Retrieved October 1, 2018
  27. ^ "An Introduction to the New Testament". Yale University Press. Retrieved June 15, 2023.

External links