Raymond E. Brown
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Raymond Edward Brown (May 22, 1928 - August 8, 1998), was an American Roman Catholic priest and Biblical scholar. He was regarded as a specialist concerning the hypothetical ‘Johannine community’, which he speculated contributed to the authorship of the Gospel of John, and wrote influential studies on the birth and death of Jesus. Brown was also professor emeritus at the Protestant Union Theological Seminary in New York, where he taught for 23 years.
Brown remains controversial among traditionalist Catholics because of their claim that he denied the inerrancy of the whole of Scripture and their claim that he cast doubt on the historical accuracy of numerous articles of the Catholic faith.[1] He was regarded as occupying the centre ground in the field of biblical studies, opposing the literalism found among many fundamentalist Christians while not carrying his conclusions as far as many other scholars.[2]
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[edit] Biography
Born in New York, the son of Robert H. Brown and Loretta Brown, Raymond studied at the Catholic University of America where he received a BA in 1948 and MA in 1949. In 1951 he joined the scholarly Society of Saint-Sulpice following his STB from St Mary's Seminary and University. In 1953 he was ordained a priest in the diocese of St. Augustine, Florida.
Brown was appointed in 1972 to the Pontifical Biblical Commission and again in 1996. He was professor emeritus at the Protestant Union Theological Seminary in New York where he taught for 23 years. He served as president of the Catholic Biblical Association, the Society of Biblical Literature (1976-7) and the Society of New Testament Studies (1986-7). He was a Roman Catholic priest in the diocese of Baltimore, Maryland. Widely regarded as one of America's preeminent biblical scholars, Brown was awarded 24 honorary doctoral degrees by universities in the USA and Europe, many from Protestant institutions.[3]
He died at St. Patrick's Seminary, Menlo Park, California. Cardinal 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]
[edit] Scholarly views
Brown was one of the first Catholic scholars in the United States to use the historical-critical method to study the Bible.[5] He described the 1943 encyclical Divino Afflante Spiritu, which called for the use of historical-critical methods in establishing the literal sense of scriptural texts[6] as a "Magna Carta for biblical progress".[7]
Dei Verbum, the Second Vatican Council's Dogmatic Constitution on Divine Revelation, promulgated in 1965, stated that "the books of Scripture must be acknowledged as teaching solidly, faithfully and without error that truth which God wanted put into sacred writings for the sake of salvation."[8] Brown saw this as an affirmation of his approach ("Many of us think that at Vatican II the Church 'turned the corner' on the inerrancy issue"), although he emphasised that to determine the real meaning of the words one needed to study the discussions in the Council that proceeded it.[9] "Within its context, the statement is not without an ambiguity that stems from the compromise nature of Dei Verbum. The Council in 1962 rejected the ultra-conservative schema "On the Sources of Revelation" that originally had been submitted,