BROWN, RAYMOND EDWARD

Sulpician priest, biblical scholar; b. New York, NY, May 22, 1928; d. Redwood City, CA, Aug. 8, 1998. He was the son of Robert H. and Loretta Brown. As a seminarian, Brown received a B.A. and an M.A. at the Catholic University of America (1948 and 1949), and an S.T.B. at St. Mary's Seminary and University, Baltimore, in 1951, when he joined the Society of St. Sulpice. Ordained a priest of the diocese of St. Augustine, FL, in 1953, he spent his first year teaching at St. Charles Seminary, the Sulpician minor seminary in Catonsville, MD. In 1954 he began his doctoral studies at Johns Hopkins University. He received an S.T.D. from St. Mary's Seminary in 1955 with a dissertation entitled The "Sensus Plenior" of Sacred Scripture. When he finished his Ph.D. in 1958 under the renowned Palestinian archaeologist and biblical scholar William Foxwell Albright, he was awarded a fellowship for 1958 and 1959 at the American School of Oriental Research in Jerusalem, with special designation to work on the concordance of nonbiblical texts from Qumran Cave 4 then being compiled in the "scrollery" of the Palestine Archaeological Museum. In 1959 he was awarded the S.S.B. degree by the Pontifical Biblical Commission (and the S. S. L. in 1963).

Brown's career as a biblical scholar began in 1959 when he joined the faculty of St. Mary's Seminary, where he taught until 1971. During that time he published New Testament Essays (1965), The Gospel according to John (Anchor Bible 29, 29A [1966, 1970]), Jesus God and Man (1967), Priest and Bishop: Biblical Reflections (1970), and was one of the editors of The Jerome Biblical Commentary (1968). During 1967 and 1968 he became a visiting professor at Union Theological Seminary (UTS) in New York. In 1971 Brown was named professor of biblical studies at UTS and was later given the chair of Auburn Professor of Biblical Studies (1981). Until his retirement in 1990, Brown taught many seminarians of different Protestant denominations who attended UTS. For a few years he also taught Jesuit seminarians, when Woodstock College moved to New York City and became affiliated with UTS for about five years. Brown also served as a member of the newly reorganized Pontifical Biblical Commission from 1972 to 1978.

He always advocated the historical-critical method of interpreting Scripture and combined his critical scholarship with a reverence for the written Word of God and also with an ability to teach clearly. The most important of his books published during his years at UTS were Virginal Conception and Bodily Resurrection of Jesus (1973), Biblical Reflections on Crises Facing the Church (1975), The Birth of the Messiah (1977), The Critical Meaning of the Bible (1981), The Epistles of John (Anchor Bible 30 [1982]), and Biblical Exegesis and Church Doctrine (1985). He was also an editor of Peter in the New Testament: A Collaborative Assessment by Protestant and Roman Catholic Scholars (1973), Mary in the New Testament (1978), and The New Jerome Biblical Commentary (1990). Brown also published in this period many shorter works for a more popular readership (e.g., An Adult Christ at Christmas [1977], A Crucified Christ in Holy Week [1986]). These were part of his effort to spread solid biblical interpretation among the general public. During his tenure at UTS he became the object of much popular criticism for his biblical views. He himself called his position "centrist," never advocating new, bizarre, or even particularly bold theories about the New Testament, but distancing himself from a fundamentalistic reading of it. He was among the first of the generation of biblical scholars who sought to implement the directives of Pius XII in divino afflante spiritu (1943). Despite public criticism, the U.S. bishops nominated him twice to serve on the Biblical Commission (1972–78, 1996–98). He participated in dialogues with several Protestant churches: the national dialogue with the Lutherans (1965–73), Joint Commission of the World Council of Churches and the Roman Catholic Church (1967–68), and the Faith and Order Commission of the WCC (1968–93). By papal nomination, Brown served as a consultor to the Vatican Secretariat for Promoting Christian Union (1968–73) and in 1982 was appointed to the International Methodist–Roman Catholic Dialogue.

After Brown became professor emeritus at UTS in 1990, he retired to St. Patrick's Seminary in Menlo Park, California. During his retirement he continued to write and to lecture. He published a revision of The Birth of the Messiah (1993), The Death of the Messiah (two vols.,1994), and his last big book, An Introduction to the New Testament (1997), which was intended for the educated general reader. His popular-level books also continued; the last of them, A Retreat with John the Evangelist (1998), appeared a day before he died of a heart attack at Sequoia Hospital in Redwood City. He is buried in the Sulpician Cemetery in Catonsville, Maryland.

Bibliography: k. duffy, "The Ecclesial Hermeneutic of Raymond E. Brown," Heythrop Journal 39 (1998): 37–56.

[j. a. fitzmyer]