68536774 New Testament Essays by Raymond Brown Part 1

“The noted Scripture scholar Fr. Raymond Brown has cho-sen a rich and representative selection from his published articles of the past ten years for inclusion in the present book. In each of the essays, which number fourteen in all, Fr. Brown invariably views his diffi cult subject matter in its broadest context and manages to clarify it by thorough but unobtrusive scholarship. New Testament Essays is, then, at once learned and eminently readable.”

Herder Correspondence

Father Brown’s “essays embody a wide range of scholarly interest, power to penetrate to the cardinal issues, thorough acquaintance with current research, lucidity in literary style, and cogency in scholarship.”

Paul S. Minear, Yale University

“The two words that occurred most often to this reviewer as he read the collection were candor and competence.”

Catholic Biblical Quarterly

“Perhaps most characteristic of his essays is his unfailing ability to present a balanced position. One may disagree with some technical points, but the thrust of his work is toward both a scientifi c and religious appreciation of the New Testament.” Commonweal

“Father Brown’s work ‘shows an admirable combination of close textual study and theological analysis.’ ”

R. A. F. McKenzie, S.J., Rector of the Pontifi cal Biblical Institute

“Anyone weary of reiterated introduction and eager for more than a passing acquaintance with the sacred text will rejoice in this collection of Father Brown’s essays. . . . This book is distinguished not only for the depth of its author’s scholarship but also by the readability of its prose.”

The Catholic World

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NEW

TESTAMENT

E S S A Y S

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Excerpted from New Testament Essays by Raymond E. Brown. Copyright © 2010 by Raymond E. Brown. Excerpted by permission of Image, a division of Random House, Inc. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.

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NEWTESTAMENT

E S S A Y S

RAYMOND E. BROWN, S.S.

Introduction by

Ronald D. Witherup, S.S.

Image Books / Doubleday ReligionNew York London Toronto Sydney Auckland

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An Image BookPublished by Doubleday Religion

Copyright © 1965 by The Bruce Publishing CompanyIntroduction and Bibliography copyright © 2010 by


All rights reserved.Published in the United States by Doubleday Religion,

an imprint of The Crown Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc., New York.

www.crownpublishing.com

image, doubleday, and the portrayal of a deer drinking from a stream are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc.

Originally published in the United States in slightly different form by The Bruce Publishing Company, Milwaukee in 1965.

nihil obstat:John A. Schulien, S.T.D.

Censor librorum

Imprimatur:†William E. Cousins

Archbishop of MilwaukeeJuly 12, 1965

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication DataBrown, Raymond Edward.

New Testament essays / by Raymond E. Brown; introduction by Ronald D. Witherup.

p. cm.Originally published: Milwaukee: Bruce Pub. Co., c1965. With new introd.

Includes bibliographical references (p. 345–347) and indexes.1. Bible. N.T.—Criticism, interpretation, etc. 2. Bible. N.T. John—Criticism,

interpretation, etc. I. Title. BS2395.B7 2010225.6—dc22 2010002067

ISBN 978-0-307-59164-7

printed in the united states of america

2 4 6 8 10 9 7 5 3 1

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Tost. mary’s seminary, baltimore

The oldest and largest of American Catholic seminaries on the 175th anniversary of its foundation

(1791–1966)

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CONTENTS

Introduction to the New Editionby Ronald D. Witherup, S.S. 1

Preface 19

PART ONE: BIBLICAL RESEARCH TODAY AND ITS ECUMENICAL POSSIBILITIES

I. Our New Approach to the Bible 27 II. Ecumenism and New Testament Research 42 III. The Unity and Diversity in New Testament

Ecclesiology 66

PART TWO: EXAMPLES OF MODERN BIBLICAL RESEARCH INTO THE GOSPELS

Section 1: The Theology and Background of the Fourth Gospel

IV. The Johannine Sacramentary 83 V. The Eucharist and Baptism in John 114 VI. The Theology of the Incarnation in John 137 VII. The Qumran Scrolls and the Johannine

Gospel and Epistles 143 VIII. John the Baptist in the Gospel of John 178

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x Contents

Section 2: The Relation Between the Fourth Gospel and the Synoptic Gospels

IX. The Problem of Historicity in John 191 X. The Gospel Miracles 222 XI. John and the Synoptic Gospels:

A Comparison 250

Section 3: Important Passages in the Synoptic Gospels

XII. The Pater Noster as an Eschatological Prayer 279

XIII. Parable and Allegory Reconsidered 324 XIV. The Beatitudes According to Luke 337

Recommended Resources for New Testament Study 345

Author Index 349

Index of Passages in John 353

General Index 355

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NEW

TESTAMENT

E S S A Y S

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INTRODUCTION TO THE NEW EDITION

New Testament Essays and the

Legacy of Raymond E. Brown


When this set of essays was fi rst published in 1965, Roman Catholic biblical scholarship was on the verge of breaking into the mainstream scholarly discussion that had largely been dominated by Protestant scholars since the nineteenth century. Raymond E. Brown, S.S., was at the center of this new development and was already being hailed as one of the leading American Catholic bib lical scholars. Renowned for his ability to address scholars and nonpro fes sionals alike, these fourteen essays illustrate what a fresh new out-look on biblical study had arrived on the scene.

Reissuing this collection more than forty years after its initial appearance is warranted for three reasons. First, they provide eloquent testimony to the impact Brown made on New Testament scholarship in the middle of the twentieth century. Among people interested in modern biblical schol-arship, both Catholic and non-Catholic, Brown’s became a household name, someone to be reckoned with if you wanted to know more about the Bible. Second, these essays are an excellent example of the application of the historical-critical method, an essentially modern scientifi c study of the

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2 New Testament Essays

Bible. As such, they continue to show the ongoing contri-bution that method can make to our comprehension of the Bible. Finally, these essays foreshadowed some of the is-sues that would linger into the twenty-fi rst century.

This introduction has three goals: to present a synopsis of the life of the world-renowned biblical scholar Ray-mond E. Brown, S.S.; to offer a brief assessment of this collection of his early essays; and to offer some thoughts on where New Testament studies have gone since these es-says originally appeared.

biography

Raymond Edward Brown was born on May 22, 1928, in the Bronx, New York City, one of two sons born to Reu-ben H. and Loretta (Sullivan) Brown.1 He began his edu-cation in the Bronx, but his family relocated to Miami Shores, Florida, in 1944, where he completed high school. He entered St. Charles College in Catonsville, Maryland, in 1945—a college seminary program run by the Society of St. Sulpice (the Sulpicians), the community of diocesan priest-educators he later joined (thus, the initials S.S.).

Already a prodigious academic talent, Brown entered an accelerated program of study and transferred to the Catho-lic University of America in 1946, where he became a Bas-selin Scholar and obtained both a B.A. (1948) and M.A. (1949) in philosophy. He then began advanced seminary studies at the Gregorian University in Rome (1949–50) but at the request of his bishop returned to the States the fol-lowing year to complete studies for the priesthood at St.

1 See my somewhat expanded biography in Life in Abundance: Studies of John’s Gospel in Tribute to Raymond E. Brown (ed. John R. Donahue; Collegeville, Minn.: Liturgical, 2005), 254–58, and the comments of Joseph A. Fitzmyer, The Interpretation of Scripture: In Defense of the Historical-Critical Method (New York: Paulist, 2008), 101–14. A full-blown, objective biography of Father Brown has yet to be written.


Introduction 3

Mary’s Seminary & University in Baltimore, Maryland. The oldest Roman Catholic seminary in the country, St. Mary’s was founded by the Sulpicians in 1791 at the in-vitation of Bishop John Carroll, the fi rst Catholic bishop in the United States. There Brown completed his theologi-cal training for the priesthood, obtaining Bachelor of Sacred Theology (S.T.B., 1951) and Licentiate in Sacred Theology (S.T.L., 1953) degrees. He was ordained a priest on May 23, 1953, for the Diocese of St. Augustine (Florida) but was im-mediately released to the Sulpicians, since he was attracted to biblical studies and had become a Sulpician candidate in 1951. He entered the Society formally in 1955.

From a historical perspective, one should keep in mind when reading these essays that Brown entered Catholic bib-lical studies when it was in its infancy, a little over a decade after Pope Pius XII had issued a groundbreaking encycli-cal letter in 1943, titled Divino Affl ante Spiritu, which gave Catholic biblical scholars the green light to pursue their aca-demic research publicly, something that had been pursued discreetly in the background for years. This allowed them to enter into wider scholarly discussions. The encyclical urged Catholic scholars to utilize every linguistic, archaeological, and literary tool available to enhance a contemporary under-standing of the Bible, freeing these methods of study from the cloud of suspicion that had previously surrounded them. Although Brown was not the only Sulpician biblical scholar to be engaged in signifi cant research projects, his unique abilities were quickly recognized and his name became as-sociated with the historical-critical approach that was to dominate the latter half of the twentieth century.2

2 The fuller history can be found in Gerald P. Fogarty, Ameri-can Catholic Biblical Scholarship: A History from the Early Republic to Vatican II (San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1989). Fogarty notes how frequently Sulpician biblical scholars, some of whom endured censure from Vatican authorities for what were considered to be dangerous views about Scripture, were usually on the side of scholarly discussions later vindicated as the more correct viewpoint (e.g., Francis Gigot, Joseph Bruneau). The



After joining the Sulpicians, Brown was assigned to teach at St. Charles Seminary in Catonsville. This appoint-ment also allowed him to complete a doctorate in sacred theology at St. Mary’s Seminary & University (S.T.D., 1955) and to begin doctoral studies in Semitic languages at Johns Hopkins University, where he became a student of the world-renowned scholar William Foxwell Albright, known then as “the dean of biblical archaeologists.” Al-bright was recognized as the world’s leading expert on ar-chaeology and the religion of ancient Israel, and he also understood the potential that archaeology held for expand-ing our understanding of the Bible. He trained a genera-tion of important scholars, among them Raymond Brown. Although it was somewhat unusual for a Roman Catholic (and a priest) to study at a secular university, the Sulpicians were interested in the best possible training for their mem-bers who would be teaching in major seminaries around the world. At that time, the Catholic Church’s openness to other Christian denominations was growing, and Brown was able to benefi t from this development by studying with such a well-known scholar.

Brown fi nished his dissertation (Ph.D. in Semitic lan-guages) in 1958, writing on the Semitic background of the term “mystery” in the New Testament, a work that demon-strated his longstanding interest in combining Near Eastern and Old Testament studies with the study of the New Tes-tament.3 (This infl uence is readily visible in New Testament Essays, for example when he discusses the Dead Sea Scrolls in relation to Church organization or to the Johannine lit-erature.) Later, Brown also completed a licentiate in sacred scripture from the Pontifi cal Biblical Commission in Rome (S.S.L., 1963), to round out his biblical education from a

fi rst president of the Catholic Biblical Association of America (CBA), Edward P. Arbez, was also a brilliant Sulpician biblical scholar, but his name is hardly known today.

3 Raymond E. Brown, The Semitic Background of the Term “Mystery” in the New Testament (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1968).


Introduction 5

Catholic perspective, where he had obtained an earlier bac-calaureate in sacred scripture (S.S.B., 1959).

At the end of his doctoral studies at Johns Hopkins, Brown was fortunate to be invited to work on the Dead Sea Scrolls at the American School of Oriental Research (ASOR) in Jerusalem from 1958–59, where he helped cre-ate a preliminary concordance of those remarkable docu-ments. Discovered in 1947 in caves near the Dead Sea by a shepherd boy out tending his fl ock, these scrolls later became the focus of much intrigue and scholarly debate.4 Brown quickly recognized their importance as providing, if not direct infl uence on the New Testament, at least some of the crucial environment surrounding the teachings of John the Baptist and Jesus of Nazareth and the traditions about them found in the New Testament. After this fruit-ful sojourn in the Middle East, which broadened his back-ground and personal knowledge of the Holy Land, Brown returned to teach at his alma mater, St. Mary’s Seminary & University in Baltimore, until 1971.

By that time, Brown had gained an international schol-arly reputation because of the appearance of his monu-mental two-volume commentary on John’s Gospel in the Anchor Bible Commentary series (1966, 1970) that had been begun by his Johns Hopkins mentor, William F. Al-bright.5 In fact, Brown’s two volumes virtually redirected the nature of that commentary series and raised the bar

4 For a good summary of the Dead Sea Scrolls and their sig-nifi cance, see Leslie J. Hoppe, “Science and Archaeology: The Case for DNA Analysis of the Dead Sea Scrolls,” The Bible Today 47:4 (2009): 271–76.

5 Raymond E. Brown, The Gospel According to John (AB 29, 29A; Garden City: Doubleday, 1966, 1970). These two volumes are now published by Yale University Press, which has taken over the Anchor Bible project entirely. At his death, Brown was in the process of revising extensively this massive commentary. All that could be published was his partially completed intro-duction. See Raymond E. Brown, An Introduction to the Gospel of John (ed. Francis J. Moloney; New York: Doubleday, 2003).



signifi cantly on both the quality and extent of the schol-arship expected. With the permission of his Sulpician superiors, Brown moved to New York to accept a joint professorship at the Jesuit Woodstock College and Union Theological Seminary (1971–74). When Woodstock closed, he took a full-time position at Union, where he taught for twenty years, until his early retirement in 1990 as Auburn Distinguished Professor of Biblical Studies. He then took up residence at the Sulpician-run St. Patrick’s Seminary in Menlo Park, California, in order to continue his research and writing. He lived there until his untimely death by car-diac arrest on August 8, 1998, having been the author of some forty-seven books and hundreds of articles and book reviews.6 Although he made his name in Johannine studies, Brown’s interest extended into many other areas, including Christology and ecclesiology of the New Testament, bib-lical hermeneutics, inspiration, fundamentalism, and bibli-cal preaching in the liturgical life of the Church. It is also noteworthy that Brown educated some signifi cant young scholars who themselves went on to make important schol-arly contributions (e.g., Craig Koester and Marion Soards, to name just two).

an assessment of NEW TESTAMENT ESSAYS

Why reissue these essays more than ten years after the au-thor’s death and more than forty years after their appear-ance in a collected format? Two immediate reasons come to mind. First, the name of Raymond E. Brown continues to be recognized around the world as exemplary of a qual-ity of Catholic biblical scholarship in the twentieth cen-tury that has enduring value for the ages. His ability to explore the biblical writings of both Testaments, as well

6 See the bibliography organized by Michael L. Barré, in Don a hue, Life in Abundance, 259–89, which nonetheless contin-ues to grow as more translations and editions of Brown’s works appear.


Introduction 7

as important extra-biblical materials such as the Dead Sea Scrolls, in great detail yet in a way that appealed beyond the scholarly world to the general public, was unsurpassed in his day. When the Essays fi rst appeared, one (non-Catholic) commentator noted how remarkable it was for a scholar not yet forty years old to have reached such a level of achievement.7 Brown’s prolifi c and innovative scholar-ship was already evident. His interpretations, observations, and questions especially in the Johannine literature set the agenda for much of Johannine scholarship for the next forty years. No scholar could avoid grappling with Brown’s positions, even if one disagreed with specifi c viewpoints or hypotheses.

His New Testament Essays also gives rich testimony to the effi cacy of Catholic biblical studies, especially after Vatican Council II (1962–65), which awakened in Catho-lics an unquenchable thirst to explore the Bible. This ec-umenical council of the world’s Catholic bishops (and invited non-Catholic observers), called by the elderly Pope John XXIII in an unexpected move, produced an impor-tant Church constitution on divine revelation, titled Dei Verbum, which reinforced the modern, scientifi c study of the Bible already promoted by Pope Pius XII in Divino Affl ante Spiritu. This constitution continues to guide mod-ern Catholic biblical studies, although there remain contro-versies about its interpretation. Brown’s essays carved out a path that enabled Catholic scholars to participate in the wider scholarly enterprise in ways that were still loyal to the Catholic perspective, even though some disagreements would inevitably ensue.

Rereading these essays after decades does nothing to di-minish this assessment of their value. On the contrary, the insights they contain continue to inspire and to direct the attentive reader toward incisive observations about bibli-cal texts easily forgotten or overlooked. Moreover, some

7 John Reumann, “Introduction” to Brown, Semitic Background of the Term “Mystery,” iv.



topics treated in the essays (e.g., the Bible and ecumenism; unity and diversity in New Testament ecclesiology) Brown went on to explore at greater length in popular books in-tended for educated lay people that enticed readers to want to know more about the Bible and how it could speak to people today.8 New Testament Essays is thus an early “win-dow” into Brown’s mind and the ideas that would later make a far greater impact on the life of the Church in the post–Vatican II era.

A second reason for their republication is the witness they bear to a distinctive time in the history of the Catholic Church when serious battles were still being fought over the value of modern, scientifi c study of the Bible, which up to that point had been primarily the legacy of Protestant biblical exegesis. Indeed, Father Brown was a quintessen-tial practitioner of the historical-critical method, actually a collection of methods that emphasized “objective” scientifi c study of Scripture based upon modern linguistic, archaeo-logical, and literary tools. Among others at the time, like his famous colleagues Joseph A. Fitzmyer and Roland E. Murphy, with whom Brown edited the fi rst Catholic one-volume Bible commentary in English,9 Brown ardently defended the use of this approach to professional biblical studies in contrast to earlier methods that had assumed the literal historicity of all the biblical materials and empha-sized allegorical and spiritual readings of the Bible over historical ones. Paradoxically, this discussion is being re-visited today, as multiple dissatisfactions (some of them valid) with the historical-critical method have arisen and

8 See my essay “The Incarnate Word Revealed: The Pastoral Writings of Raymond E. Brown,” in Donahue, Life in Abun-dance, 238–52.

9 The Jerome Biblical Commentary (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1968). The same trio later produced an extensively revised and updated version of this groundbreaking resource, The New Jerome Biblical Commentary (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1990).


Introduction 9

as a desire to return to a more spiritually oriented patristic reading of the Scriptures has resurfaced.10

Beyond refl ecting the use of new scholarly methods for increased understanding of Scripture, New Testament Es-says also provides eloquent testimony to many other de-velopments in the Catholic faith during this unique period of Catholic history. Mirroring the larger emergence of ecu-menical dialogue, for example, Part One, titled “Biblical Research Today and Its Ecumenical Possibilities,” contains three essays that explain why the historical-critical ap-proach to the Bible, which was relatively new for Catho-lics at that time, helped to promote ecumenical discussion and cooperation. The Bible provided the common ground that had previously been elusive, especially in discussions between Protestants and Catholics. Brown was at the fore-front of these developments. His meticulous scholarship, done faithfully from a Catholic perspective, enabled him to bridge ecumenical gaps and to foster tolerance among di-verse Christian denominations.

Methodologically, it should be emphasized that Brown’s scholarly approach was generally considered to be judi-cious and as objective as possible. He was extremely professional in the way he applied scholarly methods to delicate topics. He was not averse to raising serious questions about historicity in the New Testament, when necessary, as is illustrated by his essay “The Problem of Historicity in John,” where his conclusions respect both the theology and possible historical underpinnings con-tained in the Gospel accounts of the Last Supper. Although some lay critics eventually became alarmed at some of his

10 For an overview, see Ronald D. Witherup, Scripture: Dei Verbum (New York/Mahwah, N.J.: Paulist, 2006), 100–10. For a passionate defense of the historical-critical method, see Fitzmyer, The Interpretation of Scripture. For an appreciation of the value of pre-critical exegesis, see Luke Timothy Johnson and Wil-liam S. Kurz, The Future of Catholic Biblical Studies: A Con-structive Conversation (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2002).



scholarly conclusions, which they deemed excessive and antispiritual, and some even went as far as to protest his public lectures, Brown never let this stop him from apply-ing his scholarly tools in a steady and even-handed man-ner. He remained loyal to the Catholic tradition and was twice appointed to the Pontifi cal Biblical Commission it-self, but he also recognized the complexity of the biblical materials and felt that the Church had nothing to fear from a proper, professional application of scholarly methods to New Testament study. One obvious result of his judicious approach to such delicate questions was the popularity that his works achieved in short order. He was able to take complex topics and make them understandable in ways that most educated, nonprofessional readers felt made sense. They could also see that he was not interested in simply dismantling the historical foundations of the New Testa-ment. He searched for the truth behind the New Testament traditions. Brown was also adept at applying insights from pre-critical biblical interpretation, such as the Church fa-thers, but he acknowledged the inherent limitations of their pre-scientifi c vantage point.11 In general, one can say that New Testament Essays displays Brown’s characteristic pru-dence and sound judgment that became the hallmark of his exegetical method.

developments in new testament studies

When a new edition of New Testament Essays was being considered, a question arose as to whether the bibliography and the footnotes should be updated, as would normally be done when reissuing an update of one’s own scholarly work. In this instance, however, this procedure was neither

11 Another example of Brown’s balance can be seen in his essay on parable and allegory, where he notes the limits of pre-critical approaches but is not excessive in his rejection of them. See New Testament Essays (Garden City: Doubleday, 1965), 321–33, below pp. 324–336.


Introduction 11

possible nor desirable. Father Brown is no longer avail-able to do such a task, and more important, the essays have their own integrity, though time-conditioned, that should be preserved. This fact, however, does not mean that New Testament studies have not advanced in the last forty years. To the contrary, many scholarly developments are appar-ent, and Brown’s later writings, both popular and scholarly, demonstrate some of these advances clearly. These particu-lar essays were some of his early work, but many of them can validly be considered “classics,” such as “The Pater Noster as an Eschatological Prayer,” “John and the Syn-optic Gospels: A Comparison,” or “The Johannine Sacra-mentary.” As exemplary pieces of historical-critical study, these can hardly be improved upon. They stand as senti-nels, looking both backward to the early days of modern Catholic exegesis and forward to the contemporary issues confronting Catholic New Testament study.

Yet New Testament scholarship has continued to evolve. At the risk of oversimplifi cation, I point to three key areas where advances have gone beyond what these essays represent.12

1. An Explosion of Methods

Methodology is the most obvious area of signifi cant change. Recent years have seen a virtual explosion of meth-ods in New Testament studies. Brown restricted himself to the historical-critical method. This approach emphasized the search for bedrock history in the Bible, sometimes ex-pressing an excessive historical skepticism about the truth

12 I am aware that one could say there are developments in every topic treated in these essays, many of which concern John’s Gospel, because in fact other commentators have gone on to new interpretations or have challenged or engaged some of Brown’s published positions. This will always be the case. But in the short space allotted, my focus is on larger developments of New Testament study, not the intricacies of individual interpretations.



of the Bible’s tales. It tended also to be preoccupied with source questions and how the oral, written, and redacted traditions of the Bible had changed over time, sometimes obscuring the actual events purportedly recounted in the Bible. Brown represents a high point of this type of study, judiciously applied.

But many new methods and approaches to New Tes-tament study have evolved that go far beyond such historical-critical preoccupations, such as narrative criti-cism, structuralism, rhetorical criticism, social-scientifi c criticism, psychoanalytic methods, feminist, liberationist, various ethnic hermeneutics (African, Latino, etc.), and all sorts of postmodern approaches that “deconstruct” the text and that insist there is no such thing as objective in-terpretation of any text.13 Each of these methods or herme-neutical stances has strengths and weaknesses, but there is no uniform method for New Testament study. Up until his death, and as can be seen in his last major work, An Introduction to the New Testament, Brown kept abreast of these developments, but he had no interest in imple-menting them himself.14 Not all of these new methods, of course, yield a lasting contribution. Some methods will fall by the wayside. Few may have the monumental impact of the historical-critical method, which even the Pontifi cal

13 A summary and evaluation of many of these methods can be found in the instruction of the Pontifi cal Biblical Commis-sion’s document, The Interpretation of the Bible in the Church (Boston: St. Paul, 1993) and in several resources listed in the supplementary bibliography at the end of this book.

14 An Introduction to the New Testament (New York: Double-day, 1997). However, it is worth noting that Brown was will-ing to acknowledge a few insights from narrative criticism in his monumental Death of the Messiah: From Gethsemane to the Grave: A Commentary on the Passion Narratives of the Four Gospels (2 vols.; ABRL; New York: Doubleday, 1993). Had he lived to see its completion, I suspect Brown would have revised his groundbreaking commentary, The Gospel According to John, which fi rmly established his status as a scholar, utilizing even more such insights.


Introduction 13

Biblical Commission’s document has referred to as “indis-pensable” (§.A).

2. Patristic and Medieval Exegesis

A concomitant second development, largely because of dissatisfaction with the excessively historical orientation and historical skepticism of the historical-critical method, and because many fi nd it too dry to contribute to their faith perspective, there is a trend to rediscover the value of pre-critical Patristic and medieval exegesis. Interestingly, this movement is evident in both Catholic and Protestant circles. Increasingly more medieval and Patristic resources are available in modern English translations, and some new commentary series have emphasized a much broader ap-proach to biblical interpretation than was evident in the last half of the twentieth century.15 Brown would likely have been wary of this development, especially if it were to sig-nal a rejection of any historical interests and methods in biblical studies. He would warn against a historically naïve pre-critical view that, if left without any objective controls, could promote all sorts of fanciful interpretations with lit-tle or no basis in the text.

Many of Brown’s works demonstrate that he was con-versant especially with Patristic literature. One can fi nd quotations from Augustine, Jerome, Origen, John Chryso-stom, and so on, but his historical-critical orientation was unequivocal. Yet one should not forget that Brown’s works were so popular and continue to garner attention precisely because, even decades after their fi rst appearance, people do not fi nd them fruitless and unimaginative. Rather, many readers fi nd Brown’s insights lively and intriguing, not at

15 Two examples are the New Testament series titled Catholic Commentary on Sacred Scripture being published by Baker Aca-demic Press (traditionally Evangelical!), and the multiple volumes of the Ancient Christian Commentary on Scripture (InterVarsity Press), which cite quotations from Patristic commentators.



all opposed to a spiritual understanding of the text.16 Read-ing Brown’s exposition of John’s Gospel, for instance, is never simply a narrow search for historical bedrock. Brown had a gift for ferreting out in his technical exegesis diverse understandings of the Bible that could nourish people and entice them to delve more deeply in the text. This is part of the legacy of these Essays.

3. The State of Ecumenism

A third development concerns the ecumenical scene. One of the great advances from the Second Vatican Council was the explosion of ecumenical (and interfaith) dialogues. Hundreds of years of differences between Protestants and Catholics began to be reevaluated. Study of the Bible was front and center in this extraordinary historical develop-ment. And Raymond Brown himself was in the thick of it all, especially in the course of his twenty years on the fac-ulty of an interdenominational seminary like Union Theo-logical Seminary in New York. If there was an area where ecumenical discussion could take place in a less controver-sial and more open spirit, it was in biblical studies. New Testament Essays represents only the very earliest of these developments, especially in Part One, which is devoted to “ecumenical possibilities.” As a Catholic professor at an interdenominational Protestant seminary, where once sharp dogmatic debates over orthodoxy in the Reformed Tradi-tion had taken place, Brown was in a unique position to contribute to this area. He came to know many Protestant and Jewish scholars on a fi rst-name basis, nationally and internationally, and he was widely admired for his ability

16 It should be noted that Brown was hardly insensitive to the multiple layers of meaning in biblical texts, spiritual and other-wise, for he had done a doctoral dissertation on such “deeper” meanings. See Raymond E. Brown, The Sensus Plenior of Sa-cred Scripture (Eugene: Wipf & Stock, 2005; orig. 1955).


Introduction 15

to engage in their scholarly dialogue in a calm, objective, and judicious fashion.

His later works expanded his contribution in this area considerably, especially when he participated in Church-sponsored ecumenical discussions that produced signifi -cant studies on biblical themes.17 Those were the halcyon days of ecumenical fervor. Much has cooled on the ecu-menical scene since then. Ecumenism has been more in the background in recent years, and there are fewer pro-fessional studies done from an overtly ecumenical perspec-tive. Indeed, in some circles, there are Catholics who fi nd such cross-fertilization of ideas dangerous or who seek to defi ne precisely what constitutes a “Catholic” exegesis.18 One easily forgets the historical context of Brown’s early years when it was hazardous for Catholics to do biblical exegesis. As he writes in the postscript to his essay “Our New Approach to the Bible”: “This paper was delivered in 1961 when the modern biblical movement was facing con-siderable opposition and indeed was fi ghting for its life. It is a great joy that now a few years later the clouds have lifted and the hopes of the writer for tolerance and accep-tance have been granted beyond expectation. . . . Teachers in Rome who were under a cloud of suspicion have been restored to their chairs of biblical studies.”19

Curious as it may seem, contemporary Catholic bib-lical scholarship fi nds itself revisiting this scenario, not quite so urgently but nonetheless in an environment that,

17 One thinks, for example, of Peter in the New Testament (New York: Paulist, 1973) or Mary in the New Testament (New York: Paulist, 1978) both of which Brown coedited with Karl P. Donfried and John Reumann, in the fi rst instance, with the ad-dition of Joseph A. Fitzmyer for the latter book.

18 For example, see Johnson and Kurz, The Future of Catholic Biblical Studies, and Peter Williamson, “Catholic Principles for Interpreting Scripture,” CBQ 65 (2003): 327–49. For an over-view, see Witherup, Scripture: Dei Verbum, 110–15.

19 New Testament Essays (1965), 35, below p. 41.



at times, questions the loyalty of some Catholic exegetes to the magisterial teaching of the Church. To complicate matters, the issue of fundamentalism lurks in the back-ground. Although such a literalistic approach to biblical interpretation is ostensibly rejected as a Catholic method20

(or, for that matter, as a mainline Protestant approach), there are those who question whether fundamentalist inter-pretation is really that bad. Brown was quite clear on this point. He maintained that from a modern perspective, the dividing line of interpretation was not primarily Protestant versus Catholic, but between those who accepted modern historical-critical study of the Bible and those who rejected it (essentially, fundamentalists). One of Brown’s enduring contributions to New Testament study is to demonstrate the value of being open to the diverse interpretations of other Christian experts while being faithful to one’s own Catho-lic tradition.

These are just three ways New Testament study has evolved since New Testament Essays appeared, but as with so many modern realities, advances arrive at a fast pace. Readers of this collection should be aware, though, that much of what Brown has written here has stood the test of time and continues to infl uence scholarly discussions. Heated debates continue to take place about the role of the historical-critical method and other methods, about the na-ture of the Johannine community and the literature it pro-duced, about the ultimate impact of the Dead Sea Scrolls on our understanding of the New Testament, about unity and diversity in the New Testament view of the Church, and so on. These Essays are not merely static pillars stand-ing as archaic reminders of a bygone era. They are sign-posts to many contemporary scholarly discussions.

20 See the analysis of the Pontifi cal Biblical Commission, The Interpretation of the Bible, §I.F.


Introduction 17

conclusion

The reissuing of these essays is thus an opportunity for veterans of the early, post–Vatican II generation of Catho-lics interested in Bible study to savor once more the fresh insights that came from such critical study of the Bible. It is an occasion to revisit the fervor and excitement of the 1960s and 70s and to get in touch with why we be-came excited about Scripture as a force that could shape our lives and the life of the Church. For a new generation interested in Bible study, these same essays provide some much-needed historical perspective, an occasion to get in touch with some of that same enthusiasm of an earlier gen-eration, but with a nuanced understanding of how the work of one dedicated scholar helped to shape the questions of biblical interpretation being discussed today. These essays do not claim to be the fi nal word on any biblical theme, but they legitimately testify to the greatness of a brilliant exe-gete who combined the best of scholarly ability with an in-credibly pastoral sensitivity that could attract readers to the Bible as the Word of God, bearing a message for all time.

As one who knew Father Brown personally, I believe he might be embarrassed to think of reissuing these essays without substantial revision and updating. His humility and integrity as a scholar might make him cringe. But he might also be proud to know that this early scholarly fruit of his labors in the exegetical vineyard continues to excite and di-rect people’s questions pertaining to the Bible. He would want us to explore the many new methods arriving on the scene and to assess their strengths and weaknesses. He would also want us to engage further the role of archaeol-ogy on our understanding of the Bible and its environment. And he would want us never to cease being open to the Bible’s ability to make us look at ourselves honestly and not to be afraid to ask questions of the text as they come our way.



It is my sincere hope that rereading these essays will reinforce the greatness of this premier Catholic exegete and always will send readers back to the source, back to the study of the sacred text itself, for that is what Brown himself would have wanted.


PREFACE

The essays in this book represent a selection made from articles published by the author in various biblical jour-nals over the past ten years. They have been edited in the sense that passages affected by later biblical research have been modifi ed and corrected, but no need was felt to re-write them completely. It is indeed comforting to an author to know that his brain-children are not destined to die in the pages of periodicals, but have been found worthy of a longer life and a larger family. The selecting of the articles to be included was a diffi cult task, but what is presented here is a good cross section; for not only “lighter” articles but also studies in depth have been included.

The Catholic biblical movement of the postwar period has produced a hunger for modern works on Scripture. Up to now what has been offered to the Catholic public has in large part been by way of an introductory nature. This was very necessary, but then one can be introduced to Scrip-ture only a limited number of times. We are now reaching the second stage of development where the public that has been introduced to Scripture wants to know in more detail



about the individual books and passages of the Bible. This writer is convinced that there is an audience, religious and lay, that will respond to a more serious level of writing on Scripture and especially on the New Testament. He is grateful to The Bruce Publishing Company for the oppor-tunity to test this conviction.

By way of introduction for the general reader, we may say that the choice of essays was guided by the desire to develop harmoniously certain themes of importance. The essays in Part One, for instance, deal with a more general topic, namely, the motivation and orientation of modern Catholic biblical research. To some extent they answer the questions of “why?” and “to what purpose?” The opening essay makes it clear from the very fi rst page of the vol-ume that author is committed, heart, mind, and soul, to the modern biblical movement that for Catholics had its origins in Pope Pius XII’s great encyclical Divino Affl ante Spiritu (1943). This scientifi c approach to the Bible is the only approach that can make sense to the men of our time. The essay has as its purpose to explain to all who are open to conviction that the modern biblical movement is solidly grounded in science, has received the approving patronage of the Church, and is a thoughtful and necessary Christian response to contemporary culture.

The next two essays in Part One exemplify one direction that this response can take by exploring the ecumenical pos-sibilities of the biblical advances. It is no secret that since its beginning in 1943 the Catholic biblical movement has been heavily dependent on the work of Protestant scholars. Be-tween the Modernist crisis at the beginning of this century and 1943 there was a period in which the authorities of the Catholic Church, made cautious by the Modernist extrava-gances, frowned on the free application of scientifi c histori-cal criticism to the Bible. When Pope Pius XII changed this position and insisted on the importance of scientifi c criti-cism, Catholic scholarship had fallen seriously behind. For-tunately, Protestant scholarship, which had gone through its


Preface 21

own problems with the liberal and fundamentalist extremes, was at this particular time producing much solid work that could motivate and inform the revitalizing of Catholic bibli-cal studies. Only in the past few years has Catholic scholar-ship reached a suffi cient maturity in modern techniques to begin to repay the debt by making substantial contributions of its own in the New Testament fi eld.

Because of the way in which this development has taken place, Catholic and Protestant biblical scholars have come to know and trust one another and to appreciate one an-other’s work. Indeed, there exists a rather broad consensus in biblical interpretation—a consensus that cuts across de-nominational lines—and one can often read a biblical ar-ticle without knowing whether the author is Protestant or Catholic. This does not mean that the respective authors are in any way disloyal to their own confessions, but that they recognize in Scripture a common heritage which should be able to be interpreted objectively by all Chris-tians. No Christian Church worthy of the name should have to bolster its theology by an interpretation that is not an honest refl ection of the sacred writer’s intent. Most of the differences that separate Christians stem from the evaluation given to postbiblical developments in Christian thought and practice. The second and third essays attempt to show in practice what contributions the modern bibli-cal movement is making in a study of the scriptural mate-rial relevant to some of the differences between Christians. One essay, in particular, addresses itself to the concept of “the Church” in the New Testament.

The essays in Part Two constitute the major portion of this volume. Here we progress from the general to the par-ticular and try to show modern biblical technique at work in the fi eld of the Gospels. The author’s own research in these past years has been largely in the study of the Fourth Gospel, and so the majority of the essays deal in one way or another with John. Many of the readers will already be familiar with the writer’s popular commentary on John in



the Collegeville New Testament Reading Guide. Very often the essays presented here show how the conclusions briefl y mentioned in that commentary were reached.

In the fi rst section under Part Two there are fi ve essays dealing with various points in the Fourth Evangelist’s the-ology and background. It is commonly thought that one of the major purposes in the writing of the Fourth Gospel was a desire to show the relation between Church life and the ministry of Jesus. As he lived late in the fi rst century, the Evangelist seems to have been impelled to recall to the Christians of his time that the mainstays of their life in the Church, e.g., the sacraments, were intimately connected to what Jesus had done in Palestine some forty to sixty years before. It is curious that we fi nd this same need in our own time and that in this century theologians are fi nding it nec-essary once more to stress that the sacraments cannot be divorced from the action of Jesus. Symbolism was John’s tool in accomplishing this purpose. The Evangelist (Chap. 9) tells the story of how Jesus opened the eyes of a man born blind so that the man came not only to see physically but also to see spiritually and to believe in Jesus. He uses such a story to symbolize the effects of baptism, which leads the Christian from the sin and darkness into which he was born into the light and life that is Jesus. In a similar manner the Evangelist shows that in multiplying the loaves and in speaking of Himself and His revelation as the bread of life Jesus was preparing the way for the Eucharist. Two of our essays are concerned with this sacramental theme in the Fourth Gospel. The Johannine emphasis on sacra-mental symbolism is closely related to John’s theology of the Incarnation whereby, having become man, Jesus uses the things of this world both to explain His thought and to sanctify men. The short essay on the Incarnation in Johan-nine theology is really a challenge to live up to the impli-cations of such a Christian worldliness in our own lives.

The last two essays under the fi rst section deal with the background of the tradition found in the Fourth Gospel.


Preface 23

It is immediately obvious that in John Jesus speaks in an abstract language and a dualistic outlook (e.g., a world di-vided between light and darkness, truth and falsehood) that is not characteristic of His speech in the fi rst three Gos-pels. The failure to fi nd a good parallel for these patterns in contemporary Jewish usage made many scholars of the past suspect that the Evangelist had placed on Jesus’ lips the language of second-century Greek thought. The discov-ery of the Dead Sea Scrolls has challenged this assump-tion. We now fi nd abstract language and dualistic thought very similar to John’s in the writings of a Jewish commu-nity who lived in Palestine in Jesus’ time. One of the major obstacles to treating John as a serious witness to the his-torical Jesus has been removed. Yet, of course, that does not mean that John is simply a history of Jesus’ ministry. Rather, a body of historical tradition which served as a source for the Fourth Gospel has been developed through preaching and teaching until in the form of a written Gos-pel it conveys the Evangelist’s own appreciation of Jesus’ signifi cance. The essay on John the Baptist is meant to demonstrate the difference of insight between the written Gospel and the original historical tradition. Thanks in part to the Dead Sea Scrolls, we are now able to fi t John the Baptist into an intelligible milieu. In studying the sayings that Fourth Gospel attributes to John the Baptist, we can see, on the one hand, how in their original meaning these sayings fi t into that milieu, and how, on the other hand, they have undergone theological development so that they fi t smoothly into the perspective of the Evangelist.

The essay on John the Baptist also shows how, when properly understood, John’s tradition about the Baptist is reconcilable with the picture of the Baptist in the Synop-tic Gospels. Thus this essay serves as a bridge leading the reader to Section 2, which discusses the relations between John and the Synoptic Gospels. Today almost all scholars agree that John was not written to fi ll in the lacunae of the Synoptic Gospels, but some tend to treat John as totally



dependent on the Synoptic Gospels for any historical mate-rial pertaining to the ministry of Jesus. The whole case for Johannine historicity depends on the existence of indepen-dent historical material as a source for the Fourth Gospel. Three essays are devoted to a very close comparison of the Johannine and Synoptic traditions to show the similarities and the differences in the basic material behind each and the different ways in which that material is developed. The con-clusions hopefully do justice both to the wealth of historical material in the Fourth Gospel and to the Evangelist’s theo-logical genius at developing this material in his own way.

Section 3 shows how biblical research can be applied to some very familiar passages in the Synoptic Gospels. It is the writer’s hope that, after reading the essay on the Lord’s Prayer, the reader will have seen new depths of meaning in this frequently recited formula. The parables of the Gos-pels are familiar Sunday fare in the readings at Mass, and one essay is devoted to reclaiming the authenticity of some features in the parables from an overcritical exegesis. The volume closes on the well-known theme of the beatitudes, but the beatitudes seen in a light that many will fi nd quite different. Perhaps this fi nal short essay in the volume is the one best adapted to show the reader that the modern bib-lical movement not only supplies nourishing intellectual fare, but also opens up some fascinating possibilities for deepening one’s spiritual insight.

The author is quite aware of his own limitations as scholar and writer; he makes no pretense that the views he proposes will be acceptable to all his fellow workers in the biblical fi eld, nor even to all Catholic scholars. (Disagree-ment among Catholic scholars is a good sign; too often in the past uncritical consent to a particular view as “the Catholic view” has led us to grief.) But he does hope that these essays will exhibit to the reader how much wealth can be discovered in Scripture if we use the modern tools available to us.


P A R T O N E

BIBLICAL RESEARCH TODAY

AND

ITS ECUMENICAL POSSIBILITIES

I. Our New Approach to the Bible

II. Ecumenism and New Testament Research

III. The Unity and Diversity in New Testament Ecclesiology


I

Our New Approach

to the Bible

That there is something new afoot in Catholic biblical circles has become obvious to all: to the hierarchy, to theo-logians, to priests in the ministry, to teachers, and to the ordinary laity. Some are enthusiastic; some are opposed; some are afraid; and some are just confused.

In all the discussion of the “new” biblical movement, however, there is one question that does keep coming up, namely, why a new movement? The Christian Church has been in possession of the Bible for nearly two thousand years. Naturally there are always new insights. But the no-tion that there can be a new approach to the Bible seems to imply that either the Church has been on the wrong track in the past, or has been neglecting its duty. It is this mis-trust of the “newness” of the biblical movement that leads many to suspect that it is just a passing fancy or something worse.

We think that a great deal of confusion can be cleared away by carefully answering this question of newness. We would like to go into the background of the new bib-lical movement to show why it has come about now and



not before. We would like to make it clear that there is no question of any sort of reproach to the Church of the past, for the material that has given rise to the new biblical movement could not possibly have been known before our own time. Rather, the very fact that there is a new biblical movement is a witness to the eternal vitality of the Church and to God’s providential plan for its growth. In short, the newness of the biblical movement is not a dangerous nov-elty gained by wanton uprooting, but the freshness of or-ganic growth.

The modern Catholic biblical movement is the result of a grafting of the past one hundred years of scientifi c dis-covery on to the tree of Christian knowledge. In the past other grafts have been made on this tree; and each time, with proper pruning, the tree has borne ever richer fruit. In the early centuries Greco-Roman culture with its laws, ethics, organization, and philosophical imagery was grafted on to the basic teachings of the Galilean Rabbi; and the re-sult was the fl owering of the patristic period. In the Middle Ages there was a graft of Aristotelian philosophy, trans-mitted through the Arabic commentators; this gave its life to the splendid fl owering of Thomism and the revival of the philosophia perennis. In the period of the Renaissance a graft from the new classical and scientifi c insights fl ow-ered in the great theological and spiritual advances of the Counter-Reformation.

So now in the past hundred years there has been a growth in scientifi c knowledge unparalleled in the history of mankind; and this knowledge, too, has its role to play in the growth of Christianity. The wise men of today must bring their gifts to the God-Man, as did wise men of the past. To turn our backs on this new knowledge of our times and to claim that it has nothing to offer to religion would be a denial of history, and a blasphemous confession that Christianity is dead because it can grow no longer. To fear this new knowledge and to hide from it is a denial of faith,


Our New Approach to the Bible 29

for “the refusal to face facts in the name of piety is not the evidence of faith but of the lack of it.”1

The biblical movement is but one phase of the contribu-tion of science to religion, but it is a very active phase. In discussing the scientifi c origins of the new biblical move-ment let us consider the contributions made in the past hundred years by language studies, by history, and by ar-chaeology to the growth of biblical knowledge.

language studies

First, language studies. It is diffi cult to realize today that up to one hundred years ago the Bible was really the only fi rsthand witness to the great civilizations that preceded Greece and Rome. True, there were echoes in the Greek historians (especially in reference to Persia), in Josephus and Eusebius, but they were often badly garbled. The Bible was our chief source of knowledge of the Egyptians, the Assyrians, the Babylonians, the Aramaeans, and of a host of other kingdoms that bad fl ourished and died in the an-cient Near East, And we must remember that the foreign empires fi gured in the Bible only incidentally, i.e., as a background for the story of God’s dealings with an insig-nifi cant Semitic tribe known as the Benê Israel. This isola-tion of the Bible presented all sorts of diffi culties. Many parts of the historical books remained virtually incom-prehensible because of a lack of background. And for the more literary parts of the Bible, e.g., its sapiential poetry, no intelligible standards of comparison had survived from the civilizations contemporary with Israel.

Then the picture changed radically. In the fi rst half of the nineteenth century Champollion deciphered hieroglyph ics

1 Bruce Vawter, “Genesis and the College Teacher of Sacred Doctrine,” Proceedings of the Sixth Annual Convention of the So-ciety of Catholic College Teachers of Sacred Doctrine (1960), 31.



and Rawlinson deciphered (Persian) cuneiform. It took time before these decipherments could he fully used in giving us the grammar and vocabulary of the respective languages, but by the end of the century Egyptian, Baby-lonian, and Assyrian records could be read accurately. The Bible was no longer alone in its witness to the past.

The historical contributions of these records we shall discuss later; let us mention here just a few examples of their literary importance. The Egyptian records, for in-stance, give us a whole body of wisdom literature very close in concept to the wisdom literature of the Bible. In fact, it seems clear that part of the Book of Proverbs was dependent on the sayings of the Egyptian Amen-em-ope, and that there is a close parallel in Psalm 104 to the Egyp-tian hymn to the sun-god Aton. The Assyro-Babylonian re-cords and those of their forerunners, the Sumerians, have given us even richer material. The Babylonian fl ood story (ultimately of Sumerian origin) and its hero Utnapish-tim are identical in many details with the biblical story of Noah. This shows us that some of the stories of Genesis 1–11 were not the peculiar property of the Hebrews but were drawn, with modifi cations, from the common tradi-tions of the Near East. The great law codes of the Sumeri-ans and Akkadians (e.g., Hammurabi) have made us realize that the Mosaic code refl ected the legal traditions of neigh-boring peoples.

These nineteenth-century linguistic discoveries were only the fi rst in a series. More recently (1930), the dis-covery and decipherment of the tablets found at Ugarit have made a tremendous impact on biblical studies. When Abraham and, later Joshua came into the promised land, they found a fl ourishing civilization, that of the Canaan-ites. They borrowed the language of this civilization (for Hebrew is just a Canaanite dialect) and many of its cus-toms. But until 1930 we knew of no literary records left by the Canaanites. The decipherment of Ugaritic (ancient Canaanite written in a cuneiform alphabet) made available



the poetic myths which dealt with the gods of Canaan. The language itself was of interest; for, more ancient than He-brew, it gave us the meanings of words and constructions in Hebrew poetry which had long been forgotten. But more than that, this ancient Canaanite poetry was of basically the same form as biblical poetry; and so we now realize that the Hebrews borrowed not only their language but also their poetry and music from the Canaanites. Many expres-sions of the Psalms appear word for word in the Ugaritic literature, and it seems clear that some of the praises sung of Yahweh were borrowed from those once sung of Baal. None of this is shocking: the God of Israel was a God of history, and the people that learned to worship Him used familiar materials in fashioning their religion, although they infused these materials with an entirely new spirit.

Even more recently than Ugarit, the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls (1947) has thrown light on the Bible. This is the fi rst large body of Palestinian literature from the period after the Maccabees and before the fall of Jerusalem (c. 130 b.c. to a.d. 68). The Scrolls are useful in giving us an idea of the type of Hebrew and Aramaic being writ-ten in the period before and during Jesus’ lifetime. For the standard books of the Hebrew Bible the Scrolls have given us a text almost one thousand years earlier than that hith-erto available. For the fi rst time we can see a deuteroca-nonical book like Tobit and apocryphal books like Jubilees and Enoch in their original Semitic form, without having to depend on Greek and Ethiopic translations.

The linguistic discoveries we have mentioned thus far have affected Old Testament studies (although, as well known, the Dead Sea Scrolls are of importance for New Testament background). But there have been equally im-portant discoveries with regard to the New Testament. True, Greek was well known long before the past one hundred years. Yes, classical Greek, but not New Testament Greek. Indeed, there were scholars who thought New Testament Greek so strange that they suggested that it was a dialect



peculiar to the New Testament. It was only at the end of the past century with the discovery of the Greek papyri in Egypt that there were made available some examples of the everyday (koine) Greek spoken in New Testament times. Here were business contracts and letters—the documents of the ordinary man written in the ordinary Greek that he spoke. This Greek, not classical Greek, was the language of the New Testament; and any modern New Testament Greek dictionary shows the great infl uence of the papyri on New Testament studies.

More recently the discovery of papyri fragments of New Testament books has given us Greek biblical texts hundreds of years earlier than the great codices like Vaticanus. The Ry-lands fragment of Jn (P52, published in 1935), for instance, dates to a.d. 125–150. The Bodmer papyri of Jn (P66, pub-lished in 1956, and P75, published in 1961) give us relatively long texts of the Gospel from the late second century. These papyri discoveries, both in the Gospels and Epistles, are of great importance for studies of the biblical text.

All of these discoveries that we have mentioned belong to the past one hundred years, many to the past few years. The knowledge that they have supplied for interpreting and translating the Bible was not available to earlier centuries. We might remember, by way of comparison, that for the seven hundred years between the time of St. Jerome and that of the School of St. Victor (twelfth century) Hebrew was virtually an unknown language in the Western Church. Hence we can understand how this tremendous increase of linguistic knowledge in the short period of one hundred years has produced a more rapid advance in the biblical fi eld than all of the past centuries put together.

historical discoveries

Second, we may turn now, more briefl y, to the contributions of another science, that of history, to biblical knowledge. The ancient records, whose discovery we have mentioned,



have fi lled in the background of the history of Israel and put that history on a scientifi c basis. Even today, a close knowledge of the history of a period enables us to determine whether a modern author is writing real history or only using historical details as a backdrop for fi ction or parable. The same is true of the knowledge gained of the biblical period. What we have learned of ancient history in the past hundred years has enabled us, in part, to determine whether the author of a sacred book intended to write history or not. A knowledge of ancient records has convinced many Catho-lic authors that books like Jonah and Daniel were never in-tended as scientifi c history by their authors.

It might be interesting to look at a few examples of how historical discoveries have thrown light on Israel’s history. The Egyptian records have clarifi ed the Joseph story, for now we know more about the Hyksos period (seventeenth century b.c.) in Egypt when the country was ruled by for-eigners, and when a Semitic nomad like Joseph might well have made his way to power. The centralization of prop-erty attributed to Joseph in Gn 47:11–26 fi ts in very well with the Hyksos period. Again our knowledge of the Egyp-tian building activities in the delta under the fi rst pharaohs of the Nineteenth Dynasty (late fourteenth, early thirteenth centuries) now enables us to date the exodus under Moses to the thirteenth century. The complicated foreign affairs of the monarchies of Judah and Israel are only intelli-gible now when Egyptian, Assyrian and Babylonian docu-ments have traced for us the struggle for power between the neighbors of Israel. Only a few years ago the annals of Nebuchadnezzar were discovered, annals which enable us to pinpoint the fi rst capture of Jerusalem to March 16, 597 b.c. For the subsequent Babylonian captivity of the Jews there have been found the actual Babylonian records dealing with the provisioning of the royal house of Judah.

We could go on and on with these historical fi nds that have clarifi ed the Bible. A whole world has opened before our eyes—forgotten peoples who were previously only



biblical names have come to life, like the Hittites and the Hurrians. Their customs, laws, and treaties have explained details in the patriarchal narratives. Light on even such a basic thing as the Ten Commandments has been received from the categorical imperatives in Hittite treaties. There the agreement to keep certain commandments marked the signing of a covenant, just as Israel’s agreement to keep God’s commandments marked the Old Covenant.

And once again these historical discoveries are not con-fi ned to the Old Testament. How many times the records of the Roman Empire in Greece and Asia Minor have confi rmed information given to us by Luke in Acts, infor-mation that was once doubted. Needless to say, all this his-torical knowledge was unavailable to previous generations. Its availability to our generation has been the backbone of the biblical movement.

archaeological discoveries

Third, and last, let us turn to the contributions of the sci-ence of archaeology, a science which is itself the product of the past one hundred years. Here there is a question not only of the archaeology of Egypt and Babylonia, but of the archaeology of Palestine itself. Beginning in the 1890’s, the archaeology of Palestine has been put on a scientifi c basis; and, thanks to ceramic chronology, we have, inde-pendently of the Bible, the material for a history of the Holy Land and of its peoples.

The archaeological discoveries pertaining to the Middle and Late Bronze periods (roughly 2100 to 1200 b.c.) have unfolded before our eyes great Canaanite cities like Jeri-cho, Beth-shan, Megiddo and Hazor. The public and pri-vate buildings of the Canaanites, their temples, defenses, weapons, chariots, artifacts, are all there for us as they were in the times of the patriarchs—from the idols that Rachel hid under her saddle to the Hazor destroyed by Joshua. And the discoveries go on. Only in the past ten



years Jewish archaeologists have traced the ancient settle-ments and travel routes in the Negeb, the southern desert of Israel, and thus clarifi ed the travels of two of its ancient citizens, Abraham of Hebron and Isaac of Beersheba.

After the Canaanite period, archaeology has unfolded the Iron Period, Iron I being roughly contemporary with the Judges, and Iron II with the monarchy. The excavations of settlements at Megiddo and Taanach have helped fi x the date of the song of Deborah, celebrating the victory at Taanach by the waters of Megiddo (Jgs 5:19). Saul’s unpretentious fortress has been excavated at Tell el Ful, as have Solomon’s tremendous economic and military constructions through-out the land. The history of the divided monarchy has been vividly illustrated both in battle-scarred ruins and in magnif-icent building projects (such as those at Samaria, the capital of the northern kingdom). And its dramatic end has been spelled out in the letters excavated at Lachish where a des-perate offi cial describes the ever-tightening noose drawn by the Babylonian advance on Jerusalem.

Scarcely a detail of life as portrayed in the Bible has not been elucidated by the archaeological discoveries of these past years. And this includes the New Testament period. For instance, the mention of the pool of Bethesda with its fi ve porticoes (Jn 5:2) has been confi rmed by the discovery of this pool in Jerusalem near the Sheepgate of the Temple, exactly where John said it was. Once more none of this material was available in the past, when it lay covered by the dust of centuries.

And so whether the new biblical information has come from language studies, or from history, or from archaeol-ogy, there can be no question of blaming biblical scholars of earlier generations for not using it; it was not theirs to make use of. The only possible blame could be on our own gener-ation if we seek to ignore it because of preconceived ideas.

Nor in this catalog of modern biblical advances do we mean to undervalue the biblical insights of earlier periods, especially the theological insight which the Fathers gained



from the Bible. (In fact, today’s biblical scholars have re-vived interest in patristic exegesis.) God has always seen to it that in each period the Church profi ts from the Bible ac-cording to her needs. The present biblical advances are in a scientifi c direction which was closed to past ages but which peculiarly fi ts the needs of the Church today. And, naturally, from this scientifi c advance there has been an ever deeper theological perception of the wealth of the Bible.

catholic use of new material

The observations made thus far should explain the origins of the new biblical movement, but they do not explain why this movement has arisen so recently in Catholic circles. After all, the new Catholic movement is a product of the postwar period, after 1945. Yet, some of the scientifi c discoveries we have been mentioning were available before 1900. While there may have been limited Catholic use of this material before the Second World War, its free employment is some-thing recent. Why? The answer is Divino Affl ante Spiritu.

At the end of the past century many non-Catholic schol-ars were using the new scientifi c material. Often, however, their approach was guided by rationalistic philosophy. The result, seen in such schools of biblical criticism as that of Wellhausen, was a radical and basically irreligious ap-proach to the Bible. Often their facts were correct, e.g., Moses did not personally write the whole Pentateuch; but the interpretations were wrong, e.g., when they claimed that there was nothing Mosaic in the Pentateuch. In the same era some Catholic scholars, too, began to use the scien-tifi c material at times with splendid results, e.g., the works of Père Lagrange. Other Catholics, however, fell under the spell of the rationalists, and failed to distinguish between fact and interpretation. Their misguided steps ultimately led them into the Modernist heresy. This unhappy fi nale had the unfortunate extraneous result of casting an aura of suspicion on attempts to employ modern scientifi c material



in biblical research. Thus, in the years between 1910 and 1940 Catholic biblical research continued to feel the im-pact of the Modernist troubles.

Then in 1943 came the encyclical Divino Affl ante Spiritu and its redirection of Catholic biblical studies. Pope Pius XII praised the type of scientifi c discoveries of which we have been speaking (No. 11).2 He pointed out that, while the criticism at the beginning of the century had misinterpreted this material, biblical science was now much more secure (No. 18). And so the Pope ordered Catholic scholars to go ahead and use the new scientifi c material in interpreting and translating the Bible (No. 15, No. 16, No. 19). Partic-ularly in the fi eld of translation he insisted that Catholics should no longer confi ne themselves to the Vulgate but should use the original Hebrew and Greek.3

The Pope’s encyclical implied a radical change in the Catholic approach to Scripture. Naturally time was required for its commands to be put into effect, and so it is that only in the 1950’s was the new Catholic biblical movement set in motion. Part of the glory of this new movement is that it has sprung up under Church auspices, and that some of its lead-ers are found on such eminent Catholic faculties as that of the Pontifi cal Biblical Institute in Rome and the magnifi cent Dominican School of St. Stephen in Jerusalem.

current facts

Before we close this explanation of the “newness” of the new Catholic biblical movement, we might add a few re-marks to assure any who may have felt uneasy about the movement. Sometimes the term “Modernism” is used by

2 All paragraph (No.) references are to the edition of the en-cyclical in Rome and the Study of Scripture, 4 ed. (St. Meinrad: Grail, 1946).

3 We are now receiving the fruit of this wise counsel in such Catholic translations as the Jerusalem Bible and the American Con fraternity translation.



the adversaries of the movement; and more than one oppo-nent has triumphantly remarked of some idea expressed by a biblical scholar: “That is just what the Modernists said.” As we have pointed out, the Modernists did make use of some scientifi c facts which they interpreted wrongly. The fact that a modern Catholic biblical scholar will occasion-ally accept some fact that the Modernists accepted fi fty years ago proves nothing regarding his heterodoxy. The important question is how does he interpret his facts. And you can be sure that the erroneous and heretical presupposi-tions that were the backbone of Modernism are held by no modern Catholic biblical scholar. It is interesting to take a problem like the fi rst eleven chapters of Genesis and com-pare the modern Catholic views with the errors of Loisy and those of his predecessors, like Wellhausen. Starting from the same facts, the two groups arrive at totally different in-terpretations. Above all, the modern Catholic biblical schol-ars submit their opinions to the Church’s teaching authority, something that was anathema to the Modernists. Thus the charge of resembling Modernism is based purely on appear-ances and lacks any foundation in fact.

We stress, too, that the Church continues to encourage the biblical movement. The Pontifi cal Biblical Commis-sion was set up to watch over Catholic biblical studies and insure their safety (Vigilantiae of Leo XIII, 1902). It has been regarded as the upholder of very conservative posi-tions. Yet, in face of the new biblical movement, the sec-retary of the Biblical Commission stated that Catholic biblical scholars now have “full liberty” in investigating matters touched on by the past decrees of the Commission, except where there is a question of faith or morals.4 Thus, on such points as the unity of a biblical book or its au-thorship, Catholic scholars now enjoy much greater liberty. This is why many Catholics now freely hold such views as the existence of deutero-Isaiah, the priority of Mark, etc.,

4 The text is published in the Catholic Biblical Quarterly, 18 (1956), 23–29.



even though there are past decrees of the Commission to the contrary.

All well and good, it may be answered, but have not Cath olic scholars gone too far? What about the recent Ro-man monitum (Holy Offi ce, June 20, 1961)? It is unfortu-nate that this monitum was so poorly presented in much of the Catholic press as if it were a warning to biblical schol-ars alone.5 Many newspapers did not even stress that the monitum opens with praise for the fervor of today’s bib-lical studies. And, again, if one reads the monitum, one will fi nd that it is directed, not to biblical scholars alone or as such, but to all “who deal with the Sacred Books whether in writing or speaking.” The special target of the monitum is the “circulation of opinions which endanger the genuine historical and objective truth of Sacred Scrip-ture.” The monitum is most anxious that such opinions be not allowed to disturb the faithful. Thus it would seem that the monitum is directed principally against populariza-tions which are transmitting dangerous and, often, garbled opinions to the faithful. Undoubtedly there are schol-ars (few, we hope) who have been imprudent; but a real and, perhaps, greater danger fl ows from the overzealous popularizers— seminarians who have not understood their professors, or who exaggerate one aspect of the professor’s teaching; young priests with a desire to shock parishioners or older pastors; educated laity with a desire to lord it over a poorly informed priest. Yet these are a hazard in any Church movement whether it be liturgical, catechetical, so-cial, or biblical, and are part of its growing pains.

Catholic biblical scholars have long been conscious of

5 We recommend highly “The Wayward Press,” by Bruce Vaw ter, C.M., in America (August 5, 1961) which shows how poorly the press handled the monitum. He says (p. 592): “That a paternal admonition such as that of the 20th of June should be willfully or unthinkingly distorted into a cease-and-desist order against the biblical movement is the worst thing that could hap-pen to the cause of Catholic truth.”



this danger of incorrect generalizing and overzealous pop-ularizing, and are only too happy to have it pointed out clearly by the Holy Offi ce. They are especially grateful for the very cautious wording of the monitum which shows that the Holy Offi ce is quite sensitive to the views of this bib-lical movement whose fervor it praises and has no desire to crush them. Notice that what is condemned are opinions that endanger the genuine (or “proper”— germanam) histor-ical truth of Scripture. As Father Fitzmyer6 has pointed out, this is an implicit reference to different literary forms, each having its own purpose and standards of historical truth. (This is the very doctrine that was the key teaching of Di-vino Affl ante Spiritu, Nos. 35–39.) Thus there is no sign that the monitum was designed to reverse the bib lical movement or to return to the days before the encyclical when some treated the whole Bible, outside of the Sapiential Books, as if it were nineteenth-century scientifi c history written by moderns.

CONCLUSION

The biblical movement has greatly interested large num-bers of the Catholic laity in the Bible, as the tremendous sale of the pamphlet New Testament Reading Guide (Litur-gical Press) has shown. Catholic biblical articles and books are being received with real appreciation and interest in non-Catholic circles, for non-Catholic scholars recognize that Catholics are using the latest scientifi c data (thanks to Divino Affl ante Spiritu) and are holding positions that are scientifi cally tenable. In the ecumenical and liturgical movements our “new” approach to the Bible has rendered great service.

In conclusion, we hope that our remarks have made it

6 “Recent Roman Scriptural Controversy,” Theological Studies 22 (1961), 444. He cites Cardinal Bea’s dictum: “Sua cuique generi literario est veritas”—“Every literary form has its own truth.” This article is essential for an understanding of the oppo-sition to scriptural studies today.



clear why there is a certain “newness” about the Catho-lic biblical movement today. We fi rmly believe that with the proper precautions this biblical movement can make a tremendous contribution toward the growth of the Church in our times precisely because it is a logical development of our times. Can we fail to see the workings of the Holy Spirit in this movement which holds as its magna carta the encyclical of a great and saintly Pope?

postscript: This paper was delivered in 1961 when the modern biblical movement was facing considerable oppo-si tion and, indeed, was fi ghting for its life. It is a great joy that now a few years later the clouds have lifted and the hopes of the writer for tolerance and acceptance have been granted beyond expectation. Vatican II has adamantly refused to approve any statement on Revelation which would set the biblical movement back. Teachers in Rome who were under a cloud of suspicion have been restored to their chairs of biblical studies. Above all, the Pontifi -cal Biblical Commission issued a magnifi cent instruction (April 21, 1964) pertaining to the Gospels. Not only does this instruction permit the Catholic scholar to make use of what is valuable in the method of form criticism; but also it very clearly outlines the development that has taken place in the formation of the Gospels. The instruction shows how the apostolic preachers interpreted the words and deeds of Jesus according to the needs of their listeners, and then how the sacred authors adapted this material passed down from the primitive instruction by selecting, synthesizing, and “explicating” (note well), according to the purpose they had in writing and the situation of the churches which they were addressing. The instruction of the Biblical Com-mission was taken over substantially into the Second Vati-can Council’s constitution on revelation (1965). As far as the writer knows, no Protestant community possesses an offi cial statement on biblical criticism so progressive in tone as the one now given Catholic scholars by Rome.


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68536774 New Testament Essays by Raymond Brown Part 1