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and Theology
Biblical Theology Bulletin: A Journal of Bible
DOI: 10.1177/014610799902800401
1999; 28; 128 Biblical Theology Bulletin: A Journal of Bible and Theology
David M. Bossman
The Passing of Raymond E. Brown
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128
Presenting
the Issue
The
Passing
of
Raymond
E. Brown
The news of
Raymond
E. Browns death on
August
8,
1998 arrived
during
the annual
meeting
of the
Catholic Biblical Association at which Roland E.
Murphy coincidentally yet
most
appropriately
deliv-
ered the
address,
&dquo;What Is Catholic about Catholic
Biblical
Scholarship?&dquo; (BTB 28:3, 112-19).
Both
Brown and
Murphy
are former
presidents
of this asso-
ciation. Both
produce scholarship clearly
Catholic in
character and modem in substance. Both
respect
and
follow
guidelines
of the Pontifical Biblical Commission
(BTB 26:2, 79-81).
For
both,
caution was never so
strict that
they
forsook
honesty. Together, they span
the two Testaments.
Orthodoxy
for
Raymond
E. Brown was a hall-
mark. Given a conflict between text and
theology,
he
found a middle course that allowed both to survive.
His lines of
argument may
have exhausted the
field;
yet
his Catholic
loyalty
never
flagged. Still,
Brown ob-
serves in AN INTRODUCTION TO THE NEW TESTAMENT
(Doubleday, 1997),
&dquo;I
spent
much of
my
academic life
teaching
other Christians ... and so the wider
range
of Christian
practice
and belief are
very
much
my
con-
cern-and should be in this ecumenical era&dquo;
(xi).
The
legacy
of
Raymond
E. Brown is manifest in a
cooperative
Catholic biblical
scholarship
in the United
States
today.
Whatever
path
he
took,
he
amply
cited
and
weighed
the works of a wide
range
of
scholars, giv-
ing preference only
to his
judgments
and not
merely
to
his
predispositions. Yet,
his
predispositions remained,
as
they generally do,
close to the soil from which he
came. A
disciplined
son of the
church,
he saw the
church in
progress
from doctrinal isolation to
larger
involvement within the realm of
pluralistic
scholar-
ship.
The
trajectory
of this
cooperative scholarship
may
well continue
beyond
what even he could envision.
The authors
contributing
to the
pages
of BIBLICAL
THEOLOGY BULLETIN likewise continue to
present
critical
explorations beyond
the doctrinaire. As
Ray-
mond Browns
honesty
at times
may
have shocked
some,
so the
forthrightness
of BTB authors should ex-
pand
the
envelope
of
scholarship today
for even more
expansive inclusivity
in the future.
In the
present
issue
of BTB, Carey
Walshs A Star-
tling
Voice: Womans Desire in the
Song of Songs
views
the text with a fresh
honesty
that itself
may
startle
some, yet help
to
open
the
way
to fuller
honesty
in hu-
man relations. F Scott
Spencer,
in Pauls
Odyssey
in
Acts: Status
Struggles
and Island
Adventures, helps
at-
tune readers
today
to the cultural
scripts
of the author
of Acts. Halvor Moxnes
presents
a
masterfully
inclu-
sive
analysis
of historical
scholarship
in The Historical
Jesus: from
Master Narrative to Cultural
Context, point-
ing
toward further
developments
in awareness for bibli-
cal
scholarship
better
equipped
to
decipher
contextual
meanings. Finally,
Mark
R.J. Bredin,
in The
Syna-
gogue of
Satan Accusation in Revelation
Z:9,
reasserts
the need to
recognize
intramural conflicts that
abounded within the House of Israel at a time before
Jews
and Christians as we know them had
emerged.
The
passing
of
Raymond
E. Brown
signals
the
completion
of one biblical scholars achievements. We
duly
honor him as a milestone in the
ongoing quest
for
truth and
understanding
in biblical
theology.
His work
challenges
others to
yet greater progress.
David M. Bossman
Editor
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