Raymond F. Collins Reflects on Raymond E. Brown

Fr. Raymond F. Collins, an elite Pauline scholar, and Visiting Scholar in the Department of Religious Studies at Brown University, has graciously shared some of his memories of his friendship with Fr. Raymond E. Brown on the website.

Many of you will know Fr. Collins for his excellent commentaries on First Corinthians (Sacra Pagina) and Second Corinthians (Paideia), so this is a huge honor for me personally to have his reflections on the site. Click here to read more.

Graham Twelftree's Paul and the Miraculous Excerpt

Baker Academic has generously posted a 51-page excerpt on Graham Twelftree's Paul and the Miraculous. 


Twelftree is perhaps the leading New Testament scholar on the subject of miracles, and he tackles an oft-neglected area here, namely, Paul's letters.

I am really looking forward to this volume.

PhD Dissertation: The Role of the Jewish Feasts in John's Gospel

I was delighted to discover recently, a PhD thesis written by Gerald Wheaton at the University of St. Andrews in 2010. The dissertation was supervised by Kelly Iverson, a great up and coming Markan scholar who is now at Baylor University.

The dissertation is entitled, The Role of the Jewish Feasts in John's Gospel. You can download it here.

Two New Images of Raymond E. Brown

I owe a debt of gratitude to Tricia T. Pyne, Ph.D. , Director, Associated Archives at St. Mary's Seminary & University for educating me on copyright laws as well as allowing me (with permissions) to feature two more images of Father Raymond E. Brown. These two I have never seen before and one is now my favorite, which I deem "Fr. Ray: The Thinker."

Many of the other photos of which I was naively unaware also belonged to the copyright of the Sulpicians in association with St. Mary's Seminary and University. Thankfully, those are now also being used with permissions. It is important that this website maintains the integrity that Fr. Brown carried throughout his life. I will be much more careful in the future regarding uses of images and the like on the site.

Raymond E. Brown Site: New Page Added

I have some wonderful news regarding the Raymond E. Brown site to announce. I have been granted permissions from Liturgical Press to reproduce a PDF of the excellent biography authored by Ronald D. Witherup, S.S. and an exhaustive bibliography produced by Michael L. Barré, S.S. in the monograph dedicated to Brown, Life in Abundance: Studies of John's Gospel in Tribute to Raymond E. Brown, 253-289.

Visitors can view the site here.  Enjoy!!!

Raymond Brown Website Update: Two Articles Added

I have added yet two more articles to the Raymond E. Brown website, the first, issued by Theological Studies in issue 35.2 (1974) is "Luke's Description of the Virginal Conception," and the second is also from Theological Studies, issue 42.1 (1981),  entitled "And the Lord Said?: Biblical Reflections on Scripture as the Word of God."

You can view the update here.

Doug Moo's Galatians: An Excerpt

The good folks at Baker Academic have  provided a 36 page excerpt sneak preview  of Doug Moo's highly-anticipated commentary on Galatians (BECNT) slated for a November release.

Click here and enjoy! 

Gordon Fee's Classic Getting a Makeover

My good friend, Cliff Kvidahl, alerted me to some news regarding an update of Gordon Fee's classic 1 Corinthians commentary (NICNT) .

Here are the particulars of the second edition:

Fully updated exegesis of 1 Corinthians 

This award-winning commentary by Gordon Fee, originally published in 1987, has been lauded as the best study available of Paul's theologically rich first letter to the Corinthians. Writing primarily for pastors, teachers, and students, Fee offers a readable exposition of 1 Corinthians that clearly describes the meaning of Paul's ideas and their larger theological relevance. More scholarly matters, including Fee's considerable interaction with other commentators, are found in the footnotes. In this second edition, Fee has updated the text to make it even more accessible, including giving all biblical citations in full so that readers don't have to look up references. Fee also includes a full bibliography of everything written on 1 Corinthians up until 2011, providing a wide range of resources for further study.

The commentary is slated for an April 2014 release.

Michael Bird's The Gospel of the Lord

The ever-active pen of one Michael F. Bird continues to spill prodigious amounts of ink as another compelling release, The Gospel of the Lord, will be released by Eerdmans in late February 2014.

Here is a description:

Balanced, comprehensive survey of the critical questions involved in studying the four Gospels In this book Michael Bird describes how the canonical Gospels originated from a process of oral tradition, literary composition, textual development, and reception in the early church with a view to showing what makes them among the most important writings in the New Testament. Bird explores how the Christian movement shaped the Gospels and, conversely, how these writings shaped the early church. He develops a distinctive evangelical-and-critical approach to the Gospels, deals with the Synoptic problem head-on, and explains the significance of the fourfold Gospel canon. The book includes a number of helpful excursuses on related topics. All in all, Bird's Gospel of the Lord clarifies the often-confusing debates over the origins of the Gospels and offers informed and soundly argued explanations that account for the content of the Gospels in the context of the wider Graeco-Roman world.

Weighing in at 424 pages, Bird's book is sure to be thorough and with his lucid writing style, a must-read.

HT: Cliff Kvidahl

First Time Publicly Released: Raymond Brown lecture from 1998.

Just months before he passed (March 1998), Raymond Brown lectured at an Evangelical seminary on the Lord's Passion, entitled, "Jesus: Condemned and Crucified."

For more details, please visit the Multimedia page on the Raymond E. Brown site. There you will find a nice surprise! 

Further Updates to the Raymond E. Brown site

I wanted to thank all of those who have taken the time to visit the Raymond E. Brown website in its inaugural week. I was amazed and humbled by the 3,300 plus visitors that made their way over. Your encouragement as I continue to slowly build this site makes all the time and effort worth it. Moreover, it pleases me to no end to see the impact that Fr. Ray had on those who personally knew him, and those, like me, who have been impacted by him in other ways.

Just by way of reminder, I have my contact info (Facebook, Twitter, and email address) in the upper-right hand corner of the main page. If any of you have feedback or suggestions, those are the places to go to get in touch. I would love to hear from you.

Lastly, I have added a few new items to the site today. Two are quotes by Father Brown from his last two books, one during his lifetime, A Retreat with John the Evangelist, and one a posthumous release, An Introduction to the Gospel of John (with the aid of Francis J. Moloney). Brown is a master communicator, as we see his thoughts on death in the former, and his laser-like perception in a pithy quote on all the attempts to rearrange the order of John's Gospel over the years in the latter.

Also, I have added another article, which originally appeared in Theological Studies, 23.2 (1962), 183-206, and later in his New Testament Essays.

Marion L. Soards Shares a Story on Father Raymond Brown

Marion ("Marty") L. Soards, Professor of New Testament Studies at Louisville Seminary, author of 20-plus books, and over 60 articles in journals and theological dictionaries, including an outstanding entry in the Dictionary of Major Biblical Intepreters on his Doktorvater, Raymond E. Brown (227-234), has graciously shared a story with me about his first encounter with Fr. Brown. It can be found on the "Recollections of Ray" page on the website. Click here.

Update on the Raymond Brown Site

I have added seven multi-media clips to the Raymond E. Brown website. The clips are courtesy of Paul Soffe of Welcome Recordings. As by way of a reminder, Paul is still offering a 50% discount on the entire audio/video catalog of Father Brown. Check out the multimedia page for the clips as well as the info on the discount code.

New Additions to the Raymond E. Brown Site

I wanted to let the readers of this blog know that I am continually updating and adding content to the Raymond E. Brown website. Just today, in fact, I have added a rare picture of Fr. Brown having a discussion with Ernst Käsemann. You can view that pic on the main page (linked above).

Also I have added another page of quotes I have and will be collecting from Fr. Brown, whether they are from his books, or newspaper articles.

There will be more soon. If anyone has any pics of Father Brown or content-related suggestions, my contact info can be found in the upper-right hand corner of the main page (linked above).

Update: 12:42 a.m. Sunday, 8/11/13- I have decided to remove the Brown/Käsemann photo due to a possible copyright infringement. The photo may again reappear, but until I communicate with the originating site, it will stay down for now.

Paul N. Anderson Reflects on Raymond E. Brown

Paul N. Anderson, Professor of Biblical and Quaker Studies at George Fox University, and one of the preeminent Johannine scholars in the world, has graciously shared his thoughts on his friendship with Raymond E. Brown on my new website. You can read his thoughts here.

Launched: Raymond E. Brown Website

Fifteen years ago today, the world of Biblical scholarship lost a giant when Raymond E. Brown passed away suddenly at the age of 70 in Menlo Park, CA. Father Brown's works of meticulous scholarship, including his famed and still regularly consulted two-volume Gospel of John commentary, his the Birth of the Messiah and the Death of the Messiah, and his Introduction to the New Testament, to name but a few, have and will continue to stand the test of time.

 

My personal interest in Brown was kindled shortly after my undergrad years, 15 years ago. A degree in Broadcast News was going nowhere quickly, and I found myself a bit adrift, working managerial jobs at small grocery and video stores. Right around this time, I decided I needed to learn more about the Christian faith that I had fairly recently professed, and I wanted to learn more about Jesus from an informed scholar. So, I went to my local bookstore and purchased Raymond Brown's Death of the Messiah (vol.1), and after reading it, was so inspired, so intrigued, I knew that my once less than purposeful life, now took on new meaning. In short, without ever meeting me, Fr. Ray inspired me to a life in Biblical scholarship.  I cannot imagine the influence he had over those who actually knew him personally.

So, it is with great pleasure to announce that I have launched a Raymond E. Brown website, a dream that I have had for some time. This site is very much a work-in-progress, many other features will be added in due time, such as a bio, links to Ray's books, etc. When those features are up and running, announcements will be made on this blog. For now, enjoy!

 

Taking a Cue from Barrett on Bultmann

For some reason it seems popular in certain circles to bash Rudolf Bultmann, perhaps the most misunderstood figure in the history of New Testament scholarship. It seems that there is a tendency to throw the baby out with the bathwater when it comes to Bultmann, thus ignoring his monumental contributions. 


So, it was quite the breath of fresh air to see comments made by C.K. Barrett in the preface of his first edition (1955) classic The Gospel According to St. John (SPCK) regarding Bultmann's monumental  The Gospel of John: A Commentary.

He writes:

Dr. Rudolf Bultmann's commentary is beyond question one of the greatest achievements of biblical scholarship in the present generation. Any one who compares my book with his will see that I have ventured to disagree with him on a number of important issues, but I have never done so without hesitation and doubt. The value of his commentary is almost completely independent of the validity of his literary hypotheses (vii; italics mine).

 These comments remind of the one's recently made by J. Ramsey Michaels in his commentary on John (NICNT):

 To my surprise I found Rudolf Bultmann’s commentary the most useful of all, a work widely admired for all the wrong reasons. Bultmann’s theories of source, redaction, and displacement has  not  survived and should not, yet his eye for detail is unsurpassed  and his close reading of the text as it stands — even when he  discards it — perceptive and  illuminating. It is only a slight oversimplification to say that Bultmann interprets the Gospel correctly (more or less), finds it unacceptable, and then re-writes it. His greatness lies in the first of those three things, not the second or  the third (Preface; xi.).

So if these two great commentators, Barrett and Michaels, find Bultmann's work invaluable, despite the inherent difficulties with his source theories, etc., shouldn't we take a cue and read Bultmann with admiration and appreciation as they have?

George Caird Lectures on Romans and the Synoptic Problem

Jeffrey Gibson was able to provide me with fifteen more lectures of George Caird, this time from 1983, a year before the great man passed away unexpectedly. These lectures are focused on Romans and the Synoptic Problem, and now brings the total tally to 77 lectures in all. Quite the cache! Thanks again to Jeff and Mark Goodacre for the great collaboration on this project!

One can find the new audio links on the George B. Caird page to the right hand side on this blog.