The Passing of Raymond E. Brown

Abstract

The news of Raymond E. Brown’s death on August 8, 1998 arrived during the annual meeting of the Catholic Biblical Association at which Roland E. Murphy coincidentally yet most appropriately delivered 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 association. 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 hallmark. 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-