Raymond E. Brown - Reactions - Support

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Brown has been described as “the premier Johannine scholar in the English-speaking world”. Terrence T. Prendergast stated that “for nearly 40 years Father Brown caught the entire church up into the excitement and new possibilities of scriptural scholarship." Much of Brown's work was given a Nihil obstat and an Imprimatur (the "nihil obstat" is a statement by an official reviewer, appointed by a bishop, that "nothing stands in the way" of a book being given an imprimatur; the "imprimatur," which must normally be issued by a bishop of the diocese of publication, is the official endorsement — "let it be printed" — that a book contains nothing damaging to Catholic faith and morals). Brown was the expert appointed to review and provide the nihil obstat for The New Jerome Biblical Commentary, the standard basic reference book for Catholic Biblical studies, of which he was one of the editors and to which he himself contributed, as did dozens of other Catholic scholars. The biblical scholar Ben Witherington dedicated his book The Jesus Quest to Brown (along with John P. Meier).

Joseph Ratzinger, now Pope Benedict XVI, who has written presenting the infancy narratives and John’s Gospel as historically reliable, was personally complimentary of Brown and his scholarship, and has been quoted as saying he "would be very happy if we had many exegetes like Father Brown".