An Introduction to the New Testament

"Yes, he is focused on the text. He thinks we ought to read the text of the New Testament and preferably read it in Greek. The reason I’ve chosen him is that he’s part of a great tradition, maybe the start of a great tradition, of Roman Catholic biblical scholarship. He was a giant among biblical scholars, but an absolutely faithful Roman Catholic. I remember being at a conference in North America where he was given an award and, without any notes, he gave a wonderful talk on the Old Testament and then began to talk about his own attitudes to the church and to the faith. At one moment, he broke down because he was so moved when thinking of the church. That was in spite of the fact that many people from within the church attacked him as a heretic and denier of all truth. This book is a very good piece of work. It must be 30 years old, I should think, but it’s still worth reading. Raymond Brown is always worth reading because he’s always carefully measured in what he says, but he is writing from within the perspective of faith, and from a profound acquaintance with up-to-date scholarship. He was attacked because he did serious biblical scholarship and people read him as saying that the Bible is a pack of lies. But that is not what biblical scholarship means! What he was actually saying was that you can safely do serious study. You can learn the languages of the Bible and you’re safe to do so. It’s not a dangerous thing to do serious academic study. He thinks you’ve got to do both theology—asserting that there is a God—but also history, to examine the history of the texts of the books of the Bible in both the New Testament and the Old Testament. It’s safe to investigate them."