Raymond Brown: Anti-Catholic, ignorant or other?

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BibleReader:
Hi, Gottle.

I’d rather not let the forces of obscenity seize control of a sector of the English language.
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I’m not sure I see an obscenity anywhere - but then, the only English I really know is the Queen’s English 🙂​

 
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PhilVaz:
BibleReader << In my opinion, the Paragraphs you site are simply only making conscious use of the same metaphors. >>

OK, now we’re getting somewhere. :confused: I wouldn’t agree with the word “fiction” but I would agree with the word “myth” and that some sections of the story are “symbolical” or “figurative.” For example:
  1. The human person, created in the image of God, is a being at once corporeal and spiritual. The biblical account expresses this reality in symbolical language when it affirms that “then the Lord God formed man of dust from the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living being.” [Genesis 2:7] Man, whole and entire, is therefore willed by God.
And
  1. The Church, interpreting the symbolism of biblical language in an authentic way, in the light of the New Testament and Tradition, teaches that our first parents, Adam and Eve, were constituted in an original “state of holiness and justice.” [cf. Council of Trent (1546): DS 1511] This grace of original holiness was “to share in…divine life.” [cf. Vatican II LG 2]
Christoph Schonborn as I understand is the author of much of the Catechism, but no matter, its still a “sure norm for faith.”

Ratzinger has written his own commentary on Genesis. I’ll quote some of that on Adam/Eve perhaps later…

I agree the Church doesn’t answer the question whether Adam/Eve had belly buttons, but I’ll say they did since I accept human evolution as fact. 😃 However, the teaching that Adam/Eve were literal and historical also appears to be taught. What else could “our first parents, Adam and Eve” mean? (see especially paragraphs 359, 375-377, 379, 388, 390-392).

Phil P
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However, it is hard to see what else A & E could be called, even if one is to take the view that the story is not a report of an event in the way that a news item might be.​

IOW, “first parents” is the customary epithet for these two figures in theological tradition: even though (as is considered to be the case now - though it was not so, until a few decades ago) there is no coercive reason to think they are historical individuals.

To talk of them as historical suggests that they differ from (say) Hammurapi of Babylon (18th century BC) only in being rather earlier, and in there being less evidence for their existence. But they aren’t historical - they are primeval. We can’t say they belong to history, unless we have some sort of reliable evidence for talking about them as historical - and Genesis is far too late, by thousands of years, to be such evidence. Genesis is the only evidence for their existence - just as some lives of Saints are the only reason to think those saints ever existed; but some of those lives are fictions, and so are some of those Saints. The short story of the boy-martyr Saint Vespaluus is not evidence of his historical existence - the appearance of A & E in a text, does not mean they ever had any real existence 😃

I sincerely hope no one ever goes on an archaeological expedition in search of hobbits or the Dark Tower of Mordor. I would not like to bet this will never happen. ##
 
Catholic Dude:
so how much of the Bible would you consider fiction?
you could come to similar conclusions on lots of OT stuff…
Cain & Abel, Noah, flood, Babel, Abram, Sodom, methusela, melchizedec, etc all these and more could be fiction
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Some of the narratives in Genesis are folklore, or contain folklore elements - Cain & Abel, and the Sodom story, are two examples. The youngest brother who is despised by his brothers and becomes ruler over them, is familiar from certain fairy-tales - but Joseph is an example of the same sort of figure, from the OT; so is David. The motif of the foundling-child who becomes a great ruler or warrior or king, goes back long before the time of Moses - it’s at least a thousand years older. Most examples of it are from Greek & Latin mythology. There is a talking horse in Homer’s Iliad, just as there is a talking donkey in the Book of Numbers.​

Genesis 19 is interesting for many reasons - it contains many folklore motifs: the city visited by Divine beings which is destroyed for its sins; a gang-rape narrative similar in many respects to that in Judges 19; a defamatory narrative about the origins of two of Israel’s enemies; an account of parental drunkenness and filial impiety resembling that in Genesis 9. The chapter is a companion piece to the narrative in Genesis 18.

Behemoth and Leviathan in Job are two examples of beings which are at one and the same time based on real animals, yet are, in some respects, imaginary beasts: myth is seen through the lens of reality.

There is a lot of folklore in the Bible, and plenty of mythological imagery - this enriches the Bible; it makes it much more interesting than if it were mere dry reporting of facts. Folklore and legends about people, are not arguments for their real existence - or against it. The Bible is all the more really human for containing the kind of stories that are familiar from outside it; it is truly catholic in the variety of the texts that it contains - which it would not be, if it contained nothing but unmitigated fact. That would mean that the imagination was excluded from it - but the imagination needs redemption & consecration every bit as much as our ability to know the truth. And folklore, like tales of what is imaginary, can both be vehicles of truth: not all truth is the truth of fact.

An example: Ezekiel 28 is not history - it’s prophetic denunciation using the language of myth and religion. Likewise Isaiah 14:12 ff. And there are several passages about great serpents - including a sea serpent. ##
 
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dcdurel:
I already quoted what he wrote in the book. I will do so again:
"Just as the Jerusalem tradition leaves little or no room for subsequent Galilean appearances," explains Brown, "the Galilean narratives seem to rule out any prior appearances of Jesus to the Twelve in Jerusalem."
"We must reject the thesis that the Gospels can be harmonized through a rearrangement whereby Jesus appears several times to the Twelve, first in Jerusalem, then in Galilee. Variations in place and time may stem in part from the evangelists themselves who are trying to fit the account of an appearance into a consecutive narrative."
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He is refusing to tamper with the evidence for the post-Resurrection appearances - why should such a refusal attract criticism ? That kind of honesty is exactly what a Catholic, a priest & scholar should show.​

He is saying the Gospels cannot be harmonized, because the the Gospel writers were NOT eyewitnesses to the resurrection as they claimed. In other words, the Gospels are not true.
He also says the same thing of the infancy narratives, that they are not completely true.
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Not historical in all respects does not = not entirely true.​

Of course, the Church teachings on the historical facts of the infancy narratives and the resurrection DON’T originate from the bible, but from apostolic Tradition. In other words, the eyewitnesses to the post-resurrection appearances handed down these facts to the successors of the apostles, the bishops, in tradition. The bible accounts are a witness to the facts of the resurrection.
But, Raymond Brown denies apostolic Tradition as the pure truth, but only the “lived experience of the people”. Thus the foundation of the teachings of the Church are rejected as not completely true.

Do you understand what he is writing or not?
Again he shows his doubts in his book, The Birth of the Messiah: A commentary on the Infancy Narratives in Matthew and Luke, Garden City, New York: 1977, p. 505.
"It was this interaction [of the eschatological and the historical] that Pope Paul pointed to in the same address when he spoke of the resurrection as “the unique and sensational event on which the whole of human history turns.” This is not the same, however, as saying that the resurrection itself was a historical event, even though editorial writers quoted the Pope’s speech to that effect."
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The Pope was quite right - as was Father Brown. What the Pope did not say, is that the Resurrection was an historical event simpliciter. It isn’t - yet the whole of human history does indeeed turn on it: because it is the event by which all creation is decisively renewed.​

That doesn’t make it an historical event - it is a meta-historical event. Meta-historical events are events in which eternity takes place in time - they are too “real” to be “merely” historical. So it is a real event which of an unique kind: which is at once beyond history & taking place within it. But real happenings are not all historical happenings. Trying to fit meta-historical realities into time, is like trying to stuff a polygon into a two-dimensional figure - it can’t be done - history and meta-history are incommensurable. What joins them, is the person of Christ.

To talk of the Resurrection of Christ as an historical event, is to say too little of it. ##
Of course the Pope just referred to the resurrection as a historical event on which “the whole of human history turns.” Here he is even trying to get the Pope to refuse to affirm the historical facts of the resurrection.

But, Brown, because of his doubts, denies the literal words and writes, "This is not the same as saying the resurrection was a historical event."

Thus, Brown, in his writings, denies apostolic Tradition as the word of God, for it is no longer the word of God handed down from the God, through the apostles, to the succeeding generations in the Chuch, but it now includes the “lived experiance of the people”,
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Apostolic tradition is not the word of God.​

And neither is it something wholly unconnected to the human person, separate from human experience, wholly exterior to the Church or to Christians. If it does not enter deeply into human life, it has no saving power. Of course it is lived experience - it has to be, if it is to be incarnated in human life. “The letter kills - it is the Spirit that makes alive” - and the letter of Apostolic Tradition can be as killing as any law, if it is not made alive in the Church by the Spirit of God. ##

[continue…]
 
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which can include every whim, fancy and opinion, heretical belief and error, then proceeds to cite the historical facts in the Gospels as made up events.
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## He has said or implied none of this ##

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Then, he says that he believes the Church dogmas on these teachings, even though Tradition contains error and scripture contains error. But Church teachings are based on scripture and Tradition. Thus he is saying that he believes the Church teachings on these events even though the these teachings are based on error. He makes the Church the transmitter of error.
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In other words, Brown separates the historical events from the teachings. He tries to say the teachings do not stem from the historical events themselves.**

## Where is that said ? ##

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That way he can doubt the evidence for historical event (which means doubting the historical event itself )
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## Not at all: evidence for an event may be rather poor or open to several interpretations - but the event itself can be plausible in a high degree. The problem with the Gospel proclamation of the Resurrection as found in the gospels is not that the event is not proclaimed - it is is, throughout most of the NT - but that the evidence is strongly theological, so that it is not always clear how much is the record of an event, and how much is theological reflection. The Resurrection is something about which the historian has no competence to speak, because it is an event of a sort which lies outside the boundaries of historical study - unlike the Crucifixion. That does not in the slightest mean the Resurrection is not a fact: it just happens not to be the sort of fact that fits into historical categories. Which is exactly what is to be expected, if it is what it is proclaimed to be in the witness to Jesus whi****ch is recorded in the NT. ##

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and still claim to believe the teachings.
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Again, this is pure stupidity.**
 
## event may be rather poor or open to several interpretations - but the…
should read:
event may be rather poorly attested or the evidence may be open to several interpretations - but the… :o ##
 
If you want an excellent book on critiquing Raymond Brown’s theology you should “The New Biblical Theorists-Raymond E Brown and Beyond” by George A.Kelly. Its seems to confirm that Brown was not ignorant, but actually anti-Catholic, a lot of the problems we have in the Church today stem from him. He has a lot to answer for.
 
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