An Introduction to the New Testament.

Raymond E. Brown Doubleday, $42.50, 878 pp.

Thomas H. Tobin

Introductions to the New Testament come in all sizes and shapes. The short ones tend to be user-friendly but don't tell you much. The long ones tell you a great deal but are often difficult to use. The late Raymond Brown's A n Introduction to the New Testament is both a very long book and a very user-friendly book. No doubt this happy combination is the result not only of a long teaching career but also of serious reflection on how best to introduce these central Christian texts to readers for whom they are not only interesting culturally or historically but also religiously significant.

To do this Brown has made several quite explicit decisions about how to structure the book. First, he begins his treatment of each New Testament document with a minicommentary, whose purpose is to help the reader get into the text itself. Only then does he deal with the standard introductory questions such as author, date and place of composition, and sources. Second, at the end of his treatment of each document, he provides readers with a section on "Issues and Problems for Reflection,' which deals with theological issues raised by the document. Third, he also provides useful bibliographies of books and articles in English so readers can easily explore issues on their own. Finally, Brown aims to be "centrist, not idiosyncratic." In an act of asceticism unusual among scholars (myself included), Brown carefully provides readers with what he regards as the majority opinion on an issue, even when he places himself in the minority. This doesn't mean he doesn't offer a wide range of opinions on important issues. He does. But he is always careful to locate where the majority of scholars stand.

The book itself is arranged in four major parts. In the first part Brown deals with a number of general issues important for understanding virtually any New Testament text. Here he explains the different methods of New Testament interpretation, including source, form, and redaction criticism, as well the political, social, and religious worlds of which the writers of the New Testament books were a part. In the second section, he deals with the four Gospels and texts related to the Gospels, such as the Acts of the Apostles which was written by the author of the Gospel of Luke, and the Letters of John which are part of the Johannine tradition. The third part is devoted to the Pauline Letters, first those universally admitted to have been written by Paul (1 Thessalonians, Galatians, Philippians, Philemon, 1 and 2 Corinthians, and Romans) and then those whose authorship is in dispute (2 Thessalonians, Colossians, Ephesians, Titus, 1 and 2 Timothy). In writing about the latter, Brown carefully gives the arguments for and against attributing one or another of them to Paul and the significance the decision makes for interpreting the particular letter. Finally, in the fourth part he analyzes all the other New Testament documents (the Letter to the Hebrews, the Letters of Peter, James, and Jude, and the Book of Revelation). In two appendices he also offers a short introduction to and evaluation of recent debates about the "historical Jesus" and valuable information about Jewish and other early Christian writings pertinent to the New Testament.

This book is consistently helpful, and for any introduction that is high praise. Brown has a remarkable capacity to make complex issues clear, which is different from making them simple. For exam pie, he warns readers that the synoptic problem - the question of the literary relationship among the Gospels of Mark, Matthew, and Luke - generates complexity and that they may want to settle for reading his most general conclusions and skipping the rest. Yet his treatment of the problem is very clear, judicious, and within the range of any interested reader. The same is true for his treatment of the complex issues connected with the Gospel of John and the Johannine tradition. Although he claims to be writing for a general readership rather than for scholars, at least this scholar also learned a good deal from Brown's book. In whatever he wrote, Brown was consistently insightful.

As with any book, there are always some limitations. Over the years, Brown was consistently skeptical about isolating sources in New Testament documents, with the exception of the dependence of the Gospels of Matthew and Luke on the Gospel of Mark and a sayings source (the Q Document). This is especially so in the case of the Gospel of John and the Passion narrative in the Gospel of Mark. While there is ample room for skepticism, more attention to sources for our present New Testament documents would have offered readers a better sense of how early Christian thought developed. Brown was equally skeptical about influences on New Testament writers beyond the biblical tradition. While it is important to avoid "parallelomania," Brown underrated the influence of Hellenistic Judaism on, for example, the Prologue of John (John 1:1-18). The same is true of his views about the relationship of the Synoptic Gospels to Greco-Roman biographies. While he admitted that their first readers may have thought of them almost as lives of Christ, he was still unwilling to agree that their authors may have thought of them in the same way. These shortcomings, however, do virtually nothing to detract from what this book accomplishes.

Brown was a man of immense learning and great modesty, a rare enough combination. He was also a man of the church. As a priest and a member of the Society of the Priests of Saint Sulpice, he spent most of his adult life introducing students for the ministry to the richness of the New Testament. The wealth of the Bible nourished his own convictions as a believing Christian, and he sought and succeeded in communicating that richness to several generations of students, most recently at Union Theological Seminary in New York. Brown obviously enjoyed the Bible and enjoyed communicating its riches to others. His Introduction to the New Testament is a marvelous example of both. I am reminded of the opening words of Simeon's canticle in the Gospel of Luke, "Now Lord, let your servant depart in peace, according to your word."

Thomas H. Tobin, S.J., is an associate professor of theology at Loyola University of Chicago. He writes frequently in the areas of New Testament and Hellenistic Judaism, and is completing a book on Paul's Letter to the Romans.