S. G. F. Brandon

The Reverend
S. G. F. Brandon
The Reverend S. G. F. Brandon
Born	Samuel George Frederick Brandon; 1907; Devon, England
Died	21 October 1971 (aged 63–64)
Ecclesiastical career
Religion	Christianity (Anglican)
Church	Church of England
Ordained	1932 (priest)
Academic background
Alma mater	University of Leeds
Academic work
Discipline	Religious studies
Sub-discipline	Comparative religion
Institutions	University of Manchester
Notable works	Jesus and the Zealots (1967)
Influenced	John W. Rogerson; Eric J. Sharpe;

Samuel George Frederick Brandon (1907 – 21 October 1971) was a British Anglican priest and scholar of comparative religion. He became professor of comparative religion at the University of Manchester in 1951.

Biography

Born in Devon in 1907,^[2] Brandon was a graduate of the University of Leeds.^[3] He was ordained as a priest in 1932 after Anglican training at Mirfield,^[4] and then spent seven years as a parish priest before enrolling as an army chaplain in the Second World War, after which he began a successful academic career in 1951 as an historian of religion.^[5] Brandon's most influential work, Jesus and the Zealots, was published in 1967, wherein he advanced the claim that Jesus fitted well within the ideology of the anti-Roman Zealot group.^[6]

He was elected general secretary of the International Association for the History of Religions in 1970.^[7]

As he flew over the Mediterranean Sea on 21 October 1971, he died of an infection he had contracted while working in Egypt.^[8]

Ideas

His thinking on New Testament themes grew out of The Fall of Jerusalem and the Christian Church (1951). His most celebrated position is a controversial one that echoes the works of Hermann Reimarus,^[9] that the historical Jesus was a political revolutionary figure, influenced in that by the Zealots; this he argued in the 1967 book Jesus and the Zealots: A Study of the Political Factor in Primitive Christianity.^[10]

The Trial of Jesus of Nazareth (1968) raises again, amongst other matters, the question of how the Fall of the Temple in 70 CE shaped the emerging Christian faith, and in particular the Gospel of Mark.

He was a critic of the myth-ritual theory, writing a 1958 essay "The Myth and Ritual Position Critically Examined" attacking its assumptions.^[11]

Brandon also claimed that the Pauline epistles and the accounts of Jesus Christ found in the Gospels represented two opposing factions of Christianity, a view first proposed by 19th century Hegelian theologian Ferdinand Christian Baur.^[12]

Selected works

The Fall of Jerusalem and the Christian Church (1951)
Time and Mankind: An Historical and Philosophical Study of Mankind's Attitude to the Phenomena of Change (1954)
Man and His Destiny in the Great Religions: An Historical and Comparative Study (1962)
Creation Legends of the Ancient Near East (1963)
History, Time, and Deity (1965)
The Judgment of the Dead: The Idea of Life After Death in the Major Religions (1967)
Jesus and the Zealots: A Study of the Political Factor in Primitive Christianity (1967)
The Trial of Jesus of Nazareth (1968)
Religion in Ancient History: Studies in Ideas, Men, and Events (1969)
Ancient Empires (1970)

As editor

The Saviour God: Comparative Studies in the Concept of Salvation (1963)
A Dictionary of Comparative Religion (1970)

References

Footnotes

^ Sharpe 1972, p. 71; Sharpe 2005, p. 1039.
^ Sharpe 2005, p. 1039; Simon 1972, p. 84.
^ Sharpe 1972, p. 71.
^ Simon 1972, p. 84.
^ Hengel 1967, p. 5.
^ Brandon 1967.
^ Sharpe 2005, p. 1040; Simon 1972, p. 84.
^ Sharpe & Hinnells 1973, p. ix.
^ "Reimarus, Hermann Samuel." Cross, F. L., ed. The Oxford dictionary of the Christian church. New York: Oxford University Press. 2005
^ "The Bible: A Political, Patriotic Jesus". Time. Vol. 93, no. 1. New York. 3 January 1969. Archived from the original on 14 December 2008. Retrieved 10 November 2019. Brandon pictures Jesus as a politically aware activist vigorously working against the Palestinian 'Establishment' – the Roman occupying forces and Jerusalem's collaborationist Jewish aristocracy.
^ In Myth, Ritual and Kingship edited by S. H. Hooke. Reprinted in The Myth and Ritual Theory (1998) edited by Robert A. Segal. Segal refers to the Sharpe and Hinnells volume for biography.
^ Brandon 1970.
^ Boteach, Shmuley (2012). Kosher Jesus. Jerusalem: Gefen Publishing House. p. 47. ISBN 978-9652295781.
^ Chilton, Bruce D. (2000). Rabbi Jesus: An Intimate Biography. New York: Doubleday. ISBN 978-0-385-49793-0. OCLC 44019167.
^ Eisler, Robert (17 April 1926). "The Russian Josephus: Recent Studies of the Text". The Times.
^ Garber, Zev (2011). The Jewish Jesus: Revelation, Reflection, Reclamation. West Lafayette, Indiana: Purdue University Press. ISBN 9781557535795. OCLC 670480801.
^ "Review – Hyam Maccoby, Jesus the Pharisee reviewed by Robert M. Price". www.robertmprice.mindvendor.com.
^ Wang, Zhixi (19 September 2019). "The Gospel According to Marxism: Zhu Weizhi and the Making of Jesus the Proletarian (1950)". Religions. 10 (9): 535. doi:10.3390/rel10090535.
^ Boxer, Sarah. "Word for Word/The Flag Bulletin;Two Centuries of Burning Flags, A Few Years of Blowing Smoke." The New York Times. December 17, 1995. Web. May 31, 2009. [1]
^ "Jesus of Nazareth, Revolutionary Socialist: An Interview with Obery Hendricks". 11 February 2020.
^ Jesus and the Politics of Roman Palestine, University of South Carolina Press, retrieved 17 March 2017
^ Andreas J. Köstenberger et al., The Cradle, the Cross, and the Crown: An Introduction to the New Testament, p. 120.
^ Rodriguez Gervasios, Manuel (2019). "Piñero, Antonio. Aproximación al Jesús histórico, Editorial Trotta, Madrid, 2018, 342 pp. [ISBN: 978-84-9879-761-9]". Studia Historica: Historia Antigua (in Spanish) (37): 357–360. Retrieved 14 July 2020.
^ Oakman, Douglas E., The Political Aims of Jesus Minneapolis: Fortress Pres, 2012.
^ Faulkner, Neil, Apocalypse: The Great Jewish Revolt Against Rome (2002) Tempus, first edition; (2012) Amberley Publishing, second edition
^ Kettmann, Matt (20 December 2012). "Christ the Activist: New Book Traces Jesus of Nazareth's Life, from Possible Slave to Social-Justice Militant". Santa Barbara Independent.
^ Pam Kirsch, "Here are good books to curl up with during 2013", The Vincennes Sun-Commercial (19 January 2013), p. A6.
^ Horsley, Richard A; Silberman, Neil Asher, The Message and the Kingdom: How Jesus and Paul Ignited a Revolution and Transformed the Ancient World. New York: Grossett/Putnam. Reprint, Minneapolis: Fortress, 2002.
^ Tabor, James D. (2006). The Jesus Dynasty: A New Historical Investigation of Jesus, His Royal Family, and the Birth of Christianity. New York: Simon & Schuster. ISBN 0-7432-8723-1.

Bibliography

Brandon, S. G. F. (1967). Jesus and the Zealots. Manchester: Manchester University Press.
——— , ed. (1970). A Dictionary of Comparative Religion. London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson.
Hengel, Martin (1967). Was Jesus a Revolutionist?. Philadelphia: Fortress Press.
Sharpe, Eric J. (1972). "S. G. F. Brandon (1907–1971)". History of Religions. 12 (1): 71–74. doi:10.1086/462667. ISSN 1545-6935. JSTOR 1061830. S2CID 162348242.
——— (2005). "Brandon, S. G. F.". In Jones, Lindsay (ed.). Encyclopedia of Religion. Vol. 2 (2nd ed.). Farmington Hills, Michigan: Macmillan Reference. pp. 1039–1040. ISBN 978-0-02-865735-6.
Sharpe, Eric J.; Hinnells, John R., eds. (1973). Man and His Salvation: Studies in Memory of S. G. F. Brandon. Manchester: Manchester University Press. ISBN 978-0-7190-0537-4.
Simon, Marcel (1972). "S. G. F. Brandon (1907–1971)". Numen (in French). 19 (2/3): 84–90. doi:10.1163/156852772X00089. ISSN 1568-5276. JSTOR 3269739.