The Churches the Apostles Left Behind

Rating:
Summary: Fascinating and Readable!
Review: As with *The Community of the Beloved Disciple,* this volume avoids the pitfalls of being either too simplistic or just over one's head. In it, Brown offers an ingenious look at the various communities of the Christian Testament and describes their differences.

For my particular tastes, Brown is sometimes too quick to accept the face value of some early traditions concerning the Apostles. But this slight weakness is easily overcome by his scholarship, his open attitude and his readability. This volume is very helpful and will open the eyes of its readers to the fact that there has not been only one ecclesiology is Christianity, but many.

Rating:
Summary: Surprising Insights About the Crisis in American Catholicism
Review: Raymond Brown uses his wide and deep knowledge of the New Testament to give us valuable pastoral insights for all Christian communities and churches. But he has some especially valuable insights for his fellow Catholics when he notes that the aftermath of Vatican II has brought some very tragic losses in Catholic belief and practice. He sees the effort to "recoup" these losses by emphasizing traditional and distinctive Catholic practices as "eminent good sense" (pp. 117-18). That effort has been central to the papacy of John Paul II, and it certainly makes eminent good sense. These and other insights into church life make reading this book a thought-provoking experience.

Rating:
Summary: A True Gem for Church History/Scripture Buffs
Review: THE CHURCHES THE APOSTLES LEFT BEHIND is no longer a new volume, and there has been a great deal of research in the early Church since the publication of this book. None the less, I often find myself going back to this gem of a resource whenever I am trying to find something interesting to present about the various Churches founded by the Apostles. The communities that Brown discusses are those of Paul, both from his letters and the Lucan communities often associated with Paul, Peter, John, and Matthew. Brown looks at these major communities from the traditional point of view, but includes current scholarship at the time of the book's publication as well. While Brown's Catholic perspective is evident in much of his writing, he was asked as a Catholic to address an ecumenical audience, so the book demonstrates what unites Christianity, namely a common early history, rather than what divides us today.

During his lifetime, Raymond Brown was a Sulpician priest involved in the training of people for ministry. This book reflects his pastoral concern. Actually, many of the chapters were presented as lectures for people involved in ministry.