S. G. F. Brandon

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.

The Reverend

S. G. F. Brandon
Born
Samuel George Frederick Brandon

1907
Devon, England
Died21 October 1971(1971-10-21) (aged 63–64)
Ecclesiastical career
ReligionChristianity (Anglican)
ChurchChurch of England[1]
Ordained1932 (priest)
Academic background
Alma materUniversity of Leeds
Academic work
DisciplineReligious studies
Sub-disciplineComparative religion
InstitutionsUniversity of Manchester
Notable worksJesus and the Zealots (1967)
InfluencedJohn W. Rogerson

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 the controversial one, that a political Jesus was a 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.[9] 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.[10]

Brandon also claimed that the Pauline epistles and the accounts of Jesus Christ found in the Gospels represented two opposing factions of Christianity.[11]

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)

See also

Scholars who have advanced related ideas:

References

Footnotes
  1. Sharpe 1972, p. 71; Sharpe 2005, p. 1039.
  2. Sharpe 2005, p. 1039; Simon 1972, p. 84.
  3. Sharpe 1972, p. 71.
  4. Simon 1972, p. 84.
  5. Hengel 1967, p. 5.
  6. Brandon 1967.
  7. Sharpe 2005, p. 1040; Simon 1972, p. 84.
  8. Sharpe & Hinnells 1973, p. ix.
  9. "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.
  10. 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.
  11. Brandon 1970.

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. 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.

Further reading


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