BRANDON, S. G. F.

BRANDON, S. G. F. (1907–1971), English historian of religions and of the early Christian church. Born in Devonshire, Samuel George Frederick Brandon was trained for the priesthood of the Church of England at the College of the Resurrection, Mirfield, during which time he also studied history at the University of Leeds. He was graduated in 1930 and was ordained two years later. After seven years as a parish priest in the west of England, he became in 1939 a chaplain in the British army, serving in the European and North African campaigns and taking part in the Dunkirk evacuation. He remained in the regular army until 1951, when he was appointed professor of comparative religion at the University of Manchester despite a lack of previous academic teaching experience; he held the post until his death.

Brandon's work centered on two areas. The first and more controversial was the early history of the Christian church. Here he took with the utmost seriousness the older theory of a conflict in the early church between a Petrine, Jewish group and a Pauline, gentile community, the latter gaining the upper hand only after 70 ce. This was the theme of his first book, The Fall of Jerusalem and the Christian Church (1951). Over a decade later he returned to the subject of Christian origins in Jesus and the Zealots (1967) and The Trial of Jesus of Nazareth (1968), in which he emphasized that Jesus had been executed by the Romans for sedition, and drew parallels between Jesus' followers and the violent anti-Roman movements of the time. Coming as they did at a highly volatile period in Western religious history, these books gained him a considerable (and to Brandon, unwelcome) radical following, and much international attention, owing to reports in Time, Newsweek, and other newsmagazines.

Brandon's other major interest was centered on the belief that religion is a human response to the inexorable passage of time. His thesis was stated in Time and Mankind (1951), and was repeated in various ways in such books as Man and His Destiny in the Great Religions (1962), History, Time, and Deity (1965), and The Judgment of the Dead (1967). Wider interests were revealed in A Dictionary of Comparative Religion (1970), planned, edited, and to a great extent written by him, and in his last work, published after his death, Man and God in Art and Ritual (1975). Here the focus shifted to iconography, but the underlying theme remained that of history and time.

In 1970 Brandon was elected general secretary of the International Association for the History of Religions, but his unexpected death a little more than a year later prevented him from exercising any permanent influence on that organization.

Despite his years as a parish priest and chaplain, after 1951 Brandon virtually lost touch with the church, and as a professor he had no interest in Christian apologetics. He was a historian pure and simple, who saw Western religion as having been in irreversible decline since the high Middle Ages, and who believed that understanding of religious traditions could be gained only from a study of their origins. His view of the interrelations of religion and the sense of time was undoubtedly valid; however, being uninterested in psychology, philosophy, or phenomenology—or in methodological questions generally—he seldom carried his investigations far enough. Although he was a disciplined scholar and a fastidious writer, his mind lacked flexibility, and his short academic career can now be seen as having marked the end of the era of traditional comparative religion in Britain. In the area of Christian origins, his views were too controversial to win ready acceptance, but it was important that he drew attention to the political setting of early Christianity, a field in which much work remains to be done.

Bibliography

Sharpe, Eric J. "S. G. F. Brandon, 1907–1971." History of Religions 12 (August 1972): 71–74.

Sharpe, Eric J. "Comparative Religion at the University of Manchester, 1904–1979." Bulletin of the John Rylands Library (Manchester) 63 (Autumn 1980): 144–170.

Sharpe, Eric J., and J. R. Hinnells, eds. Man and His Salvation: Studies in Memory of S. G. F. Brandon. Manchester, 1973. Includes a personal appreciation of Brandon by H. C. Snape, a summary of Brandon's contribution to scholarship by E. O. James, and a bibliography of Brandon's works.

Simon, Marcel. "S. G. F. Brandon, 1907–1971." Numen 19 (August-December 1972): 84–90.

Eric J. Sharpe (1987)