Joseph Fitzmyer

Fr. Joseph Fitzmyer SJ
File:Joseph A. Fitzmyer SJ.jpg
Orders
Ordination	August 15, 1951
Personal details
Birth name	Joseph Augustine Fitzmyer
Born	November 4, 1920 Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States
Died	Merion Station, Pennsylvania, United States
Denomination	Roman Catholic
Occupation	Jesuit priest, Biblical scholar, theologian
Alma mater	Loyola University Chicago Catholic University of Leuven Johns Hopkins University Pontifical Biblical Institute

Joseph Augustine Fitzmyer SJ (4 November 1920 – 24 December 2016) was an American Catholic priest of the Society of Jesus and professor emeritus at The Catholic University of America, in Washington, DC.

He specialized in biblical studies, particularly the New Testament, but he also made contributions to the study of the Dead Sea Scrolls and early Jewish literature.

Life

Born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, in 1920, Fitzmyer was admitted, on July 30, 1938, to the novitiate of the Maryland Province of the Society of Jesus, commonly known as the Jesuits, in Wernersville, Pennsylvania. After completing that stage of his formation in the summer of 1940, he was sent to study at Loyola University in Chicago, Illinois, earning a Bachelor of Arts degree and then, in 1945, a Master of Arts degree in Greek. He then studied theology in the Facultés Saint-Albert (Egenhoven–Louvain), Belgium, and was ordained a Catholic priest on August 15, 1951. He was granted a Licentiate of Sacred Theology (S.T.L.) by the Catholic University of Leuven in 1952, a doctorate in Semitics from the Johns Hopkins University in 1956, and a Licentiate in Sacred Scripture (S.S.L.) from the Pontifical Biblical Institute in Rome in 1957.

From 1958 to 1969, Fitzmyer taught New Testament and biblical languages at Woodstock College. From 1969 to 1971, he taught Aramaic and Hebrew at the University of Chicago and then New Testament and biblical languages at Fordham University (1971–1974), at Weston School of Theology in Cambridge, Massachusetts (1974–1976), and finally in the Department of Biblical Studies at The Catholic University of America (1976–1986) as Professor of New Testament until his retirement. His publications covered Scripture, theology, Christology, catechesis, and the Dead Sea Scrolls.

A co-editor of the Jerome Biblical Commentary (1968) and the New Jerome Biblical Commentary (1991), he also served as president of the Catholic Biblical Association of America (1969–1970), of the Society of Biblical Literature (1979), and of the Studiorum Novi Testamenti Societas (1992–1993).

Fitzmyer, the Speaker's Lecturer at the University of Oxford in 1974–1975, was the 1984 recipient of the Burkitt Medal of the British Academy, and he served on the Pontifical Biblical Commission from 1984 to 1995.

Fitzmyer was a member of the Jesuit community at Georgetown University, Washington, DC. He died in Merion, Pennsylvania, on December 24, 2016.

Scholarship

Fitzmyer contributed to several biblical commentaries, including the Jerome Biblical Commentary, the New Jerome Biblical Commentary, and the Anchor Bible Commentary. His contribution to the Anchor Bible Commentary included work on The Gospel of Luke (in two volumes), Acts of the Apostles, 1 Corinthians, Romans, and Philemon. In the New Jerome Biblical Commentary, he has articles introducing the New Testament Epistles, Galatians, Romans, Philemon and on the history of Israel as well as Paul and Pauline theology. In the last one, after a historical review of 40 themes, he concludes:

As Christ was "the image of the God" (2 Cor 4:4) so human beings are destined to be "the image of the heavenly man" (1 Cor 15:49; cf. Rom 8:29). [Through] growth in Christ ... the Christian lives his or her life "for God" (Gal 2:19). Thus, for all his emphasis on Christ, Paul once again refers Christian existence ultimately to the Father – through Christ.

Fitzmyer published three commentaries on Romans: The Jerome Biblical Commentary (1968), The New Jerome Biblical Commentary (1989), and the Anchor Bible Commentary (1993). The last work runs over 800 pages, and from it came a very practical and spiritually accessible work, Spiritual Exercises Based on Paul's Epistle to the Romans. The creative endeavor links biblical commentary and exegeses with modern spirituality. In it, Fitzmyer lays out his interpretation of Romans in a more condensed form. Using historical and rhetorical criticism, Paul's Jewish background and Graeco-Roman setting do not prevent Fitzmyer from seeing coherency in Paul's message. While some scholars argue that Paul's theology is largely dependent on its context, such as the crisis in the Corinthian community, Fitzmyer argues for a vital application of Romans to our modern context.

In his The Impact of the Dead Sea Scrolls, Fitzmyer summarizes in the book his 50 years of research as a pioneer in the field.

Selected works

Books

• See "The Biblical Commission's Instruction" below for earliest publication in English.

Festschrift

• M. P. Horgan and P. J. Kobelski, To Touch the Text: Biblical and Related Studies in Honor of Joseph A. Fitzmyer, S.J. New York: Crossroad, 1989.