regarded as a natural development of early references to Jesus as "Lord". Gospel of John Brown analyzed the Gospel of John and divided it into two sections, which he labelled the "Book of Signs" and the "Book of Glory." The Book of Signs recounts Jesus' public miracles, which are called signs. The Book of Glory comprises Jesus' private teaching to his disciples, his crucifixion, and his resurrection. Brown identified three layers of text in John: 1) an initial version Brown considers based on personal experience of Jesus; 2) a structured literary creation by the evangelist which draws upon additional sources; and 3) the edited version that readers know today. Reactions Support Brown has been described as “the premier Johannine scholar in the English-speaking world.” Terrence T. Prendergast stated that “for nearly 40 years Father Brown caught the entire church up into the excitement and new possibilities of scriptural scholarship." Much of Brown's work was given a nihil obstat and an imprimatur (the nihil obstat is a statement by an official reviewer, appointed by a bishop, that "nothing stands in the way" of a book being given an imprimatur; the imprimatur, which must normally be issued by a bishop of the diocese of publication, is the official endorsement – "let it be printed" – that a book contains nothing damaging to Catholic faith and morals). Brown was the expert appointed to review and provide the nihil obstat for The Jerome Biblical Commentary and The New Jerome Biblical Commentary, the standard basic reference book for Catholic Biblical studies, of which he was one of the editors and to which he himself contributed, as did dozens of other Catholic scholars. Joseph Ratzinger, later Pope Benedict XVI, was personally complimentary of Brown and his scholarship, and said that he "would be very happy if we had many exegetes like Father Brown". Criticism Brown's immense body of work was, at times, controversial among some traditionalists who objected to the elements of his work that they regarded as casting doubt on the historical accuracy of numerous articles of the Catholic faith. His critics included Cardinal Lawrence Shehan and Father Richard W. Gilsdorf, the latter of whom postulated that Brown's work was "a major contribution to the befogged wasteland of an 'American Church' progressively alienated from its divinely constituted center." Other writers, critical of historical Christian claims about Jesus, criticized Brown for excessive caution, for what they