I learned a few weeks ago that my colleague and fellow Jesuit John R. Donahue died on Oct. 28, 2024. During his years of service as a biblical scholar, Father Donahue was a frequent contributor to America and served as “The Word” columnist from 1998 to 2001.
Father Donahue (Jake to his friends and brother Jesuits) was born in Baltimore, Md., in 1933. He first encountered the Jesuits at Loyola Blakefield High School and entered the Maryland Province novitiate in Wernersville, Pa., in 1951, soon after his 18th birthday. After many years of study and teaching as part of his Jesuit formation, he was ordained a priest in 1964, and received a doctorate in New Testament in 1972 from the University of Chicago.
He taught at a number of schools, including the University of Chicago, Woodstock College, Vanderbilt University, the Pontifical Biblical Institute in Rome and the University of Notre Dame, but at the height of his career, he was professor of New Testament at the Jesuit School of Theology in Berkeley, California (now the Jesuit School of Theology of Santa Clara University). From 1980 to 2001, his work influenced countless students preparing for lay and ordained ministry.
In 2001, Jake became the Raymond E. Brown Distinguished Professor of New Testament Studies at St. Mary’s Seminary and University in Baltimore, Md., where he would stay for three years. At the same time, he also began a 16-year tenure teaching at nearby Loyola University Maryland (then known as Loyola College in Maryland).
Jake published many books and articles on the Gospel of Mark. He returned to it frequently in scholarship because he loved its visceral quality. Mark’s use of vivid details and rapid narrative pacing gives the second Gospel an intensity that the others, in Jake’s estimation, lack. Matthew, Luke and John recall Jesus’ ministry; with Mark, the reader re-lives it.
Aside from Mark’s Gospel, Jake’s other passion was social justice. One of his greatest contributions to the topic came in 1993 with “What Does the Lord Require? A Bibliographical Essay on the Bible and Social Justice.” This lengthy essay, published in Studies in the Spirituality of Jesuits, revealed just how vast and well-informed Jake’s interest had become. The essay leads the reader through the Bible book by book and discusses every related study on the topic of justice.
One of my first interactions with Jake came in 2010, at a dinner I attended at the Loyola Maryland Jesuit community. In the summer of 2008, Israeli archaeologists had discovered an inscription at Khirbet Qeiyafa, a site not far from Jerusalem. Initial publications of the text suggested that it dated to a time early in the Israelite monarchy (ca. 1000 B.C.E.) and that it was a royal instruction to local judges to ensure justice in the cases of slaves, widows, orphans, foreigners and children.
Jake was ecstatic. If this interpretation was correct, the inscription was evidence that themes of justice were important to Israel at a very early date.
I was skeptical. The text was fragmentary and difficult to parse. I believed concerns about widows and orphans to be more at home in later Israelite religious thought (ca. 700 B.C.E.). During my visit that evening and in many visits afterward, Jake argued passionately for an early dating, even as I tried to hold my ground. He read every publication on the topic and was ready for me every time I came over for dinner. Controversy still surrounds the inscription, but as more and more scholars have come to take Jake’s view, I’ve been quietly pleased that his hopes are finding vindication.
When Jake retired from Loyola in 2017, he sent me an astonishing gift. Without any notice, a box containing all ten volumes of the Theological Dictionary of the New Testament arrived at my office at Boston College. Each volume was carefully wrapped in newspaper. They had been heavily used, but were still tightly bound with all their dust jackets intact. An enclosed note from Jake asked only that I pray for him in retirement.
I consulted the volumes regularly in my studies and teaching, especially in my preaching classes. I myself recently moved on from teaching and I gave away most of my scholarly library. I sent Jake’s TDNT to a former student of mine who is now a professor at the Institut de Théologie de la Compagnie de Jésus in Abidjan, Ivory Coast.
At the time, Jake’s health was already declining and I never got the chance to tell him. I’m confident he would have been delighted.
