Brown was the expert appointed to review and provide the nihil obstat for 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.
Brown je bio stručnjak imenovan da pregleda i dadne nihil obstat za The New Jerome Biblical Commentary, standardnu temeljnu referentnu knjigu za katoličku biblijske studije, a čiji je bio jedan od urednika i kojem je i sam doprinio poput desetina drugih katoličkih učenjaka.