Mary Schertz

Professor of New Testament; Director, Institute of Mennonite Studies

• B.A., Goshen College, 1971
• M.Div., Goshen Biblical Seminary, 1983
• Ph.D., Vanderbilt University School of Religion, 1993

E-mail: mschertz@ambs.edu
Phone: 574 296-6218

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Mary’s teaching calls forth the best in her students as she works creatively to help students discover the excitement of reading the Bible in its original languages. In the last few years, Mary has created opportunities to spend time with pastors studying the Bible—time that is unhurried so the Scripture can form those who read it. Mary is working on a Luke commentary and co-wrote a book on biblical studies methodology with Professor Emeritus Perry Yoder. As director of the Institute of Mennonite Studies, Mary helped launch the journal, Vision: A Journal for Church and Theology, jointly published with Canadian Mennonite University. Prior to joining the AMBS faculty in 1988, Mary taught at Goshen College for one year and served at Vanderbilt University School of Religion as a teaching assistant and New Testament researcher and bibliographer.

"The text of the New Testament sometimes suffers from over-familiarity. We know it so well that we hear but don’t hear, see but don’t see. Studies in the language, history, literary conventions, and social world of the New Testament text can ‘slow us down’ enough to help us really hear and see what God is saying and doing through Scripture. Giving the New Testament the kind of attention we would give a letter from a very dear friend may renew both us as learners and the church of which we are a part."

Scholarship

• Vision: A Journal for Church and Theology, editor
• Beautiful Upon the Mountains: Biblical Essays on Mission, Peace, and the Reign of God (Institute of Mennonite Studies, 2004), co-editor
• “For God So Loved” in The Heart of the Matter: Pastoral Ministry in Anabaptist Perspective (Cascadia, 2004)
• “Preaching and the Bible: First We Have to Read It” in Anabaptist Preaching: A Conversation Between Pulpit, Pew and Bible (Cascadia, 2003)
• “Keeping Faith: New Testament Scholarship and the Church” in Minding the Church: Scholarship in the Anabaptist Tradition (Pandora, 2002)
• Seeing the Text: Exegesis for Students of Greek and Hebrew (Abingdon, 2001), co-author