Mary H. Schertz, PhD
Professor Emerita of New Testament
About Mary
Prior to joining the AMBS faculty in 1988, Mary taught at Goshen College for one year; at Vanderbilt University School of Religion she was a teaching assistant and New Testament researcher and bibliographer. 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.
She retired from AMBS on June 30, 2017. See: Schertz and Schipani retire after 61 years of combined service
Watch an interview of Mary by Jackie Wyse-Rhodes, PhD, on Aug. 16, 2023, on “Our Lives as Scholars,” in celebration of the release of Mary’s commentary on the Gospel of Luke as part of the Herald Press Believers Church Bible Commentary series. Her work on the commentary stretched through many of her years of teaching New Testament at AMBS, where she tested her emerging ideas in rich interactions with students, friends, colleagues and the broader church (from a piece by Karl Stutzman).
Teaching philosophy
“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.”
Publications
Luke, Believers Church Bible Commentary Series (Herald, 2023)
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