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2007-06-19 issue:

A Mennonite Bible

by J. Lowell Nafziger, Rockford, Ill.

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Maybe it’s time we had our own Mennonite Bible. I’ve been reading the responses to the Lancaster Mennonite Conference’s politically incorrect decision on ordination and thinking that there is a historical precedent solution. Martin Luther believed a number of books in both testaments were wrongly included in the Bible. He succeeded in removing Old Testament books that had come through the Septuagint, such as Tobit, Judit, Bel and the Dragon, Baruch and others. He also thought the books of James and Revelation in the New Testament were apocryphal but wasn’t able to convince a majority of his followers of it. So the Protestant New Testament remains as Athenasius recommended in 367.

Now perhaps those Mennonite writers who object to Lancaster Conference’s decision could institute a Mennonite Bible—picking up where Luther left off. They could exclude the politically incorrect parts of 1 Corinthians, 2 Corinthians, 1 Timothy and 2 Timothy. That would fix our ordination problem. Also they could exclude Titus, with its shameful stereotyping of the lying, lazy gluttonous Cretans. They could also eliminate that quarter of a page that denigrates gay practices so gratuitously. In other places, margin notes could be added to declare that certain verses are “disputed,” such as Jesus’ limitations on divorce. That’s the way the Roman church did it at the time of Jerome. We could simply declare all those passages to be Mennonite apocrapha.