Erasmus, the Anabaptists, and the Great Commission

Many scholars have pointed to the influence of Erasmus on the early Swiss Anabaptists and on Menno Simons, an Anabaptist leader from Friesland who founded the Mennonites. Yet the extent of this influence has never been firmly established. Friesen uses new research to build a more convincing case for the early Anabaptist movement’s dependence on Erasmus’s thought by tracing the intellectual origins of both Swiss Anabaptism and Menno Simons to the writings of Erasmus. He is able to link their intellectual origins to Erasmus’s unique interpretation of Christ’s Great Commission as represented in his famous paraphrases of Matthew and Acts.