MennoNet.com

The complete writings of Menno Simons, Jakob Hutter, Jakob Amman, and other Anabaptist theologians and figures are easily available for purchase on the internet, however, unlike more popular Magisterial Reformers like Luther, Melanchthon, Calvin, and Zwingli, who wrote their original texts in German and Latin, and the Opera Omnia (complete library) of their works easily available both freely on the internet and on paperback format in various editions, I am having a lot of trouble in finding the texts of the Anabaptist Radical Reformers in their original language editions as they were originally written and distributed.

It seems that all of the writings of the early Anabaptist leaders that I look for on the internet seem to be recent translations in the English language, even older editions, such as the the The Complete Works of Menno Simons by John F. Funk from 1871 is of course in English, and it follows a KJV-esque archaic language structure common for the era that it was published, a rare exception to this is that hymns by early Anabaptist martyrs are still preserved in their original German in the Ausbund, which is easily available online, and you can also just simply buy one near Amish communities in the USA.

Even back in 2017 on this very website, another user pointed out that he was unable to find the complete text of the 1632 Dordrecht Confession in its original Dutch language (https://forum.mennonet.com/viewtopic.php?t=819), it is quite strange that such a historically important and old document that traveled through two different continents would not have its original version easily preserved and available for the lay reader.

The reason about why I am wanting these things, and why I created this thread, is because in the future, once I am finally done studying (and maybe one day even study at Rosedale Bible College, God willing!), and have formal degree to work in Anabaptist and Bible scholarship, I really wish that I could be able to translate these historical Anabaptist texts in their original languages, contexts, backgrounds, and cultures to various other languages, not only that, but also to preserve the texts as important historical documents, and make them easily available to read for the average lay person anytime, anywhere.

I am already a bilingual guy on the autism spectrum, my native language is Brazilian Portuguese, but I also speak Italian, Spanish, German, a little bit of Japanese, and I am in the process of studying other tongues as well, I just love to study languages, preaching the gospel, and teaching the entire world about the historical and cultural background of the Anabaptists that few people outside of the Americas know of, and to avoid the Americanization of our faith, I do not feel uncomfortable in making an English translation of their works, which loses their original context.

So, where would be the right places for me to search for such texts (more likely in real-life given that I was unable to find them online), as well as me being allowed to take them home with me?, would I have to contact the Mennonite Heritage Museum?, or Anabaptist learning institutions such as Rosedale or Menno Simons College?, or go for the old-school path of having to visit a Plautdietsch-speaking Mennonite colony, or a Pennsylvanisch-speaking Amish colony, a Hutterisch-speaking Hutterite colony?

But even in this scenario, one has to bear in mind that for example, Menno's writings were originally in Dutch, not in German like the other Anabaptists, so this still pose a challenge for me who wants the original language text, and not any translation.

Hi MS1998,

Various libraries do have some early publications in their archives. There are a handful I looked at at Behalt, and there are also libraries at Goshen and Elizabethtown. Msot of us rely on translations done by other scholars, but I think it's good you want to continue to work on the textual accuracy of these translations, and in particular you could have a lot to contribute with translations into Portuguese - the number of Portuguese Anabaptists in Brazil continues to grow, and there are now horse and buggy colonies in Angola too and I expect Anabaptism to spread there.

Early translations into English were often from translations into German from the original Dutch. Recently direct translations have been made. Perhaps you could assess the landscape for the quality of Portuguese translations and consider what might be worthwhile for a "direct" translation? My denomination maintains hymnals in Portuguese and a few of our books.

JohnH wrote: ↑Sat Jul 18, 2026 1:33 pm Hi MS1998,

Various libraries do have some early publications in their archives. There are a handful I looked at at Behalt, and there are also libraries at Goshen and Elizabethtown. Most of us rely on translations done by other scholars, but I think it's good you want to continue to work on the textual accuracy of these translations, and in particular you could have a lot to contribute with translations into Portuguese - the number of Portuguese Anabaptists in Brazil continues to grow, and there are now horse and buggy colonies in Angola too and I expect Anabaptism to spread there.

Early translations into English were often from translations into German from the original Dutch. Recently direct translations have been made. Perhaps you could assess the landscape for the quality of Portuguese translations and consider what might be worthwhile for a "direct" translation? My denomination maintains hymnals in Portuguese and a few of our books.

Hello John!

I will keep an eye out for these libraries!, one day (and that is a distant day for the time being) when I visit the US I will make sure to contact them to see what their collection looks like, as my idealistic goal is to have a Pan-Anabaptist collection of the complete writings of the Mennonites, Hutterites, and Amish, so I am not looking just for the writings of Menno Simons, but Hutter and Amman wrote very little, so it should not be that difficult to find them if I look for the right place, having the writings of other theologians and historians would also be lovely.

I will also have to see if they will permit me to purchase copies of these writings, so that I can digitize them, and then translate them over a lengthy period, so I hope that they will indeed have multiple copies of such writings, and I hope that they are not old either, because imagine trying to take such dusty, old, big, historical books on an US airport to overseas!, who knows, maybe I will have to accomplish this Pan-Anabaptist digitization and preservation project in the US itself instead of my home countries, hopefully I can convince one of them to embark in a full-fledged digitization of their collection, who knows, I am still young and naive, in fact, I just turned 28 today!

And oh yes, I absolutely have in mind translating them into my native language!, it is the language that I pray in afterall, like how I said, I plan to translate them into various languages and make them available on a specific website related to a future multi-lingual project related to Anabaptist history, but like how I said, this is still very early and idealistic thinking, will still take years, if not almost a decade for such a thing to be accomplished.

Thank you, John!, I also look forward to other users responding my inquiry with their own information!

I have a PDF download of The Complete Writings of Menno Simons in the original Dutch language, but I don't know where I found it on-line. (I downloaded it in 2017. The file name is ned-kbn-all-00013994-001.PDF & there is a text only version as well, called ned-kbn-all-00013994-001_djvu.txt. Google doesn't find these files anymore, so perhaps the site where I got has taken it off.)

My understanding is that the Dutch to German version was the first translation, then Funk later translated from that German version into English. However, I find it a rather cumbersome translation, and much prefer the English translation by Leonard Verduin, direct from Dutch to English. This version, however, is still under copyright, so no complete scanned version is available for download.

It is possible that the Brazilian Mennonites have translated it into Portuguese, but since they only recently gave up German, they very possibly have not done that, or, if they did, it was probably done from the German edition, not directly from Dutch.

Neto wrote: ↑Sat Jul 18, 2026 6:29 pm I have a PDF download of The Complete Writings of Menno Simons in the original Dutch language, but I don't know where I found it on-line. (I downloaded it in 2017. The file name is ned-kbn-all-00013994-001.PDF & there is a text only version as well, called ned-kbn-all-00013994-001_djvu.txt. Google doesn't find these files anymore, so perhaps the site where I got has taken it off.)

I'd guess you might have gotten it at https://archive.org/details/ned-kbn-all-00013994-001.

ken_sylvania wrote: ↑Sat Jul 18, 2026 6:44 pm

Neto wrote: ↑Sat Jul 18, 2026 6:29 pm I have a PDF download of The Complete Writings of Menno Simons in the original Dutch language, but I don't know where I found it on-line. (I downloaded it in 2017. The file name is ned-kbn-all-00013994-001.PDF & there is a text only version as well, called ned-kbn-all-00013994-001_djvu.txt. Google doesn't find these files anymore, so perhaps the site where I got has taken it off.)

I'd guess you might have gotten it at https://archive.org/details/ned-kbn-all-00013994-001.

Yes, that is the file! I apparently later attempted to find it again (two years ago) by doing a photo search. I copied the internet address from the results into a text file, and named it as the website address. But earlier today when I pasted that address into the browser, it went to a scientific document in Russian.....

MennoSimons1998 wrote: ↑Sat Jul 18, 2026 1:15 pm The complete writings of Menno Simons, Jakob Hutter, Jakob Amman, and other Anabaptist theologians and figures are easily available for purchase on the internet, however, unlike more popular Magisterial Reformers like Luther, Melanchthon, Calvin, and Zwingli, who wrote their original texts in German and Latin, and the Opera Omnia (complete library) of their works easily available both freely on the internet and on paperback format in various editions, I am having a lot of trouble in finding the texts of the Anabaptist Radical Reformers in their original language editions as they were originally written and distributed.

Even just tracking down the important texts and making them available would be a huge first step - and a lot of work. If you do that part, you may be able to enlist others to help with the translation.

And if you get a decent start on doing that much, others may help you track down other texts.

Neto wrote: ↑Sat Jul 18, 2026 6:29 pm I have a PDF download of The Complete Writings of Menno Simons in the original Dutch language, but I don't know where I found it on-line. (I downloaded it in 2017. The file name is ned-kbn-all-00013994-001.PDF & there is a text only version as well, called ned-kbn-all-00013994-001_djvu.txt. Google doesn't find these files anymore, so perhaps the site where I got has taken it off.

Likely archive.org, I have found several texts there, and this format indicates that as the probable source.

MennoSimons1998 wrote: ↑Sat Jul 18, 2026 1:15 pm I am already a bilingual guy on the autism spectrum, my native language is Brazilian Portuguese, but I also speak Italian, Spanish, German, a little bit of Japanese, and I am in the process of studying other tongues as well, I just love to study languages, preaching the gospel, and teaching the entire world about the historical and cultural background of the Anabaptists that few people outside of the Americas know of, and to avoid the Americanization of our faith, I do not feel uncomfortable in making an English translation of their works, which loses their original context.

Even so, you are just one person, and enlisting others to help will build community and energy around the project, also bringing in other skills.

FWIW, when you deal with Dutch or German from the 1500s, it's significantly different from the modern languages, and there are so many dialects that are quite different from another. A good first step is to learn both modern German and modern Dutch well - and Dutch will be very easy if you know English and German - and then learn another dialect or two of German. Not low German, it's too close to Dutch. Learn a dialect that is quite different from high German or Dutch. Then you will have pretty good instincts to understand a lot of older variants of German and Dutch - which were not completely distinct, there's a sliding scale of dialects that blend into each other. Which is actually kind of true of dialects today, low German is more Dutch than German, there are variants of Flemish that are highly influenced by German etc.

Also, learn Grimm's Laws. The Grimm brothers were linguists who collected folk tales in various dialects in order to better understand all historical dialects of German languages. The fairy tales are nice in their own right, but people still rely on some of their work to understand older German dialects.

I wish to thank you all so much for the help that you have given me so far!, however, it is too late here in Brazil, and I am just utterly exhausted after a long day of both celebrating my 28th birthday with my family, and at the same time helping them move a lot of heavy objects on a trip to another city, so I need to go to sleep, tomorrow I will write a more in-depth reply to you all when my mind is rested and clear, but still, thank you all so much, and God bless you all!