Eugene
Peterson is an author, scholar, poet and ordained minister. He has written more than 20 books
including A Long Obedience in the Same Direction and Leap Over A Wall; but he is most known for modern
language translation of the Bible, The Message. His latest work is The Message With Its Translator:
Conversations,
an annotated Bible with commentary, teaching and related texts by
Peterson. Conversations is releasing September 2007 from
NavPress. Peterson lives with his
wife in Montana and has three children and six grandchildren.
Eugene
Peterson is an author, scholar, poet, ordained minister, and professor emeritus
of Spiritual Theology at Regent College in Vancouver, BC, Canada. He received his formal education from
Seattle Pacific College, New York Theological Seminary and Johns Hopkins
University.
He has
written more than 20 books including A Long Obedience in the Same Direction and Leap Over A Wall; but he is most known for modern
language translation of the Bible, The Message. Since 1991, The Message has sold more than 11 million
copies in all formats. Peterson
created this unique translation to make the Bible more accessible to today's
society. His latest work is The
Message With Its Translator: Conversations, an annotated Bible with
commentary, teaching and related texts by Peterson. Conversations is releasing September 2007 from NavPress.
After
graduate study at Johns Hopkins, Peterson returned to New York Theological
Seminary where he taught biblical languages and English Bible. Concurrently, he
was associate pastor at a Presbyterian church in White Plains, New York.
Although he planned to be in academia, it was during this time he discovered
his passion for pastoral ministry.
In
1962, Peterson left New York for Bel Air, Maryland, outside of Baltimore. He was the organizing pastor of Christ
Our King Presbyterian Church in Bel Air where he served for 29 years. It was his effort to make the book of
Galatians relevant to his congregation that was the catalyst for the first
translation of The Message.
Peterson
says his work as a pastor has had significant impact on this translation: "The
largest influence on the work of The Message, after the Greek and Hebrew text
itself, was 35 years working as a pastor, listening, listening, listening to
people, trying to get these original texts in their idiom, their imaginations,
the way they talked. I always felt I was on the border of two countries where
they spoke different languages-the bible language and the American language. I
kept asking myself, if Isaiah or John were writing what they wrote for these
people I am living with, how would they say it?"
In
1991, Peterson felt God was calling him to devote more time to writing and
teaching. He spent one year at Pittsburgh Seminary as writer-in-residence,
teaching and working on The Message. In
January 1993, Peterson became professor of spiritual theology at Regent
College. He currently serves as
Professor Emeritus at Regent, spending the majority of his time writing and
speaking full-time. It took more
than 12 years for Peterson to finish his seminal work of translating the entire
Bible for The Message.
The Message with Its Translator: Conversations grew out of his own ministry of
conversation-with God, with his parishioners, with the hundreds of students he
has taught. He sees reading the
Bible as a part of the essence of living.
Writes Peterson: "My task is to bring into awareness that the biblical
text, in the course of revealing God, pulls us into the revelation and welcomes
us as participants in it. What I
want to call to attention to is that the Bible, all of it, is livable. It is, in fact, the text for living our lives."
Peterson
now lives in the Big Sky Country of rural Montana, with his wife, Jan. He has three grown children and six
grandchildren.