Eugene Peterson learns how to translate the Bible

Right now I am listening to a video interview with Eugene Peterson, translator of The Message version of the Bible. Peterson explains how he became a Bible translator. First he became a biblical language scholar. Then he discovered books recently published about how to translate the Bible. He read translations of the Iliad and the Odyssey, from Greek to English. He discovered the translation principles use by these translators. Finally, he began translating the Bible for his church congregation. Out of that experience came The Message. Peterson does not intend The Message to be a study Bible. But he intends it to help people understand the the message (!) of the Bible, expressed in contemporary English, applicable to their own lives.

You, too, can listen to this interview with Eugene Peterson:

http://www.qideas.org/practices/live/showing.aspx

You will need to register with your name, email address, and zip code before you can listen to the video. Actually, there are two videos, one on “Practicing Sabbath”, the other, the one I’m listening to, is titled “Immersed in Scripture.”

6 Comments

  1. Posted April 25, 2012 at 9:55 pm | Permalink

    Hey Wane
    Working for Northern Cheyenne Tribal Schools as a para in the Special Educaiton Department. Our Director would like to implement a language component for the cheyenne language, a training software or some way of implementing the language for sped students. Becka Howey said there is a web based e-mail connection that you once served. It mailboxed new language packets that you had developed. that sounded really kool dropping language components for the cheyenne language? Any thing twards language teaching for K-12 would be apreciated thanks. Ken

  2. Posted April 26, 2012 at 4:32 am | Permalink

    Kenneth, the packets are being posted daily in the Cheyenne language group on Facebook at this address:

    http://www.facebook.com/groups/237296780885/

    Email me offline if you’d like to chat more: wayne dot leman at gmail dot com. Cheyenne language stuff excites me.

  3. Posted April 30, 2012 at 5:50 pm | Permalink

    Reblogged this on heraldista.

  4. Posted June 15, 2012 at 3:04 am | Permalink

    On a related subject: do the publishers of Peterson’s “The Message” have any plans to correct its text of Colossians 3:20? The last sentence of the verse is missing the word “to” — that it, is says “This delights the Master no end,” although it should say, “This delights the Master to no end.”

    I have not found (although I have not thoroughly searched for) a copy of Peterson’s “The Message” that does not contain this mistake.

    Yours in Christ,

    James Snapp, Jr.

  5. Laura Hood
    Posted August 31, 2012 at 1:10 pm | Permalink

    Is there a spanish translación of The Message available? Or one in progress?

  6. Posted August 31, 2012 at 10:01 pm | Permalink

    I haven’t heard of one, Laura.


One Trackback

  1. By Wednesday Link List « Thinking Out Loud on May 9, 2012 at 9:32 am

    [...] Peterson didn’t just get up one morning and start translating the Bible. Several steps led up to the creation of The Message including: “…He read translations of the Iliad [...]

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