Eat This Book

Grover Gardner's precise narration conveys Peterson's somewhat redundant message on spiritual reading. Using the examples of the angel speaking to John, the Revelator, from the Book of Revelation, and Ezekiel, the biblical prophet, Gardner captures the metaphor in ringing tones, when he says, "Eat the Book." Spiritual reading can be likened to a dog chewing on a succulent, juicy bone. Just as the dog chews, savors, and lingers over its bone, Peterson recommends that Christians chew and savor and linger over Holy Scripture. Gardner's gentle vocal personality lends itself well to persuasion as he gives full value to the details of spiritual reading and encourages listeners to regain the lost art of biblical meditation. G.D.W. (c) AudioFile 2007, Portland, Maine

January 2, 2006
Peterson is a retired pastor and popular author best known for The Message, a paraphrasing of the Bible into modern idiom. In this slender book, he invites Christian readers to encounter the Bible anew. Drawing on language in Ezekiel and Revelation, Peterson says that we ought not read the Bible the same way we read a cookbook, a textbook, or even a great novel. Rather, Christians are to absorb, imbibe, feed on and digest Scripture. Peterson recommends a type of Bible-based prayer called lectio divina, in which the person praying meditates on a short passage of Scripture and listens for God to speak through the text. Peterson's exposition of lectio divina is one of the fullest to appear in recent years. Throughout, he cautions that lectio is not a systematic way of reading, but a "developed habit of living the text in Jesus' name." The last chapter, in which Peterson ruminates on his own experience translating the Bible, will be fascinating to Peterson's devotees, but is more myopic than the rest of the book. However, this is a worthy sequel to Peterson's 2004 hit Christ Plays in Ten Thousand Places.