Eat This Book challenges us to read the Scriptures on their own terms, as God’s revelation, and to live them as we read them. With warmth and wisdom, Peterson offers greatly needed, down-to-earth counsel on spiritual reading. In these pages, he draws readers into a fascinating conversation on the nature of language, the ancient practice of lectio divina, and the role of Scripture translations; included here is the “inside story” behind Peterson’s own popular Bible translation, The Message.

You can't rush this book. That's what I discovered. Over a month, I had to bit by bit "taste and savor", reflect and then take the next bite. The last part on translation, however, I read in an hour as it was riveting. Lots to think about and I especially liked his breakdown of lectio divina. ( )

Considering how short a book this was, I was totally lazy about reading it. But it's a great book...definitely NOT a set of step by step instructions on "how to" read the Bible. Thank goodness...as if anyone can actually tell you that. It IS full of ideas about good and bad ways of approaching Scripture which are thoughtful and interesting. ( )

The Book of Common Prayer contains a prayer which petitions God to enable us to "hear [holy Scriptures], read, mark and inward digest them." I believe that these actions are also the theme of the Christian scholar Eugene Peterson in this book in which the author encourages the reader to more deeply read the Bible as to be transformative in our lives. However, he doesn't do so without providing some caveats regarding the use of metaphors and being aware of textual context in the writings. Peterson performs an extensive exegesis of the lectio divinia, a Benedictine spiritual discipline. My only complaint was that he took more time in explaining each step than how to do it. ( )

A must read. ( )