Eat This Book Study Guide

By Eugene H. Peterson and Peter Santucci

The second part of Peterson's momentous five-volume work on spiritual theology, 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 through a fascinating conversation on the nature of language, the ancient practice of lectio divina, and the role of Scripture translations. What better way to continue that conversation than through an intensive study with other readers?

This helpful study guide is designed to enable small groups in schools or churches -- or even individuals -- to delve deeper into the timely wisdom of Eat This Book. Peterson's discussion is here broken up into nine "sessions," each of which contains a summary, quotations to consider, questions for interaction, and a suggested activity, ending with a suggestion for prayer.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Eerdmans
• Release date: Jul 25, 2006
• ISBN: 9781467426244

Eugene H. Peterson

Eugene H. Peterson (1932–2018) was a pastor, scholar, author, and poet. He wrote more than thirty books, including his widely acclaimed paraphrase of the Bible, The Message: The Bible in Contemporary Language, his memoir, The Pastor, and the bestselling spiritual formation classic A Long Obedience in the Same Direction. Peterson was founding pastor of Christ Our King Presbyterian Church in Bel Air, Maryland, where he served for twenty-nine years before retiring in 1991. With degrees from Seattle Pacific, New York Theological Seminary, and Johns Hopkins University, he served as professor of spiritual theology at Regent College in Vancouver, British Columbia, until retiring in Lakeside, Montana, in 2006.

Book preview

Preface

This is a book about a book about a book — a guide to a book about reading the Bible. My hope is that using this study guide will help you and your community do exactly what Eugene Peterson set out to do when he wrote Eat This Book — namely, read and meditate on and pray and live the book this is all about, the Scriptures.

As Peterson notes in his book, we use words to hide just as much as to reveal, to lie as much as to tell the truth. This is true of both what we write and what we say. Because of that, I think of this study guide as an archaeologist’s tool. Each question is meant to gradually and determinedly scrape away at us and at Scripture, peeling back the accumulated layers that have obscured us and the Word of the Lord.

You can use this tool effectively on your own, but it is best used in a community of Christians. There’s a certain level of honesty that can be reached only when we answer questions aloud in front of people who know us — honest speech becomes a truth event in which we articulate things that we may not have intended to say but that change us as a result. Silent thoughts that don’t escape the mind rarely do that.

This study guide can be used for a seven-session or a nine-session group study. It is currently formatted for a nine-session study, with each chapter of Eat This Book receiving its own attention. However, chapters 2 and 6 are fairly short and can easily be combined with the immediately following chapters. Still, my recommendation is the more leisurely nine-week study. After all, this isn’t fast food we’re eating here; it’s Holy Scripture!

Each session has a summary of the section covered — usually a single chapter. I’ve included this for the sake of the group leader(s). You may or may not want to read this aloud before the group discussion. One problem with reading summaries aloud in small groups is that such summaries can lead to laziness, as when I was in eighth grade and read CliffNotes on Moby Dick instead of the complete novel.

Along with questions for interaction, I’ve included quotations to consider. Eugene Peterson is eminently quotable, and I’ve had to restrain myself with the number of quotations included. (My wife was helpful in that process.) At times we need questions to spark our interaction, but at other times, simply reading a powerful and representative quotation is more effective in generating interaction.

But remember, this guide includes a lot of quotations and questions. Make sure you consider the amount of time you have available for conversation and discussion before you pick which ones to use. Simply starting with the first question or the first quotation and trying to get through them all would be a mistake, unless you’re using this guide for personal study. No group I know could have any depth of interaction while dealing with all the quotations and questions.

Each session also has a suggested activity. It will tangibly enhance your group time, engaging the group physically with the ideas expressed in the chapter. Some of the activities require advance preparation, so please make sure you allot enough time to prepare for those. Some activities are better done before the discussion time, while others are better done during or afterward. Again, putting time and thought into preparation is essential to getting the most out of your study group.

I’ve also ended each session with a prayer based on Psalm 119. Psalm 119 is the great, mammoth psalm (176 verses) that meditates on Scripture from almost every possible angle. The first line of each verse in each eight-verse section starts with the same Hebrew letter as the psalm works its way through the Hebrew alphabet. Each time your group moves from study to prayer, focus on one section from this psalm. In small-group prayer times, the focus generally moves almost completely from Scripture to our individual lives. Psalm 119 can help keep the two together.

So, take the eight verses from each section and write them out on separate pieces of paper, distributing them to the people in your group as you move to prayer. If you have fewer than eight people, you can either give people more than one verse or just use as many verses as there are people in the group. The text from Eugene Peterson’s translation The Message is included with each session, but feel free to use whichever translation makes the best sense for you and your small

Reviews for Eat This Book Study Guide

[john_warner-1 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

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.

[shdawson · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

A must read.

[laholmes_1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

The mighty angel stands astride the ocean and the land, and begins to proclaim. John begins to take notes, but the angel tells him to stop and "eat this book" This passage is the starting point for Peterson's work on Sprirtual Reading. That is to say, letting the Word of God use you, instead of you using the Word of God for your purposes. As usual, he walks us through with great care to a place where we can get the Word of God inside of us, and we can meditate on it and chew on it, dwell on it. He mentions several ways througout Christian history this has been done, including Liturgy and Lecto Divina.In the back off the book is a a great section on the art of translation, Peterson's own story as a translator, and stories of the language the Bible was written in. To me, this alone is worth the price of the book.

[wilsonknut · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

This is a great book on the practice of spiritual reading and getting into God's Word. The last few chapters on translations and the Greek in the New Testament were especially eye opening. People who insist that King James Version is the only translation worth reading need to read this book.

[alissamarie_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

A sort of primer on how to read the Bible, by the "translator" of the Message (and it includes a whole chapter on his philosophy and motivation to do the Message, which I found illuminating and helpful). Recommended to anyone who's been reading the Bible a long time.

[ebnelson · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Book does two things exceptionally well. First, it is the best book I’ve ever read on the importance of reading the Bible. His passion and love for the text comes through as he encourages the reader to fall in love with the word and the spirituality that flows from it. Second, its afterwards chronicles the philosophy of translation that underlies the Message. Quickly turned me into a true believer in that translation.

[nathanshaver_1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Eugene Peterson has become one of my favorite authors, poets, pastor, guides over the last year or so. This book has taught me how to encounter the Word of God without critical, hermeneutic approaches all the time. The art of spiritual reading (Lectio Divina) is something that will take me the rest of my life to learn, but Eugene Peterson is a welcome friend on the journey. I highly recommend this book to anyone who desires to really dive into the Story of God. The author speaks from an obvious life of reading spiritually!

[bsanner_3 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

“Eat this book,” Peterson implores his readers. We cannot simply approach the Bible searching for facts and self-help tips; rather, we must devour the text for the spiritual nourishment so essential to our life of faith – read prayerfully and personally, looking to live and obey. Peterson’s work here does not offer ‘five simple steps to reading the Bible right,’ but instead explores the rhyme and reason of scripture: its spirit, its world, its theology, its story, its reading. Undergirded by solid exegesis, spiritual reading lifts the text from the sacrilege of “upward desecration” (taking the text out of the world) and reminds us that the Word is both living and personal. A

[disneypope · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

great primer for those who are learning to read the scriptures.