The Message: The Bible in Contemporary Language (New Testament with Psalms and Proverbs)

I'm a youth pastor in the Orlando area and I did a test not too long ago with a decent sized group of students. We tested their ability to comprehend and grasp the main effect of a few different Bible stories from a selection of translations.

We used the ESV, NIV, NLT and MESSAGE. Although I like the ESV Bible and have, in the past, used it as my primary translation, it failed miserably with these kids (who by the way ranged from 6-12 grade, and most being pretty academically successful). They just didn't get the point--we had to stop too many times to analyze the text and try and figure out the meaning on the grammar! On to the NIV--it faired much better, but there were many places where the NIV had my kids stumped. I actually think that part of the NIV's failure was their choice of fonts...these things were so ancient. ...the lack of "red letters" wasn't helpful. The NLT...I used to really like it actually, but the more I've read it, the more it strikes me a just a front for an old idea. What I mean (and my kids echoed this) is that yes, it is easier to understand, but it seemed to us that they still fail to catch the "love story" of God's Word. In other words, it's still very systematic and verse-oriented, yet it tries to modernize the way those very things are carried out. It's like putting a new face plate on an old phone. It looks pretty cool, but essentially, the phone is the same.

Re: the Message...I've had a love-hate relationship with the Message since I first picked up the NT when it came out a few years back. Part of my cried heresy; part of me said "cool!!" and part of me didn't know what the heck to think. However, as I presented this to my students, we found that they loved it above the others and related to it far more. They found it intriguing and mystical all the while being able to understand it much more than the other translations.

The comments before said that it was heresy or it missed the meaning altogether of so many things. Let me offer this: Jesus told stories...my guess is that people re-told those stories and just like when you play telephone, you can expect that details of these stories are going to chance ever so slightly. Sometimes the whole story (as far as the cast of characters, the details etc.) changes, but if the plot and main effect remain constant, what has happened...adaptation only. Adaptation is not a negative thing in translations; it's a very positive one. I work in an Episcopal Church--we know a thing or two about liturgy and tradition. But, I allow and encourage kids to read from the Message...it breaks tradition right? Wrong--what's the tradition--the heart of Jesus. The details of a story CAN adapt--they must or Christianity will die. The plot and main effect needs to stay the same. I'm not a liberal Episcopalian--I work in a very "conservative Diocese" and I stand for truth. BUT, within truth there is elasticity for dynamic and adaptation--so please don't call heresy. Peterson faithfully interprets this. There are idioms and stories in the Message that I don't get all the time, but i haven't found anything so far that could be called heresy. If anything I think Peterson has done what we've praised C.S. Lewis for--he's magnified God in a way we haven't seen before.

GET THIS--USE IT--USE IT AS A PRIMARY TRANSLATION IF YOU WANT TO! I OFTEN DO!

(...)


Great Book - Great Price - Great Service   February 17, 2006
Jackie (L.A.)
15 out of 16 found this review helpful

The Message is a translation of the Bible in vernacular, not just modern English. It reads the same way we talk to our friends. It sheds a whole new light on Bible messages, and is so understandable.


Yes, it is a Bible. This is something you will read.   February 4, 2005
R. Perkins (Salt Lake City, UT United States)
43 out of 52 found this review helpful

All this chit-chat: what are all these people talking about.

Consider yet another review which requires reading a few verses of the Gospel of Matthew, which appear far below. Let the writing do the talking, so to speak.

But first, I find it intersting that our opening peer reviewer, Allen Smalling, is upset about the vernacular usage in The Message. Surprising, given that it is known that the original Greek transcripts were indeed written for the common man, in common vernacular language. Many of the negative reviews of The Message have to do with it's lack of lofty language. As is inherent in our New Covenant with Jesus, you can imaging that Jesus and his disciples used common, everyday language to connect with the commoners they preached to. Of course they did not use lofty highbrow language!!!

The forth reviewer, a "Senior Chaplain", is disgruntled because The Message does not specifically mention 'homosexuality' or adultery in Corinthians 6:9; it would interest our chaplain to know that there is no Greek word for 'homosexuality' written in the original Greek text of the New Testament. Alas, many of the other negative reviews of The Message involve this lack of 'moral clarity'. Remember, many among us Christians have a moral agenda, and such of us need these divisive terms handed down from out-of-date earlier translations to throw around at the fellow sinning heathens. A good Christian, in the words of C.S. Lewis, is in some degree a theologin. Thus it is worth knowing that some of the prior translations (the King James, the American Standard, and so on) had a moral-political agenda to push, and that those 'translators', who could not find directly equivalent words in our language, or in some cases, could find no definition for those original Greek terms at all, designated, for example, the word 'homosexual' for the Greek term 'malakoi arsenokoitai', which really, nobody knows what it means!

Indeed this is the crux. Many of our reviewers here write for pride's sake (one of the seven sins of course!). They are upset over common language, or the lack of 'damning' verses we hear so often quoted in the media. These quotes we hear on the radio and on TV- telling us where we're headed. For many, the Bible is scarry, given our sins. Attempts to read it bring disappointment, as the language is not easily understood and does seem to represent an angry, vengeful God.

The Message will redeem you.

From The New American Standard Bible (verses 27-32):

27"And who of you by being worried can add a single hour to his life?
28"And why are you worried about clothing? Observe how the lilies of the field grow; they do not toil nor do they spin,
29yet I say to you that not even Solomon in all his glory clothed himself like one of these.
30"But if God so clothes the grass of the field, which is alive today and tomorrow is thrown into the furnace, will He not much more clothe you? You of little faith!
31"Do not worry then, saying, 'What will we eat?' or 'What will we drink?' or 'What will we wear for clothing?'
32"For the Gentiles eagerly seek all these things; for your heavenly Father knows that you need all these things.


And now, The Message:

"Has anyone by fussing in front of the mirror ever gotten taller by so much as an inch? All this time and money wasted on fashion--do you think it makes that much difference? Instead of looking at the fashions, walk out into the fields and look at the wildflowers. They never primp or shop, but have you ever seen color and design quite like it? The ten best--dressed men and women in the country look shabby alongside them.

"If God gives such attention to the appearance of wildflowers--most of which are never even seen--don't you think he'll attend to you, take pride in you, do his best for you? What I'm trying to do here is to get you to relax, to not be so preoccupied with getting, so you can respond to God's giving. People who don't know God and the way he works fuss over these things, but you know both God and how he works.

These verses from the Message could bring me to tears in a way the first passage never could.


Reading the Bible again for the first time   March 1, 2003
M. Fairchild (Tennessee)
28 out of 33 found this review helpful

I'm a parish minister, responsible every Sunday for the church's proclamation. This translation does more than I have ever managed to do to bring people into direct, immediate engagement with God through Scripture. You will be amazed, appalled, amused, and overjoyed at what you read here, and you will ask: is he making this up? He's not. I was trained in Greek and Hebrew, and every time I read a passage and think to myself, "OK, Peterson, you're around the bend now!" and go stomping off to dig out my reference books and translate it myself, I have had to admit he did a wonderful job of capturing both the flavor and meaning of the original. Admittedly, I haven't read it cover to cover (not the way to read the Bible anway) but I've read enough of both Testaments to know this is the best contemporary langauge translation out there.

This is not a "word for word" but a "paraphrased" translation - that is, it attempts to translate whole ideas rather than smaller units of meaning, and this puts it in the tradition of such recent translations as the New Jerusalem Bible or the Revised English Bible, rather than translations such as the New Revised Standard Version or the New International Version. One real drawback of "The Message" is that it is a single scholar's translation and thus open to patterns of unconscious or conscious theological bias which are less likely in translations done in collaboration with others. I suppose his biases match mine, because I haven't noticed them yet!

This is NOT the Bible to buy to the young person taking a college course in Bibilical studies - stick for one of the more traditional types of translation for them. But if you want to read the Bible for your own enjoyment, enlightment, guidance, and spiritual growth, put your other Bibles away and read this one daily for a month. You may never go back to your old translations again.