I have been reading the bible for most of my life. I grew up on the King James Version, the NIV, and the NASB. I could read it and understand what I was reading, but somehow it was all rather technical. I would read and semi-consciously annotate, categorize, and analyze the text in my head—this speaks to this doctrine, that to this, I wonder if this could mean… And so when I came to a point at which I was starting to realize that I couldn't simply read the Bible I started thinking about how I could rediscover it—to somehow start over again, to read it as if I'd never seen it. It was right about that time that the New Testament portion of Eugene Peterson's The Message came on the scene. I picked up a friend's copy and started to read it. To some degree it worked for me. It was… fresh. Whether it was fresh as in, "ahhhh, the fresh country air," and "oh, my, what fresh tomatoes these are," or a little more like, "don't get fresh with me, young man," I really couldn't make up my mind. I eventually decided that The Message needed a subtitle:The Message: According to the Beat Poets. Ok, so maybe I'm being unfair—I respect what Peterson was attempting to do. But I simply couldn't get away from the sense that it was just a wee bit (ever heard of "English understatement?") too idiosyncratic for my tastes. No, the gospel writers were not Homer, but were they really hip? Ok, so maybe "hip" is the wrong word…"chatty"?