Юджин Питерсон: Американдық аудармашы және дін қызметкерінің өмірі мен қызметі

American translator (1932–2018)

Eugene Hoiland Peterson (November 6, 1932 – October 22, 2018) was an American Presbyterian minister, scholar, theologian, author, and poet. He wrote over 30 books, including the Gold Medallion Book Award–winner The Message: The Bible in Contemporary Language (Navpress Publishing Group, 2002), an idiomatic paraphrasing commentary and translation of the Bible into modern American English using a dynamic equivalence translation approach.

Peterson was born on November 6, 1932, in East Stanwood, Washington, and grew up in Kalispell, Montana. He earned his Bachelor of Arts degree in philosophy from Seattle Pacific University, his Bachelor of Sacred Theology degree from New York Theological Seminary, and his Master of Arts degree in Semitic languages from Johns Hopkins University. He also held several honorary doctoral degrees. In 1958, Peterson married Jan Stubbs. They had three children. He was the James M. Houston Professor of Spiritual Theology at Regent College in Vancouver, British Columbia, from 1992 to 1998.

Peterson is probably best known for The Message: The Bible in Contemporary Language. Peterson worked on The Message throughout the 1990s, translating the original Hebrew, Greek, and Aramaic texts and paraphrasing them into contemporary American English slang. The translation was published in 2002 and had sold more than 15 million copies by 2018. The interview caused an immediate uproar in conservative Christian circles. LifeWay Christian Books announced plans to stop selling Peterson's works. The following day, however, Peterson published a statement affirming "a biblical view of marriage: one man to one woman" and retracting his affirmative answer to the question about officiating at a same sex wedding. "I regret the confusion and bombast that this interview has fostered. It has never been my intention to participate in the kind of lightless heat that such abstract, hypothetical comments and conversations generate." Peterson died the following year. In his 2021 authorized biography, A Burning in My Bones, Winn Collier reported that Peterson's retraction statement had actually been written by Peterson's editor and publisher, and released after Peterson reviewed it. Peterson's son, Eric, doubted that the statement accurately reflected his father's convictions.

Peterson had dementia in his later years. Peterson died at his home in Lakeside, Montana, on October 22, 2018, at the age of 85, a week after entering hospice care for complications related to congestive heart failure.