Eugene H. Peterson was an American-born clergyman, scholar, author, and poet. He wrote over thirty books, including the Gold Medallion Book Award winner The Message: The Bible in Contemporary Language, which has sold over 16 million copies and is known for its idiomatic paraphrasing commentary and translation of the Bible into modern American English using a dynamic equivalence translation approach.

Peterson served as the James M. Houston Professor of Spiritual Theology at Regent College in Vancouver, British Columbia, and was the founding pastor of Christ Our King Presbyterian Church in Bel Air, Maryland. After retiring from full-time teaching, he lived in the Big Sky Country of rural Montana. He passed away in October 2018.