Ceresko Hermeneutical Approach

“...It is important to make sure that our reading of the Scriptures is based on the latest advances and methods. The principal direction biblical scholars have taken in the last one hundred [and] fifty years has been the development of what is known as the historical critical approach” (Ceresko, 17). In Anthony Ceresko’s “Introduction to the Old Testament: A Liberation Perspective”, Ceresko examines and explores Scripture through the hermeneutic of suspicion and the hermeneutical privilege of the poor. The hermeneutical privilege of the poor is the concept which amplifies understanding the Bible through the eyes of the lower class or by those who lack power. It is through these lenses that liberation theology is explored by the means of God
The lenses of suspicion are used as Ceresko’s weapon to draw valid comparisons between the Bible and politics. This hermeneutic explores methods of conflict resolution. At the same time, it questions property rights and the biased social status of women- especially considering that Priest [men] had a heavily controlling hand in the writing of the Bible. Moreover, women in the Bible were mostly silent unless functioning in the role of nothing more than a wife or a child-bearer. Ceresko’s hermeneutic of suspicion challenges that notion when Ceresko asserts “...Sarah, Hagar, Rebekah, Rachel, Tamar, and others...demonstrate initiative, strength of will, intelligence and wisdom, self-possession, and an unusual degree of independence in...their dealings with the men” (Ceresko, 342). Ceresko’s incorporation of the Hermeneutic of suspicion assist with the demarginalization of biased biblical material and social status. In other words, Ceresko embodies the Historical Critical Approach through Hermeneutical lenses- which provides a liberal perspective; thus, erasing social status for the purpose of unbiased interpretations of the