A Hermeneutic of Suspicion: What It Is and, Why You Should Be Suspicious if You’re Not Already…

My “Westminster Dictionary of Theological Terms” defines hermeneutics saying: “The rules one uses for searching out the meaning of writings, particularly biblical texts.”

“Hermeneutic (GR. hermēneutikē “interpretation”): The rules one uses for searching out the meaning of writings, particularly biblical texts” [1].

Put another way, it’s a framework in which offers us an interpretation of the scriptures.  So much goes into interpretation. Contextualization, literal language translation, culture, economics, grammar, and tone. On top of an already insanely complicated means of understanding thousands of years old manuscripts, we have manuscripts that are contradicting.

For instance, if you read through the four canonical gospels you’ll see, even in our NIV Bibles incongruencies; that is, things that don’t match up with similar accounts of the same story.

Enter, “Hermeneutic of Suspicion.”