Reading like Canaanites...

Jeepney hermeneutics is an example of “reading like a Canaanite” (see Laura Donaldson and Jace Weaver), “re-invading the land” and "re-claiming stolen spaces" (Leticia Guardiola-Saenz), and beating swords into plowshares. This proposal addresses contextual issues, concrete life settings among Filipinos. “The Canaanites are, of course, the much vilified people who occupied the ‘promised land’ before the arrival of the wandering Israelites. Yet they also stand in for all peoples whose lands have been conquered and expropriated” (Donaldson). Filipinos, as one of the most colonized peoples in the world (Eleazar Fernandez), are modern-day Canaanites. Reading the Bible inside a jeepney simply means creating space, offering a home for Filipino “Canaanites” to think, to speak, to sing, to commune in Canaanite languages.