This term is defined and used repeatedly by Gerald West in The Academy of the Poor: Towards a Dialogical Reading of the Bible, (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1999), p. 11.

The terms "trained reader" and "untrained reader" are borrowed from Gerald West's Biblical Hermeneutics of Liberation: Modes of Reading the Bible in the South African Context, (Piertermaritzburg: Cluster Publications, 2nd rev. edn, 1995).