Check Your Sources

Recently I was going over my notes for an upcoming podcast episode. I was reviewing some material from a well-known scholar and as I read through his work, it occurred to me that I had seen some data from Scripture that I couldn't find in the work I was reading. He hadn't included it.

I double-checked. There were a number of occurrences of a word listed in his word study, which he claimed was exhaustive. When I checked his work, I found that there were a significant number of occurrences of this particular word that had not been incorporated into that study.

It soon became clear that there was a trend in the statistics. This particular scholar had a point to make, and he had simply used only the data that supported his premise, ignoring the information that challenged his conclusions. Checking his work took hours, and I'm sure he figured people just weren't going to take the trouble.

It would be nice to be able to say that this is uncommon, but unfortunately it isn't. All I can say is, don't just accept the information presented to you by your teachers. Test it honestly. If their work is consistent and uses all the available data, you can be confident you're not being misled. But when you get told, "This is all the data, and it says "X" every time," and then you find out there was other stuff that said "Y", it really tells you all you need to know about the integrity of that person as a source.

I'm not an academic or a member of clergy. I'm just a regular guy. I drive a forklift for a living and I do this stuff in my spare time. So if I'm picking up this kind of inconsistency in academic work, why aren't others? Where was the support of this scholar's peers, challenging him to be more transparent in his work?

I don't claim to be more intelligent, noble or informed than the guy in question. I'm just looking for sources I can trust. And I'm sure my readers are, too.

Test everything against Scripture.

​- T.J. Steadman