Thursday, September 17, 2009

The "Big Book" Fallacy

T. David Gordon:
The “Big Book” fallacy is the notion that anything that is said in a big book, especially a multivolume series of big books, must be, at a minimum, factually correct, and at a maximum, correct in its judgment. This is fallacious, because error is error, regardless of its domicile. Peer-reviewed error may be less common than non-peer-reviewed error, but it still exists. No editor checks the factual accuracy of every sentence he edits, and therefore, even in big books, multi-volume big books, and/or multi-volume big books with good reputations, error still exists, and we should not repeat the error without either citing the source or checking the source.
See the two examples he cites--the first from Kittel's TDNT, the second from Keil's commentary on Joel 2:28.

HT: Upper Register