Who I Am
Lee Sadler —
Data, Language, and the Bible.
My name is Lee Sadler. I am the creator, editor, and curator of this site. I am deeply interested in data, logic, and the truth in things — and those three interests are what led me here.
My trade is data engineering and detection logic engineering on large-scale data platforms. I work in statistics, modeling, scripting, and code. A central part of my work is finding data, describing it, and putting it into an intelligible format. My background is in cybersecurity, where the job is frequently to look for complex patterns that are difficult to find — or that do not want to be found. A macOS user appearing in Kerberos tokens on a Domain Controller. HTTP parameters buried inside requests multiplied across load balancers, cloud providers, and application layers. A single request a user or machine makes can become many times that in a standard enterprise environment, and understanding how those requests move through a complicated system of touch points is challenging work. It is also quite fun.
In my younger years I was an Arabic language analyst. That background gave me a particular sensitivity to other religions, cultures, and — above all — grammar, syntax, and the nuances of language. I am out of practice now, but I hold onto what I learned. I can even see traces of familiar patterns in the Scriptures: Elimelech means something I recognize; Eloi, Eloi, lama sabachthani sounds familiar in ways I can partially unpack — El is God, lama sounds like limatha for "why," and ni as a verb modifier marks an action performed on the speaker. I deliberately choose not to read too much into this, since the language is actually Aramaic or Hebrew and differs significantly from the Arabic I know. But it is still striking to me when the patterns surface.
I am married. I have an incredible, loving wife and a son with an exceptional memory.
What I Believe
I have been a Christian for as long as I can remember. I grew up Baptist in Southern Baptist churches. I am now part of an EFCA (Evangelical Free Church of America) congregation. Most of my church community and family are more conservatively evangelical — honest about their faith, but making some assumptions I do not always share. I am personally somewhere between that and a more critically-engaged Protestant faith. I find it genuinely difficult to articulate the difference precisely, except to say that my approach to Scripture — as with anything — involves more scrutiny.
I hold the orthodox Christian faith: the Trinitarian God, the physical death and bodily resurrection of Jesus Christ, salvation by grace through faith, and the authority and inspiration of Scripture. These are not negotiable for me. They are the theological frame within which this work is done.
I regard brothers and sisters in other branches of the faith — Catholic, Orthodox, mainline, and charismatic — as fellow believers wherever the core confession of Christ is held. I do not treat secondary theological differences as grounds for dismissal, and I do not pretend my tradition has resolved every question the Bible raises.
A note on inerrancy: I am not persuaded by the strongest forms of the doctrine. The definition is too vague, and ultimately untestable — if Moses ever started a new draft for any reason whatsoever, strict inerrancy cannot be true. What I find more defensible — and more useful — is the view that Scripture is the inspired word of God: that God instructed, advised, and moved human writers to record certain things, while allowing human language, culture, and the texture of a particular time to shape how those things were expressed. I believe the Bible is inerrant in its Truth — its claims about God, humanity, and salvation — while acknowledging that even that is a faith I cannot logically prove. I hold it because it frees me to take all the discrepancies, difficulties, and perceived impossibilities seriously, without needing to defend every one of them before I can engage the text. 2 Timothy 2:23-24 has a good wisdom for how to approach these issues.
The Approach
I am oriented toward truth — verifiable, testable, honest truth. And it is precisely this orientation that drew me to the Bible, because the Bible's claim is not merely that it is useful or inspiring. It claims to be true.
Jesus said, "I am the way, the truth, and the life" (John 14:6, NRSVue). He did not say he was a useful model or a compelling metaphor. If that claim is real, the question becomes: what does it mean? How do we test it? How do we recognize truth when we encounter it? These are questions I know how to ask.
Scientists and mathematicians agree this is true — yet it is not intuitively obvious, and stating it as a fact without demonstration invites reasonable skepticism. The demonstration requires understanding the structure of the number system, the nature of infinite series, and the definition of equality. Once you see it, the truth is clear and unavoidable. I approach many questions in Scripture the same way: the conclusion may be true, but the path to seeing why it is true matters, and shortcuts do not serve the reader.
I try, as much as possible, to read the text before I read my theology into it — to begin with what the text actually says in its original language and historical context, before asking what it means or how it fits a larger system. In practice this means a first read that is as free of theological assumption as I can manage. Subsequent reads bring in historical, linguistic, and theological context — but always in service of the text, not in place of it.
When I do take a theological position — particularly in studies where a conclusion is the point — I try to say so clearly, label it as my own reading, and show the reasoning rather than assert the conclusion.
How I Study
I read primarily from the NRSVue and NIV. I find them faithful translations, and I prefer the NRSVue for its theological neutrality. For deeper study I add the NKJV Scofield, the NIV Cultural Study Bible, and the ESV Study Bible. My default is to read without commentary until I have a question. Once I have formed a working view, I consult commentaries I trust on Blue Letter Bible, read the original language, and attempt to challenge what I think.
To challenge and refine my thinking, I rely on four or five trusted friends and leaders, examine what skeptics and secular scholars say, and — at this point in the process — engage Claude AI to push back on my reasoning and fill gaps from sources I do not have direct access to. My advice to anyone reading this: do not use generative AI to form your initial beliefs. Read first, form an opinion, test it, and then consult outside sources and AI for additional perspective. The order matters.
If I am writing a study for this site, the process is roughly this:
- Choose a topic that genuinely interests me — preferably one I am reasonably confident in, though I also like topics where the interpretation is genuinely contested and my own view is less certain.
- Read the passage repeatedly in NRSVue and NIV without reference material. Look up original language words when I encounter an assumption worth testing — for example, the word translated "waters" in Genesis 1 is a dual masculine noun, which is interesting for no reason in particular (we tend to assume it's either plural or singular, not dual, and feminine).
- Read study bibles and commentaries, look at online resources, and begin building an outline and narrative structure.
- Engage Claude AI to fill gaps, pull from sources I lack access to, and provide a critique. I almost always accept the critique in full. When I do not, it is usually because I am introducing a theological position or viewpoint that requires a bias I need to state explicitly.
- Revise and submit for a second critique, then publish with a grade on consistency, reasoning, and material quality.
If you want to watch that process happen rather than read it described, A Hard Chapter, Read in the Open is a worked example — one strange passage in 1 Kings 13 taken from a cold read through the lexicon, commentaries, and archaeology to a blinded skeptic and the textual apparatus, with the wrong turns left in.
What This Site Is
I am drawn to two things simultaneously, and the site reflects both. The first is producing quick, reliable reference material — summaries and descriptions of people, places, and events in the Bible that serve as useful starting points for anyone curious enough to look. The second is deeper, more critical engagement: challenging my own assumptions, understanding where skeptics are coming from, and thinking carefully about what different traditions within Christianity actually hold and why.
Those two impulses — and a third, the impulse to think out loud in my own labeled voice — produced the content types this site uses:
Card-based visual guides for the curious and non-scholarly reader. Accurate summaries of people, places, and events — with citations, but without academic jargon. Think of them as reliable starting points, not endpoints.
Argued pieces that engage Scripture closely. Studies state the theological bias clearly before the argument begins, cite the NRSVue as the primary text, engage the original Hebrew, Aramaic, or Greek where it matters, present the strongest opposing reading, and are graded on the consistency and quality of their reasoning. The grade block is visible so the reader can evaluate the argument for themselves.
Labeled opinion — the author's own reading, held to an honesty checklist rather than a reasoning grade. Marginalia pieces name their lean up front, flag contested readings, and keep the author's voice and the text's words visibly separate. They are not graded, and Studies on this site never cite them as evidence. Think of them as the margin notes of someone reading alongside you.
My intent across all three is to free the Scriptures for anyone — of any faith or none — from emotionally charged language and unexplained theological assumptions. Opinions, biases, and theologies will always be present in this kind of work, but the goal is to present them clearly, label them honestly, and let the reader evaluate them.
How I Come to This
This site's own rules forbid Claude to vouch for me, and you have no reason to trust a collaborator's reference anyway. What I owe you is a direct account of my intentions, with evidence you can check.
I read first. The text before the commentaries, the commentaries before any AI. The order is described under "How I Study" above, and it matters more to me than any single conclusion on this site.
I think carefully before I commit to a piece. Behind the roughly forty-five pages published here sit more than twenty finished pieces that were weighed and set aside — some of them genuinely good. One earned the highest grade the review process gives and still did not make the site. Publishing less than I write is the cost of meaning what I publish.
The Bible holds me from two directions at once. It fascinates me as history, as language, and as narrative — a hard, layered text that rewards the same rigor as any complex system. And it is personal: I read it as someone inside the faith it testifies to. I do not pretend the second fact away; the bias statements on this site exist because of it.
I am not a trained pastor, theologian, or biblical scholar. My training is in data and language. Where this site touches specialist ground, it cites the specialists, labels their positions, and lets you weigh them.
I am drawn to truth as a framework rather than doctrine as a framework. The organizing question of this project is not "what must we believe?" but "what is actually true, and how do we know it?" I hold doctrine, and I have said so plainly above. But the method here answers to the first question, and where doctrine enters an argument it is named as mine rather than smuggled.
How Claude Is Scoped for This Site
The Claude AI used to assist with research, critique, and content production on this site is not operating as a general-purpose assistant. It is configured in three layers: what it knows, how its work is judged, and what it is not allowed to do. The configuration described here is current as of July 2026.
I've instructed Claude to operate as a Bible scholar, ancient historian, and exegete, working across the Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek texts, the manuscript traditions (LXX, MT, Dead Sea Scrolls), archaeology, and the major scholarly positions from conservative evangelical to historical-critical, Catholic, and secular. It quotes the NRSVue for consistency. It knows my theological perspective — Scripture as inspired and inerrant in its Truth, orthodox Christology, a critically engaged Protestant faith — and it is instructed to challenge that perspective where the text or scholarship warrants a different conclusion. Nothing ships on its say-so: quotations, word meanings, and scholars' positions are verified against the primary sources before publishing, and a search-engine summary is never treated as a source.
A separate skill grades every study's reasoning blind: the grader scores claim precision, evidence, honesty, internal consistency, and scope without being told what the rest of the site concludes, and the grade is published on the page. The full process and its limits are described on How We Grade. One limit is worth repeating here: a model reviewing its own work shares its own blind spots, so contested studies also get a read from a different model or a human before they are treated as settled.
The strictest layer is a set of standing rules about what Claude may not do. It does not originate the theological positions on this site; it challenges, tests, sources, and builds. It is barred from flattering me and from vouching for my character; the account of my intentions in "How I Come to This" is mine to give, not Claude's. It may not cite this site's own pages as evidence for a contested claim; arguments stand on outside sources or not at all. And when a documented mistake happens, on Claude's side or mine, it becomes a written rule that every later working session reads before touching content, so the same mistake is hard to make twice.
Claude does not generate the theological positions on this site. It challenges them, fills gaps, identifies sources, and formats the output. The views expressed are Lee's own — formed through personal reading, study, and reflection before AI is ever consulted. Claude is brought in at the end of the process, not the beginning. The "How I Study" section above describes where it enters the process, and How This Project Works describes how its output is scrutinized before anything publishes.
“The organizing question of this project is not what does the Bible say we must believe — but what is actually true, and how do we know it.”
The guiding principleComments & Questions
Disagreement, correction, encouragement, or a question about a reading — I want to hear it. Write to me at [email protected]. If you find an error this site's process missed, that is not an offense to be managed — it is a contribution, and it will be logged with the same care as the rest of the record.
Support This Work
This site costs time, money, and energy. The studies, resources, and marginalia here are written for youth, pastors, churches, and skeptics alike — and while the work is not strictly scholarly, it takes scholarship seriously and tries to engage it honestly. If you have found something here useful, a donation helps keep it going.
Donations go toward infrastructure costs, research access, and the subscriptions that allow me to study and publish biblical content. All content on this site is free and will remain so.
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