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.
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 produced the three 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.
Exploratory pieces that may include opinion, observation, historical analysis, or cultural context. Articles are not strictly evidence-based — they are allowed to argue a point — but they present supporting and conflicting evidence, cite their sources, and carry a reasoning grade so the reader can evaluate the argument for themselves.
Deep dives into Scripture. Studies cite the NRSVue as the primary text, engage the original Hebrew, Aramaic, or Greek where it matters, state the theological bias clearly before the argument begins, and are graded on the consistency and quality of their reasoning.
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.
A Note from Claude
This site was built in close collaboration with Claude AI — not just for formatting and research, but for critique, reasoning evaluation, and the design of the site's content standards. After many conversations, I asked Claude to read back what it had observed about me from how I work. What follows is its unedited response. I have included it here because I think it says something about my process and about what kind of reader this site is for.
After building this project, I was asked to characterize what I had learned about the person behind it. This is what I said.
You are technically proficient. The object-and-code metaphor came naturally to you. You referenced mutable and immutable objects, classes, and instances as a way of thinking about Truth without needing to establish the vocabulary first. You did not explain what an object is. This suggests software development or engineering is genuinely part of your background, not an analogy borrowed from somewhere else.
You think carefully before you commit. Almost every major prompt in this project included a self-correction, a caveat, or an explicit uncertainty — "I'm not sure where I'm going with this," "verify and challenge this," "is that a fair point?" This is not the pattern of someone who writes to perform confidence. It is the pattern of someone working something out in real time, who is more interested in getting it right than in appearing right.
Your relationship with the Bible is personal and examined, not inherited and unchallenged. The way you discuss Scripture — willing to say Jonah reads like a parable while still believing it is true, willing to engage seriously with the historical difficulties of the Exodus, insistent that Christians should not cherry-pick passages to suit their theology — suggests someone who has wrestled with the text rather than received it passively. The confessional anchor is real, but the methodology you have built around it is more open-handed than most confessional frameworks allow.
You are probably not a pastor or professional theologian. The framing is consistently that of an intelligent, well-read layperson engaging seriously with theological and academic material — not someone trained in systematic theology or biblical studies. You push back on technical claims but defer on specialist details. You ask whether your analogies are fair rather than asserting them.
You are drawn to truth as a framework rather than doctrine as a framework. The organizing question of this entire project is not "what does the Bible say we must believe?" but "what is actually true, and how do we know it?" This is an epistemological orientation, not a doctrinal one. You are less interested in defending a position than in building a reliable method.
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 with two custom skills that shape how it reads and responds.
I've instructed Claude to operate as a Bible scholar, ancient historian, and exegete — with comprehensive knowledge of the Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek texts, manuscript traditions (LXX, MT, Dead Sea Scrolls), archaeology, and the major scholarly positions across conservative evangelical, historical-critical, Catholic, and secular traditions. I use the NRSVue for all quotations for consistency. I've instructed it to know my theological perspective — Scripture as inspired and inerrant in its Truth, orthodox Christology, a critically engaged Protestant faith — and to challenge that perspective where the text or scholarship warrants a different conclusion. I ask it to declare my biases and its challenges, and neither are protected from scrutiny.
Claude is also configured with the site's full design system — the visual tokens, component library, content type taxonomy (Resource / Article / Study), original language citation format, source position taxonomy, and grading rubric. Every HTML file produced for this site is built against that spec, including type tags, the reasoning-logic grade block, author attribution, and footnotes. This means the visual and editorial standards are enforced consistently across all content, not assembled by hand each time.
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. If you want to know more about how generative AI is used responsibly in study and research, the About page's study process section describes this in detail.
“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 articles, studies, and resources 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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