Originally Posted by
rett
I studied philology for years, and I can tell you lots of manuscript research turns out to be wrong. However in a narrow field, with very few active researchers, it can literally take more than a century to discover the mistakes (or for new texts to come to light).
A related example is academics trying to interpret Pali Canon texts on meditation without knowing anything about practical meditation traditions. They are at a major disadvantage... just as a carpenter would have a better chance to understand ancient texts on carpentry.