Unlike in some academic disciplines (e.g., much philosophy), writers in biblical studies have traditionally demonstrated their right to add their voices to the tradition by way of exhaustive citation of all who have gone before. The result is an ever-taller tower of footnotes, building one upon the other, yet to what end? The demonstration that all voices have been considered and now an opinion can be offered that commands attention? Meanwhile the text has long since been scattered abroad and is preached on, read meditatively, studied in small groups, and so forth, by many who will never encounter a single such footnote. It may be an uncomfortable question for the scholar to ponder how much interpretive work contributes more to the building of the tower than to the scattering abroad of the wisdom an insight that might allow readers across the whole earth to be blessed.
-Richard Briggs in A Theological Introduction to the Pentateuch, 42.