…archeologists of late antiquity should not just naively stuff mishnayot in their rucksacks to guide their digs any more than biblical archeologists should follow their 19th-century predecessors in setting out to excavate with a Bible in one hand and a spade in the other.
Shai Secunda, “Purity and Obscurity”, Jewish Review of Books (Summer 2017) [https://jewishreviewofbooks.com/articles/2661/purity_and_obscurity]