# Lay Explanation

## Plain-language summary

People often imagine that institutions gather evidence first and then form conclusions.

In reality, institutions also teach people what counts as evidence in the first place.

They teach:
- what questions are serious
- what sources are respectable
- what methods are legitimate
- what conclusions are safe
- what anomalies can be ignored

That means prejudice does not always look like open hostility. Sometimes it looks like a system that quietly treats certain people, questions, or sources as less credible before evaluation is complete.

## Simple definition

**Institutional prejudice** is a durable pattern in which a group or institution treats some questions, persons, methods, or sources as less credible before serious evaluation is complete.

## Everyday examples

### Medicine
A patient says something is wrong, but the report is discounted because it does not fit the standard model.

### Education
A student asks an important question, but the teacher treats it as a distraction because it does not fit the accepted lesson frame.

### Workplaces
A good idea is ignored because it came from the wrong person or department.

### Churches
A sincere question is treated as dangerous because it sounds unfamiliar or threatens inherited assumptions.

## Why this matters for research

The same thing can happen in scholarship.

A field can decide in advance:
- what sources are too fringe to matter
- what comparisons are embarrassing
- what questions are disreputable
- what conclusions serious people are not supposed to reach

This is why evidence alone does not settle every dispute. Evidence is interpreted through a framework.

## Why this matters for Enoch research

Enoch debates are often not only about texts.

They are also about:
- what kinds of texts are allowed to matter
- whether Second Temple material is permitted to illuminate Scripture
- whether non-canonical works may still be conceptually important
- whether anomalies in the New Testament are allowed to trouble inherited models

## Balanced caution

This does **not** mean:
- institutions are always wrong
- outsiders are always right
- consensus is worthless

Institutions preserve real knowledge.

But the same systems that preserve knowledge can also preserve blind spots.

## Key takeaway

The issue is not whether people have assumptions.

Everyone does.

The real issue is whether those assumptions are acknowledged and whether institutions allow awkward evidence to be heard fairly.
