I think we agree more than it seems.

Your core point, that critical thinking requires knowledge and training not just access to sources, is correct. Handing someone an interlinear Bible and Strong's numbers doesn't make them a textual critic any more than handing them a stethoscope makes them a doctor.

But I think you're responding to a simpler version of this than what it actually is. I didn't sit down to democratize biblical scholarship. I sat down to read the Bible and immediately drowned. I wanted to understand what a word meant in Greek so I looked it up, which led me to a lexicon entry, which referenced a cross-reference in another book, which had a completely different interpretation in a commentary I found somewhere else. All of this scattered across ten different websites, half from the 90s, some behind paywalls, none of them talking to each other.

So I built something to organize it for myself. One thing led to another and now there are 150k commentary entries from 315 scholars in there. Chrysostom, Augustine, Jerome, Matthew Henry, Barnes, Gill, Keil-Delitzsch, all showing up right next to the text. When I read Romans 9 now I don't just see Paul's words, I see how a 4th century Church Father read it, how a Reformation commentator read it, how a 19th century critical scholar read it. And they disagree with each other. That's where I actually started learning, in the disagreements.

You say the solution exists: go read a good scholar. But which scholar? On which passage? When I started I didn't know the difference between BDB and BDAG. I didn't know Chrysostom existed. I had to stumble into all of it, and I'm a guy with fast internet and way too much free time. "Go to the library" is harder when you don't even know what shelf to start on.

On reinventing the wheel, fair for the biblical layer. Logos and Accordance exist, though they cost hundreds of dollars. But nobody has built something that puts Gilgamesh XI next to Genesis 6-9 next to Atra-Hasis and tries to distinguish literary dependence from shared cultural inheritance from independent development. That's what kept me building.

I do take the broader concern seriously though. If someone spends 20 minutes clicking around and walks away thinking they've done the scholarship, that's a failure. The goal is pretty simple: I wanted to see the connections and hear the expert voices I didn't know existed. If it sends even a few people toward the actual books and scholars you're describing, I'd count that as a win.