Small errors matter

On the weekend I was reading an e-book on early Christianity and the Second Temple. The author is a professor at Princeton and I assumed the book, though popular, had sound scholarship.

Until I noticed a curious reference to someone accusing Jesus of being a mamzer. The author then explained what that meant and explained it wrong. And not just oversimplification error but flat out error (the author made mamzer the same as illegitimate in Common Law -- a very obvious error -- see for http://bit.ly/oJG4Tj mamzer).

The error did not affect the main thrust of the author's argument but it made me question everything else the author said.
Now, granted, most readers would overlook an error regarding Second Temple purity codes (although most readers would not be reading a popular book about Second Temple times and the concept of Mamzer remains relevant in Orthodox Judaism today), but the key point is the author made an error and as a result I lost much of my trust in the text.

This led me to think of lawyers and judges. Perhaps an innocent error on the part of a lawyer that a judge catches. The error is irrelevant to the main argument but once made ... all the judge can do is question the lawyer's ability. Small errors matter.