The definition is stable across sources: taking a text out of context to prove a doctrine, Webster via the seminaries. The specimens are famous: the open-and-point method that lands on move to Philadelphia from Revelation 2:7; the spies' grasshopper self-esteem; Judas went and hanged himself spliced with go thou and do likewise. The defense industry, systematic theologies, confessions, catechisms, runs on ordered citation chains that are proof-texting with better footnotes, and the critics inside the traditions say so.
The internet perfected the form: the quote card, the screenshot headline, the clipped video, context amputated at both ends, deployed as evidence. The mechanics are identical to the pulpit version: authority borrowed from the source, meaning supplied by the deployer, verification priced higher than propagation. The Madrasa and the timeline run the same protocol. The only upgrade the internet added: the amputated text now travels with a share button, so the pretext self-replicates.
The claim: proof-texting is not an error within citation culture but its engine, since all citation is extraction, and the only difference between scholarship and propaganda is the size of the context restored on demand; the honest system is not the one without proof-texts but the one where the amputated context is one click away. Verdict: this is the archive's own charter, three tiers, sources listed, competing readings adjacent. The verse can prove anything. The shelf around it is what keeps the proving honest. Build shelves, not sermons.
If a verse can prove anything, what can a library prove?