In short, don’t be a parrot!
In an oft-referenced essay, “Luke-Acts, A Storm Center in Contemporary Scholarship,” W. C. van Unnik recalls advice he gave to a young scholar-to-be who inquired what issues he might study which would be in vogue:
So I said to my young friend that the proper thing for him to do was to acquire the tools of New Testament scholarship, the languages, and knowledge of the Umwelt as well as to study some of the major problems of the moment. In this way he would acquire the capacities to labor in the field as a scholar and not as a parrot.
Scholar or Parrot? Acquire the tools and labor!