To Footnote or Not to Footnote

I’ve written a personal commentary on Revelation with unique perspectives that I’m supporting with massive amounts of Scripture and Jewish tradition. I see my ideal reader as a mature Christian who would love to dive deeply into the end times and the entirety of the Word of God.

My developmental editor has suggested that I convert the many parenthetical citations to footnotes, but I worry that footnotes would be an immediate turnoff for almost all who are not biblical scholars. And I’m not even a biblical scholar, and so that’s the last thing I want. In fact, I suspect that my book will fail to appeal to scholars who spend far more time reading and meditating over books about the Bible than in the Bible itself. And that’s not my audience.

So my question is, what would your impression of a heavily footnoted book be? Would you think, this book is for scholars? Or would you just think that this book has a lot of evidence supporting their claims?

Thank you!