I think this is a very important point. As unenlightened beings, we inevitably conceptualize the Dhamma in terms conditioned by our cultural, social, linguistic, and religious environment. The dominant religion at least in Western countries seems to be democratic secularism (my own view that is in no way binding on anyone), the dominant social stratum is service-sector middle class, the major languages are Romance or Germanic and the dominant culture is post-Christian European. Compare it to the Ancient Indic society speaking in terms of castes, agriculture, and Brahmanism in mostly Indo-Arian languages. The context will always intefere with the phenomenal contents of the teachings, papanca always sets in whether one wants it or not.
The overwhelming concern of the Indic culture with lists, numbers, mattikas, etc., seen even in the cosmological treatises of such religious traditions as Jainism, could not but lead to the creation of a Googlesque system like the traditional Abhidhamma. The more pragmatically minded Chinese culture, while preserving the Abhidhamma treatises as an object of worshi, couldn’t make much practical sense out of them. I think we Westerners will also not be able to make much use of them unless they are ‘translated’, ‘transformed’ into the context that is more understandable to us, and this is pretty much what the Pali scholars and Buddhist community like SC have been attempting to do for the last 150 years. Even then, this new Abhidhamma, just as any puthujjana interpretation of the Dhamma, will not be quite correct. Paradoxically, the more work will be done the clearer and more precise our understanding of the Dhamma will be, while at the same time the tiny mistakes or misconceptions we introduced at an earlier stage will be further exacerbated and will have a more drastic effect on the practice. The history teaches us this is the destiny of any religious tradition, just look at Christianity, Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism in the Far East, etc.
One can compare abhidhammic projects with attempts to describe a beautiful flower or chocolate flavour to a person who whas never seen this flower or tasted the flavour. As time passes, the descriptions will become rigid, their venerable history will become much more important than their - albeit inevitably deficient - adequacy. Still, an acute mind will always be able to appreciate the beauty of what they describe and will make an effort to see the Truth as it is, without any intermediaries.