I would not speak of Judaism as a Talmudic or Rabbinic religion. It's a Biblical religion.

I have referred to [Rabbi Shlomo ben Isaac] on occasion, but I doubt that you will find his name in any of my indices. In my view, he is important in the history of interpretation; and that is a subject I have not approached directly.

The history of interpretation [of the Bible] is fascinating; but that is something else.

I sense that what you two [Elie Wiesel and Frank Moore Cross] share is that you each have a public relationship to the Biblical text and a somewhat private relationship to the Biblical text.

Furthermore, I think there was, in fact, a celebration of Passover in the era of the Judges in which the epic was recited in the context of the central sanctuary. That tradition was displaced by the Feast of Enthronement beginning in the Solomonic era.

There are surely many legitimate approaches to Biblical literature, and I think that it depends very much on one's experience and temperament which way one deals primarily with Biblical material.

I find myself a little uncomfortable in the New Testament environment. And this is also true of what I would call late Judaism, the Judaism of the Second Temple and later.