In fact, we're both [with Elie Wiesel] engaged with the text. We search for different things, we find different things. There is a side of what he does that I'd like to do, a bit more privately. I'm not sure he is as interested in history, as I am.

The Garden of Eden presents the same story: If you want to make yourself gods, you'll find you're akin to the animals.

With the Hebrew Bible, you're living in an austere world.

That is to say, the inspiration, the interpretive richness of the text is what Elie [Wiesel] does publicly, and his interest in history is his private reserve; he knows that he is not an expert in dissecting the text the way Frank [Moore Cross] does.

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

Certainly professionally, yes [I was interested more in history]. And literary criticism, the structure of poetry. But it is primarily as a historian that I work, although text criticism and literary criticism are very much a part of my interests.

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.