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.

We are thrown back on the text, for the most part. Archaeology can give us background. It doesn't either confirm or disprove the Bible, but it may illuminate it.

Israel defined its God and its relation to that God in existential, relational terms. They did not, until quite late, approach the question of one God in an abstract philosophical way.

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.

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.

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.

I grew up in a household in which the Bible played very little role.