We want to live in ambiguity. This is the human condition.

I think we may very well, in many areas, get likelihood, but not certitude. We don't want certitude anyway, do we?

My own interest is far more in the Hebrew Bible. My religion is more personally related to the Hebrew Bible than it is to the New Testament.

I became intimately acquainted with the Bible only as a theological student.

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.

Elie [Wiesel], when you ask, "Why do I want to know," I'm trying to grab the holy. And I'm getting thrown back.

What is public for you, Elie [Wiesel], is private for Frank [Moore Cross], and the reverse.