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

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.

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

The Bible is one, Old and New, in my particular tradition.

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

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

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.